Waco Mammoth National Monument

Posted on November 2, 2015 by admin

In July, using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Obama created three new national monuments on the same day, including ones in California and Nevada, but also Texas. In a place I pass through sometimes: Waco. The new Texas monument is the five-acre Waco Mammoth National Monument, though it’s been open to visitors since 2009.

The Washington Post notes that the “Waco Mammoth in Texas ranks as a major paleontological site, featuring well-preserved remains of 24 Columbian Mammoths. The mammoths date back more than 65,000 years, and the site includes the nation’s first and only recorded discovery of a nursery herd of mammoths.

“Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) has sought to make the area a national monument through legislation, and the site has been developed and protected by the National Park Service, the City of Waco, Baylor University, and the Waco Mammoth Foundation.”

Jay and I arrived on the afternoon of the October 22, just in time to catch up with a tour of site — which is the only way to get into the locked building built over the diggings. The structure protects the fragile relics from the elements and wankers who would steal them.
Inside the building is a wide walkway overlooking the diggings, with a few paintings to illustrate Columbian mammoths, who were not the better known cold-habitat woolly mammoths. Columbians were better suited to warmer weather, and Texas had a warmer climate even then.
Our guide, an affable young woman, told us about the diggings and the bones, using a laser pointer. The archaeological consensus is that floods trapped and drowned the luckless beasts. On view in situ are whole or nearly whole skeletons, including skulls, tusks, teeth, vertebrae, ribs, femurs and more.
In our time, the first of the bones were only discovered in 1978, having been in the ground for between 65,000 and 72,000 years. A lot of the bones are now stored at the Mayborn Museum Complex in Waco, which is part of Baylor University. Other animals uncovered in the area included a Western camel (Camelops hesternus), dwarf antelope, American alligator, giant tortoise, and the tooth of a juvenile saber-toothed cat.

La Coquette, 1957

Posted on November 1, 2015 by admin

I’m able to pinpoint this image taken by my father with some certainty, because it’s the La Coquette balloon. That’s the balloon featured in the 1950s film adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days, as this site explains in considerable detail. Apparently the balloon did no actual flying in the movie. It was a set, essentially. But it could and did fly for various events.

So I’m fairly certain this is La Coquette at the grand opening of the Meyerland Plaza mall in Houston on October 31, 1957. The balloon was there, and my family, who lived in Houston at the time, made it to the event as well. I can’t imagine my father would have gone by himself, anyway.

According to the web site of the mall: “Meyerland Plaza Shopping Center opened in October of 1957 with a celebration of ‘Around the Shopping World in 80 Acres.’ There was a hot air balloon that took riders to the Shamrock Hotel.” Meyerland, since redeveloped, is still around and traded hands as recently as 2013, when the Houston Chronicle did an article about the deal that featured the balloon as a bit of background detail. The balloon also did a stint at Disneyland in the early 1960s, it seems.

White Rock Lake, Dallas

Posted on October 29, 2015 by admin

The State Fair of Texas was interesting, but before long you get tired of crowds. Such as in the main indoor food court of the fair.

On October 19, a very warm afternoon, I sought out someplace a little less crowded: White Rock Lake.

Less crowded with humans, that is. There were plenty of birds and some insects, too. The manmade White Rock Lake in northeastern Dallas, created by damming White Rock Creek in the early 1910s to supply water to the city, covers 1,015 acres. These days it’s for recreation. All around the lake is a city park, White Rock Lake Park, which includes a nine-plus mile track around the water, boating ramps, a dog park, picnic areas, and the Bath House Cultural Center.

This is the back of the Bath House, facing the lake. As the name implies, it used to be a bath house that served a beach on White Rock Lake, but swimming has been prohibited on the lake for decades. The building, originally built in 1930, was renovated in 1980 and now offers exhibits by artists and holds various concerts, workshops, lectures and other events. Since I visited on a Monday, it was closed.

White Rock Lake has a long and varied history. For instance, I’ve heard that the lake, and the White Rock Lake Pumphouse, were featured in the low-budget Mars Needs Women (1967), which was shot in Dallas. I’m not sure I’ll ever be in the right frame of mind to watch that movie, but who knows.

I’ve seen the pumphouse before, but I wasn’t close by this time. Mainly I walked on the walking-jogging-cycling path near the edge of the water.

On October 12, somewhere along the path around White Rock Lake, a jogger named Dave Stevens was murdered, apparently at random, by a lunatic armed with a machete. Seems that the perpetrator was known to be mentally ill, but not violent. While walking on the same path a week later, you try to puzzle that one out, but of course it can’t be puzzled out. Death just shows up. The crime had a sad coda a few days ago: the victim’s wife seems to have committed suicide.

To avoid ending with a sad story, I turn to Sol Dreyfuss Memorial Point, a small rise near the lake. At the foot of the rise is a short wall, and on the wall is a plaque. That was my cue to stop and read it, take a picture, and later find out about it.

According to the Texas State Historical Association: “Sol Dreyfuss, merchant, was born on August 12, 1885, in Dallas, the son of Gerard and Julia (Hurst) Dreyfuss. His father, a native of France, owned several chains of stores before Sol’s birth, including one with his wife’s father founded in 1879 and called Hurst and Dreyfuss… On August 11, 1910, the doors opened to the first Dreyfuss and Son clothing store, a one-story building on Main Street. By 1950, at the time of Dreyfuss’s death, the store was a six-story building at Main and Ervay streets.”

Besides being a merchant, “Dreyfuss owned the Dallas Baseball Club from 1928 to 1938, when the team was known as the Steers. He was a director of Hope Cottage. He was active in the Community Chest and Red Cross and was a member of the Salesmanship Club, the Citizens Charter Association, the Lakewood Country Club, the Columbian Club, and B’nai B’rith. He was also on the board of directors of both the Republic National Bank and the Pollock Paper Company.” No wonder he had a lot of friends.

Hall of State, Fair Park

Posted on October 28, 2015 by admin

At one end of the Fair Park Esplanade is the Hall of State, a stately hall indeed. “The Hall of State, a museum, archive, and reference library, was erected in 1936 at a cost of about $1.2 million by the state of Texas at Fair Park in Dallas to house the exhibits of the Texas Centennial Exposition and the Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition of 1937,” explains the Texas State Historical Association.
“The structure, designed by eleven Texas architects, is characterized as Art Deco… The front is 360 feet long, and the rear wing extends back 180 feet… The walls are surfaced with Texas limestone. A carved frieze memorializing names of historical importance encircles the building. Carvings on the frieze display Texas flora.”

I went inside for a look, and soon was face-to-face — or maybe face-to-plinth — with six statues of early Texas luminaries: Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Mirabeau B. Lamar, James Fannin, Thomas J. Rusk, and William B. Travis. Here’s Lamar (1798-1859), second president of the Republic of Texas, among other things.
Pompeo Coppini did the sculptures. I’d run across his work before at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. If it’s a monumental sculpture in Texas done in the early to mid-20th century, odds are he did it.

Then I entered Great Hall.
The TSHA again: “The Great Hall, or the Hall of the Six Flags, in the central wing, has a forty-six-foot-high ceiling. Murals on the north and south walls depict the history of the state and its industrial, cultural, and agricultural progress. These were painted by Eugene Savage of New York.” I’d run across him before as well.

During my visit, the Great Hall happened to be sporting an exhibit about Texas musicians, and I will say that I learned that Meat Loaf was from Dallas, something I didn’t know. Actually I didn’t know much about many of the Texas musicians mentioned in the exhibit, such as various bluesmen and Western swing players and Tejano bands.

On the back wall of the Great Hall is a gold-leafed medallion with the Lone Star emblem of Texas surrounded by representations of the six nations whose flags have flown over the state.
The United States and the Republic of Texas are at the top; the Confederacy and Mexico in the middle; and France and Spain on the bottom. The six together are a persistent theme in symbolic representations of modern Texas.

A Stroll Down the Fair Park Esplanade

Posted on October 27, 2015 by admin

My afternoon at the State Fair of Texas wasn’t the eat-it-now experience that the Wisconsin State Fair was. I ate two things: a fried chocolate pie like the kind to be found near the Texas-Oklahoma border, and a cheese and jalapeño corn dog, the best corn dog I’ve had in years, maybe ever. It’s the thing to eat at the fair, which is one of the claimants for introducing the food to the world.

Mostly I looked around. I spent some time in the animal barns, for example.

I missed the pig races, but I did see some riding acrobatics.

I also saw a temporary exhibit at the former Museum of Nature & Science, which left Fair Park a few years ago to become the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. The exhibit was called Canstruction, featuring structures made of cans. Such as “Big Reunion,” a model of Dallas’ Reunion Tower by JHP and RLG, two Dallas architecture firms, made out of 3,064 cans — carrots, spinach, mixed vegetables, tomatoes, and beans — plus wiring and LED lights (all that info is on the sign).
I liked this one too.
“St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow,” by Humphreys & Partners Architects, using 2,090 cans: corn, jalapeños, tomato sauce, chilis, and mandarin oranges, among others.

I also got a good look at Fair Park itself, one of the deco marvels of the world. I’d been to the park before, but barely took the opportunity to walk around and gawk at the likes of this.
That’s the South Entrado of the Centennial Building, featuring a statue of the Republic of Texas, complete with the lone star and cotton flower. It’s part of Fair Park’s grand Esplanade, with buildings and sculpture on either side of a long reflecting pool. There are six monumental statues along the Esplanade.
Fairpark.org says of the Esplanade that “the principal axis of the Texas Centennial Exposition was developed along the existing layout of the State Fair grounds. [Head architect] George Dahl strengthened the formal axis by adapting existing, unrelated State Fair exhibition halls with new, monumental facades and projecting porticos on each side of a 700-foot-long reflecting pool.

“The porticos establish the visual framework of the Esplanade and accentuate the grand perspective leading up to the Hall of State. Monumental artwork deftly combines with additional site features to complete the visually complex – and dramatic – spectacle.”

Each of the six statues represents the six nations that have asserted sovereignty over Texas or parts of it — what the Six Flags Over Texas refers to — namely Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the United States. France, Mexico and the U.S. were by Raoul Josset, a French sculptor (remarkable how many Euro-sculptors were active in Texas), while Spain, the Republic, and the C.S.A. were by Lawrence Tenney Stevens.

The Esplanade also featured a lot of murals, such as this bas relief mural by Pierre Bourdelle. This was one entitled “Man and Angel.” One source tells me it symbolizes air transport. It’s one of many murals along the Esplanade, each about three stories high.

At the eastern end of the pool are two large figures, the striking David Newton replicas of Lawrence Tenney Stevens’s 1936 sculptures, “The Tenor” and “The Contralto.” The originals were lost, maybe melted down for their metal during WWII, but exact replicas were created in 2009.
As I was taking pictures of “The Contralto,” a group of boys came up to the statue. “Hey, is that a chick?” “Yeah, that’s a chick.” Some laughter. Yep, it’s an aluminum deco chick, companion to the aluminum deco dude nearby.

The State Fair of Texas 2015

Posted on October 26, 2015 by admin

Since I happened to be in Dallas during the State Fair of Texas this year — which is held in October, because August would be insane considering the high heat — the thing to do was attend the State Fair of Texas. Especially since I’d made it to the Wisconsin State Fair not too long ago. I took the No. 60 bus to Fair Park and spent the afternoon of October 16 at the fair.

The event has it origins in the late 19th century as a moneymaking venture, but according to the Handbook of Texas online, “the Texas legislature banned gambling on horse races in 1903, thereby eliminating the fair’s main source of income, the association faced a financial crisis. To protect this valuable community asset, the Texas State Fair sold its property to the city of Dallas in 1904 under an agreement that set aside a period each fall to hold the annual exposition.”

Sounds like one time to visit would have been not long after that: “President William Howard Taft visited the fair in 1909, and Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech in 1911. Automobile races and stunt flying exhibitions became the top attractions. Attendance passed the one million mark in 1916.”

More was to come. “In 1934, largely through the efforts of civic leader R. L. Thornton, Fair Park was selected as the central exposition site for the proposed Texas Centennial celebration. No state fair was scheduled in 1935, and construction began on a $25 million project that transformed the existing fairgrounds into a masterpiece of art and imagination. The 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition attracted more than six million people during its six-month run.”

My mother, who turned 11 that year, went to the Centennial Expo with her family, coming from South Texas. Separately, my father, who was 13, attended with members of his family (not sure which ones), coming from Mississippi. It was a big to-do.

Robert Lee Thornton (1880-1964), a banker who also did stints as the president of the State Fair and as mayor of Dallas, is now a bronze in Fair Park.

His plaque says: For more than forty years an inspired leader and a powerful force in the development of the city he loved from village to great metropolis.

Mayor Thornton’s not the best known statue of the fair. That distinction belongs to Big Tex.
The figure’s been at the fair since 1952, standing at more than 50 feet and weighing three tons, held up by a cage-like skeleton of 4,200 steel rods. Originally a giant Santa Claus in the town of Kerens, Texas, he was remodeled for the fair to wear cowboy duds, including a “75 gallon” hat, though the details of his clothes have changed over the years. A voice appears to come from his mouth, extolling the amusements of the fair.
Big Tex is a popular fellow. A lot of people besides me were taking pictures of him.

Along with selfies with Big Tex in the background.
Two years ago, he caught fire and burned up while the fair was on.

I’m a little sorry I missed that. The one I saw this month is, of course, a phoenix of a Big Tex, rebuilt because the show must go on.

My Mother the Nonagenarian

Posted on October 25, 2015 by admin

Jo Ann C. Stribling

Native of Texas; dietitian; longstanding member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio; daughter of James and Edna Jo; sister of Sue; wife of Sam; mother of Jay, Jim and Dees; grandmother of Sam, Dees, Robert, Lilly and Ann.

As of this week, officially a nonagenarian. Not many of us get to be that.

I visited her on her 90th birthday, arriving in San Antonio two days before, after driving down from Dallas with my brother Jay, whom I’d visited for a while before that. Besides my mother and Jay, on this trip I saw my other brother Jim; all of my nephews and the wife of one and the girlfriend of another; and my aunt and first cousin.

Work continued during some of the visit, as it always does. And as I always do, I squeezed in a few other things, such as my second-ever attendance at a state fair, a ride on the Trinity Railway Express, a walkabout in Downtown Dallas, another walkabout along a lakeshore, a visit to one of the three spanking-new national monuments, created only this July, and a look-see at a cemetery, because of course I wanted to visit a cemetery.

The day I flew into Dallas, the city was experiencing its hottest October 15 on record, with a high of 95 F that afternoon. The days afterward were still warm, in the 80s mostly, which is a little higher than normal. By the time we planned to drive to San Antonio on the 22nd, heavy rain was predicted along most of the route, but the downpour was sluggish in arriving. All we saw were sprinkles here and there.

The massive rains came on the 23rd and 24th. The San Antonio area caught a regular storm coming from the northwest plus the remnants of Hurricane Patricia, which hit Mexico on the 23rd, and for a while had the strongest hurricane winds ever recorded. Wow.

Fruitcake Beef

Posted on October 13, 2015 by admin

I have nothing bad to say about the Collin Street Bakery’s fruitcakes, which come to mind because I got a catalog from the company recently. The fruitcakes themselves, that is. They are a sweet marvel, a dense delight, a bit of confectionery bliss.

Their price is another matter. I ordered my first fruitcake from Collin Street in 1985. A little looking around tells me that around that time, “the cake is sold in two-, three- and five-pound sizes, ranging from $9.15 to $21.45.” (NYT, Dec. 1, 1982; three years earlier, which is close enough).

And how much are they now? $28.45 to $65.50 plus $6.45 for shipping any sized order, according to the current catalog. I emphasize shipping because for years Collin Street didn’t change extra for shipping: it was a consideration that helped me be loyal. When did the company start charging? I don’t know. As recently as two years ago, there was no charge, because I ordered one that year, and probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Anyway, it’s damned annoying.

This year, a two-pound fruitcake would thus set me back $34.90 (almost — the size is actually 1 lb. 14 oz). The nominal 1982 cost of $9.15 would, adjusted for inflation, would now be $22.60, according to the BLS, plus zero for shipping. What’s the excuse for that? I’m skeptical that anything the bakery puts in their product has increased in cost by that much, and don’t tell me it’s shipping. Except for the USPS, the logistics of shipping is a lot more efficient than it was 30 years ago. As good as the cakes are, that’s a deal breaker.

At the Mansfield Cut, ca. 1958

Posted on September 13, 2015 by admin

The last time I visited Texas, I dug into more of my father’s slides for scanning. Sometime during 1958, probably, my father, mother and brothers visited my grandparents on Padre Island. My grandfather (left), a civil engineer, was working in some capacity in the creation of the Mansfield Cut, though we’re not sure what. On the right is my father. Jay and I call this the wearing funny hats shot.

My grandfather (my mother’s father) and my mother. I suspect she borrowed the bonnet from my grandmother for the sunny day. Even in the late ’50s, it would have been considered old fashioned.

My mother and brothers. It’s always a little odd looking at a picture of your family at a time when you don’t exist.

The Mansfield Cut separates Padre Island from South Padre Island, and was made to provide access from the sea at that point to the Intercoastal Waterway. Jay says that mother marveled at the large numbers of shells on the beach there, since it was remote — it’s still remote — and not many people collected them. There’s a jar of shells at my mother’s home, and some of them might have been picked up during this visit.

Tobin Park & Salado Creek

Posted on July 30, 2015 by admin

Just south of I-410 on the North Side of San Antonio, you’ll find Robert L.B. Tobin in bronze.
Tobin (1934-2000) inherited Tobin Suverys, the largest mapmaker to the oil industry, at only 19 when his father died in a plane crash. Apparently, the younger Tobin made a good run of it, enough to make him a major philanthropist in San Antonio and elsewhere. As the NYT said (and where is the Express-News obit?):

“Mr. Tobin served on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Santa Fe Opera. He was also on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art and of the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He endowed libraries and museums, underwrote operas, sponsored symphony premieres and championed artists and composers in many places.

“The major beneficiary of his philanthropy was the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio [an excellent museum]. Mr. Tobin’s mother, the late Margaret Batts Tobin, was president of the museum’s board of trustees for many years. She built a special wing for the museum on the 50th birthday of Mr. Tobin, her only son.”

I’ve also seen mention of Tobin’s “Lucchese alligator boots,” which can be expensive indeed. This must be them in bronze.
Also notable on the statue is Tobin’s cane, which has See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil monkeys on it. Not sure why the motto was close enough to his heart for him to want it on his cane, and then in bronze, but there you have it.
The statue is at the trailhead of Robert L.B. Tobin Park, a roughly two-mile segment of the Salado Creek Greenway between I-410 and Eisenhower Road. In a non-drought July, the greenway is green all right.
Tobin himself helped design the park shortly before he died, and his foundation ultimately donated 89 acres of land to the project. It opened in 2008. No wonder I’d never heard of it before Google Maps told me about it this year. All of the while I lived in San Antonio, and for years after, it was simply inaccessible land owned by Tobin (though if you’d asked me or anybody, no one would have known who he was).
Tobin Park is part of the bigger Linear Creekway Parks Development Program, the goal of which is to create linear parks along Salado Creek, Leon Creek, Medina River and the San Antonio River. Remarkably enough — Texas isn’t always the anti-tax place it seems to be — sales tax funding for the project was approved by voters in the 2000s. I wish the municipality well with this project. Greenways are fine things.

This is Salado Creek, with some visible sedimentary rock.
It’s surprising there’s still water in it at all, but then again that’s a sign of how wet the weather has been this year. I imagine during some of the downpours in the spring — which is characteristic of San Antonio’s weather — Salado Creek was a torrent.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: Texas