Dallas / Fort Worth and Me

When I last left you, Gentle Reader, I hadn’t finished talking about the wonders of Scarborough Faire — the yearly Renaissance Festival currently underway outside of Waxahachie, which is about 25 miles south of DFW. This is a great festival to visit. It’s a lot cheaper, admittance-wise, than most amusement parks, and it’s at least as much fun. Especially if you like such things as turtle races and falconry demonstration shows.

Speaking of falconry, the Royal Falconer was giving quite the demonstration about the time we walked in, and I was most impressed.

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Are you going to Scarborough Faire?

No, Paul and Art, I already did. On April 20, I had the opportunity to visit my very first Renaissance Festival — in this case Scarborough Faire, a great big festival located on permanent grounds just outside of Waxahachie, Texas.

Now, back when I was a lad, “the Renaissance Festival” meant the Texas Renaissance Festival, the one that’s been held down south in Plantersville since ‘74. I never got to go to that one, and I never even knew that Scarborough existed until a few years ago. Turns out that it’s the North Texas answer to the RenFaire I grew up with. This one’s been going on since 1981, and is set in the year 1533, during the reign of England’s King Henry VIII. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, this is he with his queen-of-the-moment.

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Last episode I waxed poetic (as I so often do) about Dallas Heritage Village, which is located on the environs of the big D’s original city park — which is called, cleverly enough, Old City Park. The curators have collected and maintained 38 wonderful old buildings from all over North Texas, including a log cabin (and the mansion its owners subsequently moved into), barns, animal pens, a bank, a saloon, a law office, a print shop, et cetera. They’ve basically created a small North Texas village from the turn of the last century, and have included sweet little touches like a fountain, a clock on a column in front of the bank, benches, fences, and connecting streets to add to the verisimilitude and tie what could have been a jumble into a unified whole. There’s even a bandstand with a surrounding village green, shaded by majestic trees.

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By an accident of history, it just so happens that there isn’t that much of it in the New World. (History, I mean.) Whereas it’s not uncommon for people in England or France to live in homes built four hundred years ago, in the U.S. structures of that age or older are vanishingly rare and, usually, heavily protected (few people would dare to live in one, given all the rules and regulations). We just don’t have that much historical time-depth to work with. In fact, the oldest continuously-occupied Euro-American city in the new world is St. Augustine, Florida, which was established in 1565 by the Spanish. Hell, London has privies still in use that are older than that, and some records (especially the Church’s) go back well over a thousand years. Longer, even.

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 Today, folks, I’m going to talk to you about the bluebonnet. And no, I don’t mean the famous brand of margarine, though I admit, I’m a little partial to it — it does taste better than most brands of not-butter.  Nay, the bluebonnet I prefer to wax lyrical about is not a tub of processed animal fat, but rather the state flower of Texas. While bluebonnets grow here and there all over the state, they’re especially common in Central Texas, of which my neck of the woods is considered the far northern part.

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 So, I moseyed on down to Trader’s Village in Grand Prairie today, so I could attend the 33^rd Annual Prairie Dog Chili Cookoff and World Championship of Pickled Quail Egg Eating (and ain’t that a mouthful). More than that, I participated. Now, pickled quail egg eating is not my thing, although the event recently came in at #5 on the Travel Channel’s prestigious list of all-time great eating contests (bet you didn’t know that). No, my role was as a judge in the first round of the Chili Cookoff itself.

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Deep Ellum is well known for its artistic inclinations (one need only look at all the murals all over, not to mention the Deep Ellum Art Park), and once a year they hold a fun little blowout called the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. This year’s took place April 4-6, and was sponsored primarily by Jeep and Chrysler. When I attended, on Saturday, April 5 (a beautiful day, incidentally), it wasn’t terribly crowded; however, I enjoyed myself immensely. One caveat: it’s a good idea to eat before or after the festival, rather than during; while they had plenty of food  and drink for sale, it was of the extremely expensive carnival kind. In other words,  a 16-ounce beer cost the equivalent of $5.00 in festival tickets. Guess what I didn’t drink? The tickets came in batches of 10 for $10. That’s worse than the State Fair. If you must eat while you’re at the fair next year, try one of the restaurants or bars along the edges of the displays; they’re slightly more reasonable.

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 In my last entry, I talked a bit about Bonnie and Clyde, who happen to be buried in Dallas (though not together). I even directed the interested onlooker to the grave of Bonnie Parker, which is located in the Crown Hill Memorial Park on Webb Chapel Road, one of our main thoroughfares.

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Like any large city, the DFW metroplex has its share of celebrity graves. For example, baseball legend Mickey Mantle is buried in Dallas, and the grave of rocker “Dimebag Darrell” Abbott (late of Pantera and Damageplan) can be found in Arlington. Someday, I’ll put together a sweet little entry or two about how to find the graves of a bunch of people while you’re visiting. Although it’s not something that floats my boat particularly, I do understand the draw of celebrity graves, and why some vacationers would make a pilgrimage to see the final resting places of heroes, legends, and role models.

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