Fort Worth, Then and Now

I was fortunate enough to take a couple of extra days to visit a relative who lives on the east side of the Metromess on my recent trip down there. The extra days also allowed me to spend one full day driving around Fort Worth to reminisce about all the good and bad times, the long-haul drive from the house I grew up in to the magnet schools I attended, and various locations that provided those childhood lessons that seemed unnecessary but now are viewed as important life lessons. Much has changed; I thought I was lost when driving west on I-30 and seeing the new Cowboys super-mega-damn-the-recession-Jerry-Jones-showing-off Stadium which made me think I was on Loop 12 heading towards Irving, the newest addition to the Fort Worth skyline throwing me for a loop, redevelopment of my childhood playground, and the incessant expansion of the city towards the southwest (Bryant Irving, Alta Mesa, Benbrook Drives to name a few). However, many important places still remain and still appear just as they have in my mind for so long.

Kincaid's Burgers still is in the old grocery store and serving up some of the best hamburgers in town, the elementary school still looks the same from the front (although has been expanded multiple times in the back, my childhood home still looks the same, Ridgemar Mall still has the one parking lot where Dad and I would go and sit for hours watching the various bombers and fighters take off from Carswell Air Force Base (now known as Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth Carswell/NASJRBFWC...and NOAA thinks it has the run on acronyms), and all the soccer complexes that countless Saturday mornings were spent at in my much younger years still show signs of generations of kids running across them. The local "Bureau" office still stands a bit out of place buried in an area of industrial warehouses, but with a minor addition of some horses that they can now count as neighbors.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to take a ride through Downtown to see Sundance Square and then north into the Stockyards as I am still trying to get the hang of driving the pick-up in urban traffic. There were some accidents that afternoon that would have required creative navigation among the skyscrapers and parking lots of Downtown. That in and of itself would need a sharp recall of what streets were one-way or not, and it has been WAY too long since I had done that...but I digress. I would have loved to have gone back to the old Fort Worth National/Texas American Bank building and taken a picture in the room that used to be my Dad's office to see what had become of this childhood playground (on weekends when I'd go with Dad if he had some catch-up work to do and I still remember the view from the windows). I can still remember the taste of the burgers from Billy Miner's Saloon and hear the crunch of the peanut shells on the floor, the aroma of Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Uno's Pizzaria, and the fried alligator and jambalaya from Razzoo's Cajun Cafe. However, it is satisfying to know that those locations still stand as a reminder, a beacon perhaps, of childhood days gone by and the opportunity to recall various memories with the full sensory experience they can provide.

Alas, the weekend was too short. I would have loved spending a couple of evenings at The Flying Saucer with many of the people I saw at Al's retirement dinner, again reminiscing of storm chases gone past, the prospects of the upcoming chasing, and various other hobbies or state-of-the-world discussions that inevitably come up over a stein of whatever your favorite brew in the world is. Unfortunately the real-world beckoned and the time-warp started as I drove west on I-20 that Saturday; all the drives from Fort Worth to grad school seemed to compress as the miles clicked down, all the memories of people I have met and interacted with started speeding by at a fast pace, and then I arrived in the present on the South Plains. And now it is back to the grind; a week chocked full of conference-calls, webinars, staff meetings, and shift work.

Keep the places where the West did begin for me Fort Worth; don't let the folks to your east try to change you at all...