Dallas / Fort Worth and Me

Today, my adoring public, I’m going to talk about something near and dear to my heart: North Texas archeology. I’m not quite an expert, but I worked in the area for nigh on ten years back when I dug holes and played in the dirt for a living. The Dallas/Fort Worth area has yielded some significant finds dating back to at least 13,000 years ago, and there are some excellent collections of those remains in local public repositories, particularly the Dallas Museum of Natural History and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (both of which are overdue for a blog entry). I expect you’ll enjoy browsing both when you come to visit. To help you better understand what you’ll see, I’ve prepared this little introduction to the basics of D/FW prehistory. It’s not nearly as detailed as what you might find in, say, a thesis or a textbook, but I think it gets the basic points across.

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Welcome back, cats and kittens! Last time I told you about the Li’l New Oprys, as I call them, that you can find in various towns around our fair state — including both Garland and Wylie, proud junior members of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. One thing that I didn’t mention, however, is that from April to October of every year (and sometimes earlier or later, if it’s warm enough), bluegrass pickers gather in the Garland town square just outside the Opry at 7 PM every Saturday evening for what’s informally known as “Pickin’ on the Square.”

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Texas has a proud history of contributing to the American popular music scene, whether you’re talking about hard rock (ZZTop), light rock (Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison), alt-rock (Bowling for Soup), Texas blues (Stevie Ray Vaughn), or punk (the Judys). We’ve even got ties to ragtime, since the great Scott Joplin was born and grew up in Linden, which is near Texarkana.

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Before we get started, a quick riddle: what did the fish say when it swam into the concrete wall?

“Dam!”*

Bwahahaha! Well. Now that that’s out of my system, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite places: Lake Lavon. Of course, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers insists on calling it Lavon Lake. Okay, they created it, so I guess they can name it — but it’s Lake Lavon to the vast majority of people who live in the area, and even the state of Texas uses the popular term.

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Hey there, and welcome to the exciting conclusion of our scintillating discussion of the existing DART train lines and their currently active stations! I know you’re all excited, but please hold your applause until the very end, if you will.

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It occurred to me, recently, that I’ve bit a bit presumptuous in my discussion of the whithers and wherefores of that most sublime of public transports in our fair Metroplex, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) rail system. Sure, I’ve given you the basics: how much you pay, what the trains look like inside and out, and a general idea of what the routes are and where they go. But have I actually provided the particulars of where, exactly, you can catch the train? I fear not, beyond mention of a few of the stations. My goal with this blog entry is to remedy that.

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Mainly, it’s the alligator and the alligator gar. Though there’s that giant sturgeon, those paddlefish, the piranhas, a couple of electrical eels, and, and, and…but I get ahead of myself.

The other day, I got a wild hair and decided to check out Fair Park in downtown Dallas, since it’ll be inundated by the State Fair in just a few weeks. While I’ll be there to chronicle that, too, it’s good to remember that a lot of the city’s culture resides in the Park — and it’s there every day of the year, whether the Fair is or not. I decided I’d be remiss to let this opportunity to check out some of the attractions pass me by, so I drove down to Fair Park to check it out.

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As you may recall, until a few years ago I worked as a professional archeologist. No, really. I even have the hard-earned papers to prove it. I worked in the field for more than a decade, and I still consider myself to be an archeologist; but given the fiscal and physical realities of the past few years, I haven’t been able to practice my chosen trade lately. The fiscal difficulty comes from the fact that, until recently, I just couldn’t afford to be an archeologist; the pay isn’t the best ever. Things have recently changed in my fiscal world, but now I’m blissfully happy with what I currently do for a living, and besides — physically, I’m about as capable of the work these days I am of running in the Boston Marathon. Suffice it to say that diabetes is a pain in the ass.

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