08/05/04  Dallas City Blues

First of all, I want to thank the editor for publishing my first article on DallasArena.com.  She told me without telling me what I could do to help this town.  It's nice to see so many people still care about this city.  It's just too bad that so many isn't enough.  Hopefully, we can brainstorm and get some more ideas on what to do.

Dallas will be better one day.

I have a fake sister (she's my very best friend who is more like family to
me than anything).  She recently moved up to Lubbock to attend school there.   She loves it.

I wonder why?  It's nothing but a big ball of dirt.  But yet, the people are friendlier there.  It's very easy to make friends, and it's even easier to hang out with them because they aren't so far away.  Even better, she hasn't seen one homeless person yet.

I tell her about Dallas.

The people here are unfriendly.  You just don't know what to say to a person in order to become friends with them.  Do you really need me to explain to you the homeless person biz?

She says, "Well, that's too bad."  What's really bad is that she was born and raised here, just like me.  In fact, she is from the same neighborhood I'm from...only not.

We're from Oak Cliff (aaah, Oak Cliff).  To be more specific, South Oak Cliff.  To be even more specific, she's from the Laurel Land area while I'm from the Alta Mesa/Highland Hills area. 

In order to get to her house, I have to go downtown to the West End and catch a bus that is just going to take me right back where I started from. I have to do the same thing when I depart.

Our wonderful transportation system DART.  Home of gun wavers, rude and crazy bus drivers and just plain don't give a dammers (is that a word?)

It's Sunday afternoon.  I'm on my way to try to see an independent film, only to find out that it's not playing at the Magnolia in the West Village, but at the Inwood Theatre.

I decide not to go, and instead look for something else to do.  That's the problem, there was nothing else to do. The West End is nothing now but a bunch of eateries and impulse buying shops.  Any other DART station is deserted around this time, with the exception of West End and Mockingbird.  No other movie theatres were near, I mean in the downtown area.

So, I went walking around and got up to Homeless City A.K.A. City Hall. Some freak decided to jump in the middle of traffic in the street in the front of the library, and ended up jumping into a bunch of bushes on the median. Looked like a nasty fall.  I stopped and observed.  The homeless were just having a grand old time laughing at this guy.  In fact, I would've never known that they were homeless.   It looked just like a regular park to me.  I even saw some picnic lunches going on. Wish I could've been having that much fun.

I kept walking and wound up in an old warehouse district.  Buildings where no one has paid any attention to them, and just let them get run down and useless.  A guy in a truck stopped and called me over. Gee, I wonder what he wanted.  I walked slowly over not getting one step closer to his door. He asked if I was lost, if I needed a ride.  I told him I was on an assignment. Then, he asked me about parades.

Parades? I don't remember the name of the streets I was on, but they were not the place to have a parade. I knew he was just trying to cover himself. I knew what he really wanted. He drove on, out of my sight.

That pretty much does it.

So, where am I going with this? The answer should be obvious.

I wasn't a tourist, but what if I was? What then?

Good luck with the new stadium. We all know what's really important, don't we?

As I left, a man was washing his shirt in the City Hall Pool, right out front. It looked like he was taking a bath.

I also saw a man urinating on one of the pillars right in front of City Hall.
 
I wonder how many people have urinated in the pool...?

But, a better question is:

"Why is it so easy to see why my sister would rather be in Podunk City, than in an actual city?"

The Mysteries of Life.....