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, February 14, 2013

Rites of a Passage



The First Shave
Borrowing my dad's Gillette double edge razor.

Haircuts
Moving up from the kid's seat to a regular seat at Bob's Barber Shop with barber Harless Oglesby.

Choosing my First Lunch Box
The winner was Roy Rogers Double R Bar Ranch lunch box with matching thermos.

My First Job
Delivering circulars with Troop 543, attempt at mowing lawns - a dismal failure with my hay fever.

My First Time Away From Home
Boy's Land Summer Camp - I would not go without my stuffed animals - a teddy bear, a rabbit and a stuffed goat.  My dad talked with a counselor who said ok.  Everyone wanted to sleep with an animal.  I never got a chance.

Walking to Reinhardt
You walked down Crest Ridge, past Estacado, turned left on Zacha to the old General Store and crossed the railroad tracks to school.

Becoming a Member of the Church
Every Saturday morning after baseball practice at St. Marks Presbyterian Church, there was a communicants class where they offered us a free Coke.  At the end of a lackluster season of the St. Marks Braves, the church had a dozen new members.

Getting my Tenderfoot Badge
I can close my eyes and readily bring up walking into my first Boy Scout meeting at the Scout Hut of Troop 742 at St. Marks Presbyterian Church in East Dallas.  My fingers fumbled as I learned to tie a square knot, try the Scout hand shake and make the Scout sign.

Picking up Elizabeth Barnes for the Prom
I had rented my tuxedo at Skeffington's in Preston Center.  I think I bought a corsage.  My dad took a picture of me at home, my head cut off.  After the Prom at the Sheraton Hotel in Southland Center, we went to Brink's Coffee Shop on Gaston at Carroll.
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