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

Skating

Even though we lived in temperate climate here in Dallas, we had both ice and roller skating rinks close by.
 
Most girls got metal roller skates which they could use in the driveway or on the sidewalk.  I never learned to roller skate as a boy, but we did end up going ice skating over several weekends at the Coliseum at Fair Park.

My sister Dorothy spent a lot of time skating at the White Rock Roller Skating Rink on Barnes Bridge off Garland Road.
 
During the Roller Disco Era, I bought a cheap pair of the new-styled outdoor roller skates with hard plastic wheels.  I went to an abandoned shopping center parking lot and taught myself how to roller skate with Donna Summers songs playing in my head.

We had several birthday parties for my daughter, Rachel.
 
Ice Arena at the Coliseum in Fair Park TA-1-1541 MYP63
 
Broadway Skateland Roller Skating Rink

400 Moon in Broadway Village BR-9-0421
Located in Mesquite.  Cost a quarter to get in.  Cokes were a nickel.  Cheapest live music venue around.  They called it "Broadway Skateland and Sock Hop a Go-Go."

White Rock Roller Skating Rink
1616 Barnes Bridge Road at Garland Road DA-7-4835
Private parties, skating lessons
"Air Conditioned by Refrigeration"
Sponsored a Hula Hoop contest.  The contestants were required to twirl the hoop around the waist, neck and both arms. W? 10/30/58
 
Maverick Roller Rink 1604 Seegar HA-8-9660
Exclusively for colored.

Ice Skating 5307 Maple Avenue ME-1-5137
Two minutes from Inwood Road.  365 days a year.  Serving chili rice "chili rice is very nice".
Ice skating noon-6:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m.-midnight, 7 days a week
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMarch 15, 2013 at 7:58 PM

    My parents used to own White Rock Skating Rink when it was on barnes bridge.

    ReplyDelete

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