About This Blog

This blog features: neighborhood restaurants, nearby restaurants, downtown restaurants, Casa View Shopping Center, nearby shopping, Downtown shops.

I will first list places and my connections with them. For the spirit of completeness, I will then list other places, known to me but not visited. I choose not to list the unknown.

I like the section entitled Places I Wish I Had Visited.

My focus is places and locations which existed from 1953, when I moved to Dallas, until 1965, when I graduated from high school. This list will continue with my college years, until I turned 21. I left Dallas in 1969 and, as I did not return except to visit my parents until 1973, my memory of East Dallas ends at that time.

Some categories were easy to separate – restaurants and shopping. Some experiences are not so easy to categorize, but are still meaningful. They may be all lumped in together, and then teased out as other connections are made.

Music wise, we may have thought we were born of the “wrong generation.” I always thought the older generation (i.e. 3 to 4 years older than me) had a richer and deeper experience.

But we, the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation, had it best – stable family life, rising expectations for the middle class and parents who wanted to give so much to their children, which most did not have in their childhood. We were left to play and roam outdoors to make our own fun. We had the best toys and the best music.

And yet we lived in tumultuous times – the Cold War, Civil Rights, Integration and the Kennedy Assassination through the killings of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Hopefully we came out as loving, caring, sharing adults whose experiences made us better people and gave us the ability to show appreciation and gratitude for the neighborhood and experiences which enriched us and our loved ones.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Boy Scouts - I was in Troops 742 and 543, Eagle Scout in 1962

Joined Den 1 of Pack 4 at Reinhardt Elementary in 1964.  Roy Skinner, Packmaster.  In den meetings we did crafts including a wooden cutting board and clothing sprinkler.

Mother was very proper.  Changed her clothes to dress and pearls when my father returned from work, had cocktails.  She dressed as a hobo to lead our Happy Den at Hobos at the Scout Circus at the Cotton Bowl.

We learned a song to sing – “Make America Proud of You.”

Couldn’t wait to join the Boy Scouts when I turned 11.

Joined Troop 742 at St. Marks Presbyterian Church in Nov 1957.  My first tent mate was John Byrd. 

The Scoutmaster became C.L. “Lum” Lewis, deputy sherriff with Dallas County.  His son, Dan, and I received our Eagle Scout in Troop 543 in May 1962.

Another boy in the troop was Mike Ruff, who bicycled from Mesquite to troop meetings.  His two twin sons, Aaron and Brandon were in the same troop as my son Adam, 30 years later with Troop 5 in North Oak Cliff.
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