Category Archives: Daily Epiphany

Bits of stuff that happen day to day.

Encore

Posted on by Bill Chance

We drove to Fort Worth to see Chris Isaak this evening at Billy Bob’s Texas. We went early so we could walk around and get something to eat. I have forgotten how much fun the Fort Worth Stockyards are – not to mention the world’s biggest honkey tonk.

Near the end of Chris Isaak’s set I saw something I had never seen before. Back in the day, we all used to hold up lighters at the end of a show – there would be this sea of flame spread out across the concert hall to signify our desire to see and hear a few more songs. At a particularly gnarly show folks would gather trash from the floor of the venue, light it, and hold it aloft – I guess to sort of kick things up a notch.

Nowadays this has morphed into everyone holding up the illuminated screen of their phones – a sea of iPhones glowing in the darkness. I’m afraid I’ve always thought this was pretty lame.

Tonight I some something new. Somebody was holding up a tablet – I don’t think it was an iPad – it looked a little smaller – maybe an Android tablet of some kind. At any rate they held it high, waiting for the encore.

And on the screen was an app that displayed a flickering flame.

Pollo Regio

Posted on by Bill Chance

Lee had friends over last night, so I didn’t get any sleep. The house today looks like a bomb went off and I couldn’t take it so I had to get out of the house as soon as I woke up.

Like an alcoholic that shouldn’t drink alone, I shouldn’t eat out by myself. A waste of money, for one thing – I’ll eat too much, for another. I would have been happy to make up a nice, healthy breakfast if our kitchen hadn’t been so depressing – so I climbed in my car and went out in search of something to eat (Candy is volunteering at an animal shelter – we are driving to Fort Worth later in the day).

My part of the city is nothing if not diverse. I did not want to go to some traditional American fast-food place, or even a traditional American slow-food place. I wanted to get some work done at White Rock Coffee. I’m working on a short story based around technology that enables text to be encoded on strings of viral DNA and books that are then spread (read) via infection. Again, my home is too depressing right now to hang around and write in.

I headed down Plano road looking for sustanance. Vietnamese, Chinese, Ethiopian, Korean, Brasilian, Salvadoran, Soul Food, MiddleEastern, Cajun, Thai, and every other part of the world presented themselves within a few blocks of my route.

Rice and Tacos

Rice and Tacos

I saw a neon sign that said – Rice and Tacos  – Mexican and Chinese food, and made a quick left – that looked like an attractive combination. It turned out to be a convenience store with a food counter and I’ll probably try that sometime soon, but I wanted to sit down in peace today. Diagonally across the intersection I spotted a relatively new restaurant that I have been watching get remodelled – El Pollo Regio.

There was a privately owned pollo asado place there before (before that, it was a Taco Bell) that was really good. Candy and I ate met there for lunch and the only complaint I had is that they served roasted Jalepeno peppers with their lunch specials and they varied in capsaicin content a little too much for comfort. I ate mine with no problems and Candy gave me hers – so I gobbled it down without the usual precautions (held lightly between two fingers, lips held back and way from the flesh of the pepper, a test nibble). It was so hot that I could barely see the rest of the day.

Not too long later the place closed down. We were disappointed at first, but then saw it was being converted into a Pollo Regio – which isn’t really any different than what it was before.

Pollo Regio

Pollo Regio

The Pollo Regio at Plano Road and Forest in Garland. The large rectangular structure on the roof to the right of the sign is the elaborate exhaust mechanism necessary for the giant chicken roaster inside to meet modern environmental regulations. Shame. There is nothing cooler on a hot night than seeing the rotating spits of a traditional pollo asado full of whole chickens moving around and dripping fat in front of an open fire. It would belch a wonderful fragrant smoke full of chicken and wood that would fill the neighborhood and attract hungry customers like flies. I love and miss that.

Now, when I’m out looking for something to eat I try really hard to stay away from chains. I would much rather support indivduals than sub-divisions of a megasized corporation – plus the food is going to be better when it is based on an old family recipe. Pollo Regio is technically a chain, but a small one. They started out a few years ago as a food truck in Austin (the source of a lot of culinary innovation) and spread to a chain of franchised chicken spots – especially penetrating the Dallas Fort-Worth Market.

I can live with that.

The food was good, The chicken (served wrapped in butcher paper along with a whole roasted onion) properly spicy and smoky, the sides (rice and charro beans) excellent, the selection of salsas (the most important aspect of a pollo asado meal) wide, spicy, and fresh. Nobody spoke english, which is another nice touch.

Why pay for a vacation flight to the tropics when you can enjoy brutal heat, suffocating humidity, spicy food, mysterious sauces, and difficult communications only a few blocks down Plano Road?

Roku and roll

Posted on by Bill Chance
Rabbit Ears

Rabbit Ears

 I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

—Roy Batty, Blade Runner

My father’s day present arrived in a little box yesterday – Candy bought me a Roku box.

I remember when I was a kid, people had only one television. Now, our house, a family of two when the kids are in school, has five televisions set up, plus any number of laptops (I usually watch entertainment on my laptop). Once, I told my kids we didn’t have VCRs when I was a kid (this was when we were all still watching VHS tapes – which already seems a long time ago) and they said they couldn’t imagine how anyone could get through the day. I tried to tell them that when I was a small child we didn’t even have color TV and they only looked confused, with their eyes scrunched up.

In many ways, I miss the one TV days. There were only three channels so everyone watched television together and they watched the same thing. I had a friend with a large family and I used to like to go to his house where the living room would fill up with family, friends, and hangers-on. My favorite was Saturday Night at the Movies, where second-run films would be edited, chopped up and interspersed with commercials, then sent out over the ether in glorious blurry black-and-white.

In the middle of the extravaganza would always be a Coca-Cola commercial. My friends’ mother would immediately haul herself up from the couch and stride to the kitchen for a cold bottle of Coke – The Real Thang. It was like clockwork. We would laugh but she never figured out what we were laughing about. She never knew that the commercial was sending her out for a cold, sweating bottle, either. She actually thought she was thirsty.

TV

Since everybody across the land watched the same thing every evening there was always a discussion of the evening’s entertainment around the water coolers the next day.

In 1964, I remember when the Beatles went back across the pond. That seemed to be a big deal back then, like it actually mattered where a rock band was physically located. It felt like we would never see or hear from the adorable mop-tops again. Though I was only seven years old, I was saddened by this – it felt like an era was passing.

It seemed like only a few days later (the exact chronology is very fuzzy – I was only seven years old) another British band appeared on Ed Sullivan. There was some buzz among the adults in the room that these kids would now replace the Beatles, so I watched and paid attention. This was almost fifty years ago, but I still remember I had a glass of milk in my hand when they came on.

Right away, I was mesmerized. They didn’t have the energy of the Beatles, but there was something…, something I couldn’t figure out, something that I knew a seven year old kid wasn’t privy to, but something, something special, something somehow unsavory yet seductive about these guys, especially the lead singer.

It was, of course, the Rolling Stones, and I was right – nothing would be the same again.

You can Watch it Here. You can’t imagine the effect this had on a seven year old kid in 1964.

So now, a half century later, in this best of all possible worlds, I spent a few seconds hooking up the Roku (they aren’t lying when they say that hooking it up is simple) and the rest of the evening running back and forth from the TV to my laptop in another room carrying a series of slips of paper with passwords and setup codes until I could get the channels working (they don’t tell you about this part).

So now, we can sit down with a small pile of remote controls in the darkened corner of a back bedroom (we’ll move it to Lee’s massive TV when he goes back to school) and stream the whole world into that little box.

It’s really cool, it really is, but it doesn’t have the effect of a blurry static-besmirched Mick Jagger wriggling beneath a pair of aluminum-draped rabbit ears. It’s not the television’s fault – it’s not the technology – it’s my eyes. They aren’t seven any more. They are worn out now. They have seen too much.

Stones

Stones

Blast From the Past

Posted on by Bill Chance

Now I’ve updated this blog every day for the last month. It feels odd to be in that quotidian writing mode again. I’ve done it before. A long time ago.

I used to have a blog before there were blogs. We called them “Online Journals.” Mine was called “The Daily Epiphany” and I uploaded it every day, every day with only a few missed hunks here and there during periods of turmoil or extreme ennui, for somewhere around ten years.

The first entry went up on… let me check the backup copy on the portable hard drive… July 25, 1996. It was not very well written. Let’s see.
(I used to start every entry out with a quote)

IAGO

I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter

and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

BRABANTIO

Thou art a villain.

IAGO

You are–a senator.

-From Othello, by William Shakespeare, Act 1, Scene 1

 Yesterday, I took Nick and Lee down to play baseball after I picked them up. I couldn’t find Nick’s glove so we played with tennis balls, took turns batting. They had a real blast, I’ll try to do this more often. They wanted to bring the tee next time, they are still a little too small to hit pitched balls on a regular basis. Lee was a little overheated and tired, he almost fell asleep when we got home, Candy thought he might be sick, but be was only worn out.

 Then I went to see Othello at Shakespeare in the Park. I really liked it, even though I’d forgotten how depressing this play was. They are alternating Othello with Midsummer’s Nights Dream, which I saw before vacation. The same set and many of the same actors are used in both productions, it is interesting to see the same elements present in two stories of such differing tone and outcome.

 By the way, the phrase “making the beast with two backs” is really from Othello. I always thought it was only some nasty bit someone made up.

 It amazes me that so many people don’t like Shakespeare. I think it is a carryover from school when we all remember the dreary days sitting in class, reading Julius Caesar. These are PLAYS for godssake, they aren’t meant to be read out of a book. I think that all school children should see a Shakespeare play first, or a least rent the movie, and only then read selected parts of the play for further study. Othello, of course, is a very turbulent story of evil, and jealousy. With it’s racial overtones, it is an amazingly contemporary story, Spike Lee could have written a it as a screenplay. Sitting there watching it, I could not believe that it was written over 500 years ago.

 All in all a very entertaining night.

 Many people are surprised that I go to plays, movies and things like that by myself. I don’t understand why more people don’t.

 First of all, it is the only way we can get out without a sitter, which costs a ton of money.

 Actually I did take Nick to see King Lear, two years ago, when he was 3 or 4. He liked it more than I thought he would. Of course, he didn’t have a clue about the plot, but he liked the swordfighting and the storm. Then he fell asleep. I could never take Lee though, he simply can’t sit still. I am looking forward to a couple years from now when we can do more as a family. Right now, Lee is so active, there are few places (DZ, Chucky Cheese, outdoors) where we can take him without driving ourselves and everybody else crazy.

 Also, I’ve always enjoyed movies and some plays by myself. Of course, you miss out on the companionship, but if it is a movie you really want to see, you don’t notice anyone (or anything) else while the movie is on anyway. It’s OK to read a book, watch TV, rent a movie by yourself, why isn’t it considered all right (in many circles at least) to go out in public by yourself. I like to see what I want to see and not have to worry about my companions and whether they like what I like (or am offended by what I like).

 It is a big change from my younger years. The big worry then was being alone and not having anyone around to do stuff with. Now I really cherish any time I have by myself, any privacy I’m able to scare up, any moments that no one is making demands on me.

 After work, I’m planning on riding my mountain bike for a little while, but I have to be home at 6:50 PM, Candy is going out for dinner with the other preschool PTA moms. So I’ll get in a couple quick laps at the Rowlett Creek single track and then get home. When it cools off a little

 I’ll take the kids back down to the school and we’ll play some baseball, if they still want to do that (which they will).

 I’m looking forward to riding today, I rode this weekend and am doing a lot better on the mountain bike, since the trip to New Mexico.

 Years ago I was a serious bike rider. It was a good time in my life, I was healthy, in shape, and really enjoying the challenge of improving my abilities on my road bike. I was considering some amateur racing. It took up a horrendous amount of time, however.

 When my kids were born, I stopped riding for about five years, I really missed riding, but I had literally no spare time. Now that my kids are a little older, I’m starting in again, totally out of shape, about 30 pounds heavier than I was when I last rode. I bought a mountain bike, and am in the long process of learning the sport, and getting my body into shape. I have the goal of being a pretty good rider one year from now, when we will return to New Mexico for my family reunion. The mountains and desert out there will be a great test for me (they sure ate my lunch this year).

Not too much has changed in the last fifteen years. Nick and Lee were, let me think, six and five. Now they are a junior and a sophomore in college and we still don’t feel comfortable leaving them at home without supervision.

Writing something on the web has really changed in that short time, though. Back then, there was no high-speed Internet. To surf the web, you had to have a free phone line and connect with a dial-up modem. I do miss that series of sounds: the dial tone, the number being called, the hiss and tone of the modem speed negotiation.

There was, of course, no blogging software. Everything was written off-line and then uploaded. I think there were a few primitive HTML editors, but most people wrote with notepad, putting in formatting codes by hand.

I still prefer to write off-line – either from OpenOffice or my Alphasmart – and then paste into the blogging software. It gives me one more layer of thought before the words escape. First drafts aren’t writing, they are typing – editing is writing. At first, my only access to web space was the five megabytes that AOL gave you with your membership. It’s surprising what you can do with five megabytes if you work hard and use mostly text.

There were very few people doing this. I was somewhere around the thirteenth person. It was considered very strange and somewhat insane to be putting your private life out there. There was no Facebook or any social media of any kind and privacy had a completely different meaning – that the rapidly evolving technology was threatening in a big way. I was interviewed for a number of articles, Wall Street Journal, New York Times… I’ll try to find copies of those, it would be interesting to look back.

Lee and I

The New York Times used this picture of Lee and I for their article.

There were these things called Webrings… The one for Online Journals was called Open Pages. There are still a few backup copies of Open Pages around, this one from 1998 had 326 listed (see, there I am, number 13), a year later it had more than doubled. I don’t think anyone would have thought that there would be tens of millions of the things being written a short ten years later.

I have a rough backup of my old entries. I’m in pretty good shape from 1996 to 2005, which is pretty damn amazing when I think of the series of computer crashes, online service provider bankruptcies, and lightning strikes my data has endured over the years. Remember, most of that time my work was backed up onto floppy disks. After that it gets pretty spotty as I tried to enter the modern world with a database-based system. It’s surprisingly easy to maintain a backup of a long list of text files in directories, not so easy with a remote database (when your service provider decides to take a powder).

Lee on the monkey bars.

I had to stop around 2006 – my kids were in high school and everybody was now online and it was getting too difficult to manage an online presence that was so public. Now of course, the kids are mostly gone, I’m an old fart, and I don’t give a crap anymore, so I can put it all up.

Several time I’ve tried to make a count of how many actual entries I still have (a few months here and there have gone wonky) – several thousand, at any rate. I am working on finishing my “new” Linux server and when it’s done I will use it as a file, music, and web server and I should be able to get all these old entries up. It will be ugly, the links won’t work anymore, and I’ve lost a lot of the images, but it will be a record of a time gone by.

Nick on his skateboard.

Nick reading Harry Potter.

Nick reading Harry Potter. Is this the first one?

In the meantime I’ll try to keep on writing every day. There are a few hints and tricks I’ve learned that are necessary to keep a string like that going (the most important trick is to give yourself permission to publish crappy entries) – and one is to have a backup plan… a way to pull an entry out of your ass when the idea creek has gone bone dry. One way is to have some photographs stuck away you can stick up… and now I have a few thousand entries I can pull out as say, “Hey look how much I used to suck!” and maybe nobody will notice that I still suck just as much.

Nick and Candy now, in Durham

Nick and Candy now, in Durham

Lee now, in New Orleans

Lee now, a Tulane student in New Orleans - Mardi Gras, Krewe of Zulu parade.

I Buy a Secretary

Posted on by Bill Chance

This last weekend, Candy and I went out on a tour of East Dallas’ best (and worst) thrift and second-hand stores. I always watch an episode of Hoarders before we go, to make sure I don’t buy stuff just to be buying.

I bought a secretary.

No, not this kind of secretary.

Secretary

Secretary

Get your mind out of the gutter.

This kind of secretary.

secretary

secretary

I’ve wanted a good place to store pens and paper – a place I can sit down and write.

Writing Surface Dropped Down

The hinged writing surface dropped down on the secretary.

And that’s what a secretary does.

We bought it at a little second-hand shop off of Garland Road that supports an animal orphanage – they had some black lab-Bassett hound mix puppies on display – we were lucky to get out of there with only the piece of furniture.

And we weren’t done – not by any means. That part of town is lousy with second hand stores and we toured quite a few, braving the heat which quickly began to rise into blowtorch territory as the blazing sun rose higher in the sky.

Found a nice little down-home Italian place right next door.

Sali's Italian Restaurant

Sali's Italian Restaurant - at Peavy and Garland Road in Dallas

Excellent food, very cheap prices… check it out if you’re in the neighborhood.

On we went, this was our old stomping grounds, years ago, and it’s surprising how little everything has changed. The thrift stores still smell the same, of course, that odd smell of other people’s clothes mixed with an air of desperation. I don’t care, I get good deals: wireless G Router for $4.93, Logitech soundsystem with powered subwoofer for $14.97, laptop speakers for 2 bucks. I didn’t buy enough crap to feel like a hoarder.

Oh, look at this. The window of a car insurance place….

No Licence, No Problem

No Licence, No Problem

“No licence, no problem.” Jeez! Selling car insurance to people without a driver’s license…. and what does that little button that says “HOME” mean?

The day wore us out. The heat – the trudging around.

I do like my secretary, though.

Father’s Day at the Mall Food Court

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’m not a big fan of holidays. Especially the manufactured holidays, like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Earth Day, or any of the others that arise not out of ancient pagan fertility rites but more modern constructions of the retail-industrial complex designed to make people go out and buy stupid presents – spend their hard-earned cash on superfluous consumer tripe rather than save it so it can be eventually lost in bad investments – like it should.

Now, I’m not complaining about my gifts, mind you. I may be stubborn, but I’m not stupid. Candy gave me a very nice pen – I’ll take some photographs in a few days. Still, I didn’t really want to celebrate – fight the lunch crowds – and said I’d eat some leftover beans instead.

But Lee was hungry so we went out to eat anyway. When asked where I wanted to go, I replied, “The food court at the mall.”

OK, I live in a Texas Suburb. Those of you a long way away probably are now thinking of big slabs of grilling beef and people wearing boots and ten-gallon hats. Those of you a little closer are thinking about typical American Mall fare – like what?… Cinabon, Steak Escape, Orange Julius (are these still around?) Dog on a Stick? – Jeez, I have no idea what a mall has in its food court anymore.

At any rate, that’s not what I’m talking about. This may be a boring Texas Big City Suburb, but the world is a much more diverse place than you think it is. My neighborhood mall is the Saigon Mall, a Vietnamese-Oriented complex constructed upon the carcass of an extinct Target, and its Food Court is a place of strange and wondrous sustenance.

Food Court Entrance to the Saigon Mall

Food Court Entrance to the Saigon Mall

My only disappointment is that the self-serve frozen yogurt place is gone. I’m going to have to find another place for my Durian ice cream fix now. Candy has a Cuisinart Ice-Cream maker… maybe I could make my…. no, better not. Durian preparation is probably something best left up to professionals.

We walked around a bit and examined the various purveyors of various cuisines – Lee was close to getting a pound of boiled crustaceans from the Crawfish Hut, Candy looked at a new stand that promised “Real Thai Cooking”, and I considered some Pho – but we eventually decided on sandwiches from Lee’s – an always reliable and delicious choice.

When ordering sandwiches, I tend to get the #1 combo – no matter what is in it. They have decided to put this at the top of their menu and they know better than I.

My Sandwich - #1 combo with Thai Iced Tea.

My Sandwich - #1 combo with Thai Iced Tea.

My sandwich was not as blurry as this picture suggests. The fresh cilantro and other herbs along with the crunchy fresh-made baguettes really set these apart from the usual boring sub fare. There was some sort of very hot pepper hiding inside somewhere, I needed another tea. You can see the Boba in my tea – it was very good, though I have no idea what was in it.

After we had our sandwiches, we went down to the Boba Tea/Smoothie place. We always love this spot. Lee and I love Boba but Candy says she “doesn’t want any of those little snot-balls” in her beverage, which I can’t really argue with. The place used to be called Teahouse, but it has a new logo – “I (heart) Boba” – though the menu seems pretty much the same. The menu consists of a list of pretty much every substance on earth – thrown into a blender with either tea, ice, or some sort of “cream” mixture. I felt like coconut, which was number 114, and the list went on from there for a long way. Then you can get Boba, or Gummy Bears, or anything else, really, dumped in for extra amusement. I felt like some “snot-balls” today, so I had Boba.

Candy and Lee at the Smoothie Place

Candy and Lee at the Smoothie Place

Candy and Lee enjoying their smoothies.

Lunch Menu

Lunch Menu

Here’s the giant lunch menu outside one of the several restaurants in the Saigon Mall. I don’t want to sound like some ignorant American Redneck, but my honest reaction to this is, “What the hell is this stuff?” I see some shrimp arranged in a nice, attractive circle, but it surrounds some strange looking brownish sauce with white flecks – it looks like it might be too spicy, even for me. One dish is labeled “Salmon or Yellowtail” which is reassuring, but nothing in the picture next to it resembles fish in any way.

I hate the feeling when you order something at random and the waiter’s eyes get big and that concerned look crosses their face. They will shake their head from side to side, and say, “Oh, you don’t want to order that.” Sometimes I’ll stubbornly push ahead and insist, eagerly waiting until the plate of something arrives and is set down in front of me.

You know, those waiters are always right. I should listen more often.

Oh, I stumbled across this… Here’s something you should NEVER, EVER do in a mall food court.

Ozymandias

Posted on by Bill Chance
ozzy by chancew1
ozzy, a photo by chancew1 on Flickr.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”

Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias

I have always had a soft spot for abandoned sculpture. Something about the idea of an expensive, large, conceived, funded, designed, constructed, dedicated, photographed, and ballyhooed public work of art forgotten, gone to seed, abandoned – yet still there for all to see – stirs something primeval, prevalent, and tragic in my heart and pen.

For a decade or so in the boom times of the waning years of the last century, there was a luxuriant development in North Dallas near the intersection of Highway 75 and the LBJ 635 Interstate loop called Park Central. It rose up on the land of a long-abandoned WWII airbase – yes, really – I discovered that the beloved Olla Podrida was a re-purposed aircraft hanger. There was an outdoor concert venue that everyone remembers and a spate of modern office towers scrambling toward the sky.

It also boasted a serious outdoor sculpture collection. I actually remember breathless news stories when the newest hunk of abstract steel rose into the summer heat. It was all pretty darn cool.

Then the economy cycled one of its many downturns (don’t remember which one) and it all went to crap.

The concert venue closed, the buildings began to gain coats of peeling paint and discolored concrete as everything expensive moved north to the far exburgs and Park Central was pretty much forgotten. Especially the sculptures. They do not bring in very much income in tough times. The artworks quickly disappeared, swallowed up by parking lots. I don’t know where they went. Were they sold off for scrap metal?

They went quickly, except for one. For a decade a lone piece of artwork stood stoutly in a weedy field, right off the interstate. A dark, twisted monolith – I almost expected to see primitive apes waving jawbones at each other around it. Literally, a million people drove by it every day – but I think I was the only one to notice it still standing there. I drove down one day to look for a plaque or some indication of what it was or who the artist was, but could find nothing, even though I worked up a good sweat and fed a thousand mosquitoes digging around in the scrub prickles trying to find some information.

The sculpture disappeared a couple years ago – swallowed up by the parking lot of a brand-spanking-new megachurch. I don’t know where it went. I suppose it was broken down and crushed into a landfill somewhere.

I wonder if I’m the only one that misses it.

Dallas N

Posted on by Bill Chance
Dallas n by chancew1
Dallas n, a photo by chancew1 on Flickr.

A helicopter flyi*g across the Dow*tow* Dallas Skyli*e. It’s o* a quest to fi*d a place to place its letter. O*ly o*e letter, a red letter, a gia*t letter. But Where, Where does it go?

Dart Mirror

Posted on by Bill Chance
Dart Mirror by chancew1
Dart Mirror, a photo by chancew1 on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
The Dallas DART train, Red Line, reflected in the mirrored walls of an office building (actually the parking garage) at NW Highway and Central.

When I first moved to Dallas, thirty years ago, one of the places that I liked was the twin gold towers of Campbell Center. They were featured in the opening montage of Dallas (the television show – J.R. Ewing and all that, remember) and were an obvious feature at Highway 75 and Loop 12 – two gold reflecting office towers, shining in the setting sun, flanking a fancy hotel.

Watch it here.

Now that I watch the opening credits, I can’t help but notice the Doubletree Hotel is not there. I have no idea when it was added. Anyhow…. Man, Dallas (the city) has grown.

I hired a secretary in one of the towers to rewrite and copy my resume – which must have worked because I was able to get a couple of job offers in a few days. That was not an easy feat in 1981 – the economy felt a lot like it does right now.

Over the decades, a lot of office towers have grown up in Dallas, overshadowing the twin gold towers. Nobody really thinks of them much anymore. I’ve been to a few wedding receptions in the hotel, had a fun New Year’s Eve at a party there once.

One cool thing now… at least cool to me… is that the DART Red Line train, going south from Park Lane along Greenville rises up onto an elevated track right behind Campbell Center. I always try and sit on the West side of the train so I can watch the reflection in the gold cladding of the buildings.

Always look for small enjoyments.

Fender Bender

Posted on by Bill Chance

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness
And I watch my baby as she sleeps
Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight
I just lay there awake in the middle of the night
Thinking ’bout the wreck on the highway
—-Bruce Springsteen, Wreck on the Highway

I was driving home from the library after having dropped off a stack – the traffic was heavy and jittery in a late rush-hour need to get home right now way. Everyone was driving faster than they should. This is on a neighborhood artery – Arapaho Road – six lanes, lots of stoplights, lots of in-and-out. I’ve seen too many fender benders in this sort of tumult so I took a deep breath, slowed down, and kept my eyes open.

I could see a clot of cars ahead of me forming around the railroad tracks. Behind me, I saw a car coming up fast, winding between the commuters, swerving between lanes. It was an ordinary ambiguous American sedan, some unidentifiable dark color, with a long dent, more like a big scrape, all down the left side. I could see the driver’s smooth round head sticking up – at first I thought they must be very short but I realized they were simply reclined, sitting back, one hand idly resting on the wheel. I noticed the nonchalant aggression of the driving, the macho languid position of the driver, and the evidence of past indiscretions and said to myself, “This person is about to have an accident.”

They pulled up to within inches of my rear bumper and as I touched my brakes to prepare for the stopped traffic ahead the car immediately swung to the right into the parking lane and used it to dash if front of me. I slowed down some more and watched as the car darted back into traffic right in front of me and immediately smashed into the halted cars.

There is the ubiquitous sound of accidents. The sudden screech of brakes, the squeal of rubber sliding on concrete. Then a fateful  BANG! – a concussion wave that pushes against your head and drills into your ears. That is the crossing point when you know an accident, not a near-miss, has actually occurred. The irrevocable forces of chaos and entropy have been unleashed. After that the sound of rending metal as all three of Newton’s Laws of Motion work together to run up huge bills at the body shop. Finally, the tinkling coda as glass falls and shatters onto the unforgiving concrete.

I watched the crumpling as the rear of the car rose and then fell back. The trunk of the car in front flew open, forced straight up like a huge metal surrender flag. It wasn’t that bad of an accident, nothing more than the usual fender bender, thousands happen every day, but it is always such a shame. I’m not a car person, but when I see something like this I always think of the thousands of hours that went in to building the car and the tens of thousands of hours spent working to pay off a car loan. There is that beam of pride smile when someone shows off their new ride.

All torn asunder in a moment of testosterone.

A few years ago I was driving back home from the gym with Nick and Lee in the car. We were coming up Skillman and getting ready to cross the LBJ 635 Interstate. That’s a nasty little intersection, with a half-dozen busy roads all coming together in a confusing, curving snarl. Now that I think about it, it was the same time of day – late, evening starting to set in, not dark yet, everybody tired and in a hurry. Coming up to the light at the frontage road I saw that the green light was beginning to get the slightest hint of yellow. Looking ahead, I saw someone coming the other way in the left turn lane. He was accelerating, obviously going to try and cut me off, run the left turn in front of me before the light turned red. I’m not going to play chicken with my car so I started to brake.

Looking in my rear view mirror I saw a custom souped-up compact speeding up right on my tail. I could read his mind, “Oh shit! don’t tell me that asshole in the crappy mini-van is going to stop on that yellow light. I have places to be, I’m not going to wait.” I knew he was going to dart around me and run the light.

I think Nick had just picked up his learner’s permit and Lee was only a year behind. I told them, “Hey, watch this, there is about to be a car wreck.” They perked up, looking a little confused.

The car behind me roared as his glass-packs spewed exhaust when he stomped the accelerator and squealed around me. Meanwhile, the other car made his left turn toward the frontage road.

It was only a glancing blow. A quick POP! and a grind as the two scraped past each other. But the car from behind me lost his front right tire and careened in a quick curve until he smacked the bridge wall pretty hard. His car climbed the concrete and if it hadn’t hung up on the steel guard rail that ran a foot above the top of the wall he probably would have hurtled over and fallen into the eight lanes of heavy Interstate traffic screaming by thirty feet below.

Nick and Lee were flabbergasted. I glanced – their mouths were hanging open.

“How did you know that was going to happen?” they both said.

I did my fatherly duty and explained how important it is to pay very close attention to what is going on, to always check your mirrors, and to not be too aggressive or too fast.I don’t drive through that intersection very often but when I do I always make note of the bent guard rail about a third of the way across the bridge.

I’m afraid I didn’t stop in either case. I do feel bad about that, I kept on driving like nothing had happened. It was obvious that nobody was hurt – and there were plenty of others around that would be more than willing to get involved in a minor traffic brouhaha.

Plus, I may be going slow, but I have places to be too.

Today, I have to go to work. I hate slaving through the weekend. While I’m there, you can enjoy this video: