April 5, 2005 – Making Our Way in Dallas

April 5, 2005 – Making Our Way in Dallas

At the start of 1969, I returned to my pursuit of a college degree, which began after I was discharged from the Navy in 1966. I started the spring semester 1967 at the newly named University of Texas at El Paso previously known as Texas Western College. I completed the semester before heading to Maryland and the birth of ME. Now, nearly two years later I had returned to pick up where I left off. El Centro Junior College—that hotbed of liberal thought near the heart of conservative Dallas—One Main Place—gave me credits for my earlier work. I began a regime of working during the day at Collins Radio and working the evening at El Centro.

When you’re 20-odd years old, time and distance are irrelevant. Collins had transferred me from the building off North Central Expressway (Texas 75) that was southeast of the Expressway to a bank building the company leased off the Expressway just under a mile away but north and west off the75. Both buildings were on the Expressway access roads. I would leave work at 5:00 PM and head south for about 13 miles. The commute wasn’t bad since everyone was leaving Dallas while I was going in. I’d pass Mrs. Baird’s Bakery off 75 at Mockingbird Lane, where IM and I would take ME for bread on the weekend. Once 75 passed Lemmon Avenue Griggs Park, I’d take Ross Avenue off the Expressway heading south and west. Along the drive into downtown Dallas, Ross passes the Fairmont Hotel on the right as it crosses N. Akard Street. Further down Ross, the road finds the old warehouse district of the city. It’s gussied up now, but back then it was an area filled with your typical warehouses waiting to be gentrified. What the area did afford was plenty of free on-the-street parking. However, you had to get there early otherwise the spaces nearest El Centro would be filled and you’d have to drive a few block away to find spaces.

I arrived early most days and would park near the intersection of Ross and North Lamar—streets in Dallas were denoted north if they were north of Main Street and denoted south if south of Main Street. I’d walk the three blocks to El Centro, which was contained in an older multistory brick building—I want to say no more than nine stories high. Classes ran an hour and a half on Mondays and Wednesdays and Tuesdays and Thursday. I carried two classes a night to achieve a full load and receive the maximum compensation from my GI Bill. It was also the fastest way to complete college without completely killing myself. The great thing about El Centro was each class were relatively small, twenty or so people max. There was an immediacy that I found conducive to learning and to making you want to succeed. Most everyone in those classes had a fire in the belly, a need to find something better than what they had.

It’s funny how you remember the classes that caused you the greatest grief; chemistry and having to solve chemical formula problems come rushing back to mind. Then there was the “Mathematics with Applications in Management and Economics”—calculus disguised in business word problems. Somehow, because it wasn’t called Calculus, I wasn’t as intimidated. I remember my English literature class where I read Hemingway’s novella “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” I recall an economics course where we sat around a table—there were only eight to ten of us in this class and discussed the idea of pollution rights—buying and selling the right to pollute the air or water, something that these many years later have somehow taken hold.

By this time we had moved from the Springbrook Apartments on the western side of Highway 75 at its junction with Texas Farm-to-Market Road 544 to a brand new apartment complex just off the access road on the eastern side of the highway called Tower Apartments. We were living on a tight budget back then and the attractions of the new place were it was slightly less expensive and it was brand new. The Springbrook complex had been up a few years by the time we arrived. The problem with the new place was it was unfurnished and we had to buy ourselves some furniture. A trip to the company credit union got us the money we needed to make the purchase and a trip to that strip of warehouses along Victory Avenue north of Ross Avenue in Dallas provided us the furniture we needed at the cost we could afford. This area of Dallas was known for its outlet centers, places where you could buy clothes, furniture, and just about everything else any department store offered but at much lower costs because these goods were salvaged from fires, train car and truck wrecks, or otherwise written off. We found a living room and two bedrooms of furniture for less than we had borrowed from the credit union. We were ahead for once.

Outside of school, IM and I shared our interest in the paranormal. We had both read The cosmic clocks: From astrology to a modern science, by Michel Gauquelin. The author attempted to build a scientific case for astrological science, but alas his arguments well apart under close examination. Another interest we shared was teaching little ME all about her world. We began with regular trips to the Plano library where we discovered the books of Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish and Herman Parish. The library was about a mile away on 18th Street: down 544 across the railroad tracks. It was an easy way to teach ME the alphabet as we started on E Street and went to P Street on 544 before turning left five blocks to 18th Street. A right turn on 18th and a little past P Street brought us to the library. ME was developing quite a vocabulary as well as a great love of singing and performing. She was a constant source of joy for both of us.