My Dallas Adventure

My son and I and our wives were invited to the Christmas party hosted by one of our development associates. Our wives couldn't go but we decided to go and to use the occasion for a tour of several developments in the Dallas area. Three were completed by our host and we also looked at several others because we're still getting ideas we might use in the future for our farm.

It was a fast paced and quick trip so we packed a lot of stuff into a little time. Most of what we did would not be interesting to anyone else. And it wouldn't have interested me not terribly long ago. It is funny now how we pay attention to parking and materials used in building retail centers and how the signs are placed and many details about residential areas Funny because I never even thought about those things a few months ago and now they loom important in my mind. So I will not write about those elements.

Dallas is so much more densely populated than is Oklahoma City. Dallas is rated as the 4th largest metropolitan area in the United States. Oklahoma City is 45th. The first thing noticeable is the traffic. I lived in the Dallas area in 1998 before I came to live with mom and dad. I think this was my first prolonged return and it wasn't really very long. But the place has changed a lot - basically more and more of everything.

We were near the Dallas Tollway and I-635 at one point on Wednesday. We were in the parking lot of a retail center. A man approached the car. He said that he was very embarrassed to ask for help but his car was broken down and he and his family needed some money to spend the night. I had $20 in my pocket and I gave it to him. I know it was probably a scam and there probably wasn't a car or a family anywhere. But there might of been and either way the $20 meant a lot more to him than it did to me.

It was about 5 pm or so when we made our way to our hotel, The Adolphus. May not sound like much but we were pretty proud of ourselves for getting there in the middle of Dallas traffic at 5 pm. It is an old hotel dating from 1912. The name is from Adolphus Busch of the beer family. It is a great old hotel and we had a very nice room there.

My son chose it because of its proximity to the Dallas Petroleum Club where our party was hosted. We walked there and it took 15 or 20 minutes probably. We definitely didn't want to drive.

Our party was two floors (I think) under the bottom of that hole in the building. We went up one floor before we left and walked around on the floor just below the hole. It is called a sky lobby. Pretty impressive. It is a little hard to see in the image but there's a kind of area that juts out from the wall of the building. It is kind of triangular I guess and you can walk out on it and it is on every floor until you get up to that hole. It is pretty disorienting to stand out there on that little slice of building.

Our invitations were hand written using calligraphy. I kept mine - work of art in itself. It said to wear cocktail dress. I had to search the Internet to discover what that meant. I wore a black coat and dark slacks and shirt and tie. There were a lot of people there and I think I was dressed appropriately. But I know it is a little easier to dress gents than the ladies.

You didn't have to hunt food or drink at this party. There were servers wandering around with trays of food and they came to you. And others took your drink order and then filled it and then hunted you down, even if you moved. No cash bar here at this deal. That was just the appetizers of course. The real food was on rather large tables and there was lots of different things and all of them were exceedingly good. My favorite was the really excellent prime rib and the pepper encrusted venison. The inexhaustible supply of shrimp was pretty outstanding, too.

Mainly this was a party where you mingled about with all sorts of others. It isn't exactly my best venue but I can mingle if I must and I did.

Of considerable note and notice, although pretty much lost on me, was the presence of a retired football player, Troy Aikman. Now I knew who he was but I'm not much of a football (or any other sports) fan - unless my kids or grandkids are playing. So this was a much bigger deal for my son than it was for me. He is about a foot taller than I am and his hand just swallowed mine. He was extremely approachable and very, very nice though. I just muttered that I was happy to meet him. He said he was happy to meet me, too, but I kind of think he was just being pleasant.

Actually he is from Henryetta, Oklahoma. I didn't know this but he played at OU for a while and left after being injured. My son said that was probably a good thing. Ironically he later joined the Dallas Cowboys under Barry Switzer who was also the coach at OU at that time. My son says Aikman has 3 Super Bowl rings and a bunch of other honors.

My son said he concentrated on trying not to make too big a fool of himself when he shook hands with Mr. Aikman. He says in retrospect he could have done a lot better.

We had a good time and walked back over to our hotel about 10 pm. We were both so tired.

The next day we drove all over the Dallas area visiting one development after another. There's a lot of tollways in Dallas so we finally stopped and bought one of the Texas Toll Tags so we wouldn't have to mess with change.

We had lunch at a very good Mexican place in Southlake, TX. That was very cool and I had heard so much about this city. It was a great experience to actually visit in person.

Then we made it back to Oklahoma finally.

I'm still recovering.

My excellent adventure.