Waco, Texas

Our first real weekend trip of the year and we decided to revisit Waco, Texas. Waco, of course, is the massive home of Baylor University. How about those Baylor Women’s Basketball Players? (Go Bears!) and the Texas Rangers Museum. If you like guns, this is your place. We had been there once before on the way back from our first trip to the State Capitol of Austin, Texas. It was late afternoon and a Sunday, so all we got to do was check out the Dr. Pepper Museum and walk across the Waco Bridge. We knew we were coming back some day.

Prior to the founding of Waco in 1849, a band of the Wichita known as the "Waco"(long ‘A’, Spanish: Hueco or Huaco) lived on the land of present-day downtown Waco. Thats OK, Patty, our Tom Tom GPS device, called out "You've reached your destination, Waaco" (short 'A')", not Waco (long 'A'). It's just a regional thing.

A guy named Neil McLennan settled in an area near the South Bosque (pronounced Boskee...yeah, I know, it’s a Texas thing) River in 1838. A former Texas Ranger (they show up in a lot of these stories) and surveyor named George B. Erath was chosen to survey and lay out the town. Property owners wanted to name the city Lamartine, but Erath convinced them to name the area Waco Village, in honor of the Native Americans who had lived there. Kudos to George for making the right call on that one. Later on, George gets another Texas County (Erath County established 1856) named after him.

Waco was an important transportation stop on the Brazos (pronounced Brasas, yeah, same as earlier) River. A relatively wide river when it’s running high, it could be very hazardous and time consuming to run ferries and flat boats between the banks so the Waco Bridge Company was formed in 1866 and built the first brick and steel single-span suspension bridge with a main span of 475 feet. The biggest and longest at that time. It was designed and built by John A. Roebling who then went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge in New York in 1870. Opened in 1869, it contains nearly 3 million bricks and put Waco on the map bringing increased commerce and especially cattle to the city.

Best part was that the investors created a monopoly by getting the City to sign an exclusive contract eliminating any competing flatboat or any other bridge builder from building until the bridge had been paid off. At 5 cents a head (including cattle), the bridge paid its $141,000 cost off pretty quickly and by 1889 the tolls were removed. It was used as a vehicle/pedestrian bridge until it’s retirement in 1971 when it was designated an historic monument and continues as a pedestrian bridge between two parks on opposite banks.

Some of you may know that in 1885 Dr. Pepper was invented in Waco at W.B “Wade” Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store. Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Morrison's store, is believed to be the inventor of the now famous drink. Alderton spent most of his time mixing up medicine for the people of Waco, but in his spare time he liked to serve carbonated drinks at the soda fountain. Once established, the now famous drink was ordered by asking him to shoot them a "Waco."

Natural springs ran through Waco and Alderton and his new partner, Robert Lazenby, formed the Artesian Mfg. & Bottling Company, which later became Dr Pepper Company. The original factory in Waco is now a  museum and you can see the brick lined well in the floor of the factory floor where they got the water from. Lazenby and his son-in-law J.B. O’Hara then moved the business to Dallas. It’s headquarters is now in Plano, Texas and resides in the same business park where Dianna works at Bank of America’s mortgage center.

The mystery over the name has many variations. The most romantics believe the drink was named after a real Dr. Pepper. One candidate is Dr. Charles T. Pepper of Rural Retreat, Virginia, who might have been honored either in order for Morrison to obtain permission to marry the doctor's daughter, or in gratitude to Pepper for giving Morrison his first job. That’s been pretty much debunked but another possibility is a Dr. Pepper of Christiansburg, Virginia. U.S. Census records show a young Morrison working as a pharmacy clerk in Christiansburg. This Dr. Pepper also had a daughter who would have been his age at the time.

The more practical theories about the origins of the soft drinks name is that the "pep" refers to pepsin, which was an effervescent treatment for stomach problems, back then. One recipe in a book of recipes is titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters", a medicinal recipe for a digestive aid. Like many early sodas, the drink was marketed as a brain tonic and energizing pick-me-up (sound familiar?), so another theory holds that it was named for the pep it supposedly gave to users.

Dianna and I decided to make a weekend of it and stayed in a great bed and breakfast just north of the city in a place called Bed and Breakfast on White Rock Creek  in the Savannah Room. Dana and Retha Strickland run the place and have a great facility. It originated as a religious retreat for a Christian Fellowship group. Over the years, the group moved on but many of the flock stayed behind, subdivided the land and built homes on the property. The Strickland’s have approximately 4 acres consisting of three two story buildings Dana built with his own hands. The guys pretty handy and should do this for a living. His other job is as a massage therapist, go figure. We had our room with our own patio/veranda, private walkway and entrance.

Being sociable types, we especially enjoy joining the other guests and our hosts for breakfast, which Retha cooked fresh for us each morning. We met some interesting folks and were able to swap travel tales and suggestions on places to see while we were there. This is the rear porch of the main house overlooking the back yard.

One suggestion was the Waco Mammoth Site only 5 miles from the Bed and Breakfast. The original landowners donated the property as a gift to the City of Waco who runs the museum and maintains the park. When we got there, we decided to go with a guided tour (no extra cost) and had a great guide named John Butcher. As is often the case, John’s passion is not prehistoric animals but he knew his subject and gave us a very good tour. John is an Art major and really wants to be a teacher. John has an artist wife and three kids and the job is tiding him over until his next big break.

John explained that the Mammoth Site is the largest concentration of Columbian Mammoths and Ice Age period paleontological site in the world. Yeah, not you’re big Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). They were up in the tundra, which extended down to about Kansas. Columbian Mammoths had shorter hair and smaller ears. Very much like their Indian Elephant relatives. Here in Texas apparently, we experienced a more milder Ice Age with temps only slightly cooler than they are today, maybe 7-10 degrees cooler which still gave us Texas style summers in the 90s. The area where the Mammoths were found had been an ancient riverbed, which periodically flooded and may have caught these mammals by surprise drowning the herd as it passed through drinking or foraging for food.

The story goes that in 1978 a couple of good-old-boy treasure hunters (really....watch the pre-tour video)were walking the area in search of arrowheads and other Native American relics when they caught a glimpse of a really big bone sticking out of the ground. Paul Barron and Eddie Bufkin knew this wasn’t a cow or cattle bone and reported it to the nearby Baylor University Museum staff. Baylor staff came out and were stunned by the extent of the find.



By 1990, fifteen mammoths had been identified, their remains preserved and removed. During the clean up of the dig site, another bone was found which has led to the discovery of ten additional mammoths, a camel, and a young saber-toothed cat's tooth. Yes, Saber-Toothed CAT, not Tiger. The Saber Tooth Cat just happens to be the official California State  “Fossil” and has been found in the La Brea tar pits. That's the tooth on the left.

And yes, I said Camel. John informed us there was some pretty reliable evidence that many warm climate mammals like camels, bears and predecessors of the Elephant (Mammoths) had either originated or passed through Texas on their way to the more familiar places we see them today like Africa and the Middle East. It was all ice and land bridges across the continents that made it all possible.

As I said, the Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) is an extinct species of elephant that appeared in North America (in the present United States and to as far south as Nicaragua and Honduras) during the late Pleistocene era from 2,588,000 to 12,000 years BP (Before Present) Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1950 as the origin of the age scale, reflecting the fact that radiocarbon dating ( no...not the kind you do at the club) became practicable in the 1950s. To account for the concern that the year 1950 has by now moved away from the present significantly, the abbreviation BP has also been re-interpreted to mean "Before Physics". Come on.

The Mammoth’s a big dude, 16 foot long tusks, stood about 16 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed about 8-10 tons. A herbivore, these males ate about 700 pounds of plants a day, that’s a lot of salad. You can imagine that a herd could pretty much clear cut a prehistoric forest pretty quick. Thus the need for the herd to keep moving to forage. That’s probably why they moved around the world so much. When you need Asian…you’ve just got to go. That’s Dianna standing at the lamp post (with her trusty iPhone around her neck not to miss a game, email or Facebook update) which has a bow tied at the approximate height of the Mammoth.

The City and Baylor’s Mayborn Museum partnered to build a state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controlled enclosure to protect the dig and provide a very unique experience for the visitors. They provided a series of elevated walkways so you can walk over the entire dig site and have a birds-eye view of the dig and location of Mammoth carcasses partially uncovered and still in the ground.

A little chill ran down my back when John reminded us that as we looked down, in the deeper trenches, we were looking at substrate that was laid down about 68,000 years BP to the higher level of the dig (where the camel and the cat were) which only go back to 16-18,000 years BP. It gives one pause to think you’re standing where mammoths, ancient camels and saber-toothed cats once roamed. They have recovered so many bones; Baylor had to stop digging because they ran out of warehouse space to hold them all. The problem is they are not fossilized and once unearthed almost immediately begin to break down and need to be encased in plaster for future study. Pretty cool place.

All this pre-historic stuff made us (well, me) hungry. I had been given several restaurants to try in downtown Waco and we decided to try Ninfa’s Mexican Restaurant. I had the Ranchera Chicken Taco Salad which was very tasty and Dianna had the “El Jackie” chicken fajita plate which was waaaay too much food and came with a stack of their freshly made tortillas. The front entry is deceivingly small but opens up into a cavernous high ceiling room with lots of bright colors and accent lighting.

As we ate, we caught a glimpse of some very brightly attired women seated in a group and enjoying lunch together. It was the Ladies of the Purple Passion, one of two women’s service groups in Waco. Debbie, I had to snap a shot of them and their hats. The lady in the center with the “frilly” red hat was the “Queen” leader of the group. Debbie’d fit right in.

We then cruised through old Waco and stopped by the McLennan County Courthouse. Waco is the County seat and this is its fourth Courthouse built during the peak of central Texas’ cotton wealth. The renaissance revival design by J.Riely Gordon of Dallas uses steel, limestone, concrete, and marble, with Texas red granite in the “rusticated” base (I love that word “rusticated”). It is currently undergoing a major renovation.

After roaming around town, we always try to find a winery to visit. Our hosts recommended a friend’s winery, the Tehuacana Creek Vineyards (TCV) along State Highway 6 just east of town. I loved the website’s directions,” From I-35, head east on Highway 6 toward Houston. Once you pass over the Tehuacana Creek look for two tall radio towers. Find the second mailbox and turn into the driveway.” Problem was the winery’s mailbox (the second) was off the main road well onto the property, not easily visible from the road at 60 mph. Luckily, my eagle eyes caught sight of the Winery’s sign before we passed it (OK, it’s a pretty big sign).

The owners are from Sweden and Ulf and Inga-Lill (you can’t make this stuff up) Westblom were our hosts. I was a little caught off guard when Ulf told us he is a doctor who specialized in Infectious Diseases. Thus his interest in the chemical make-up of his wines. He had been making wine since his college days in Sweden and because of that, he claimed he was a very big man on campus (BMOC), if you know what I mean. He still has the first bottle of wine he ever made on display. He named it on the label as “KRÖ KAR VIN” which, loosely translated means, “Wine to get drunk on”.

Ulf’s wines were OK but not something to write home about. I found them unremarkable and somewhat cloudy to look at. You can always get a pretty good sense of a wine by its clarity. Now Ulf did say he’s a stainless steel barrel guy not a Limousin, Alliere, Vosges, Nevers or American oak vintner. That might explain some of it. But I think Ulf is a frustrated chemist who threw together some odd combinations of flavors with his whites and reds. I had visions of a mad scientist (in black and white, of course) stooped over his boiling beakers mixing his concoctions on his Bunsen burner. Some of it was passable and we brought home one of his “Heart of Texas Cherry” and a “Harrison Plantation Port”.

Having spent the day wandering the back roads of Waco, we (well, I) was hungry again and we decided on a steak for dinner. I had heard good things about the Heitmiller Steakhouse at the I-35 and Loop 340. Dianna had a fine steak and I had the mushroom smothered Jack Chicken breast with a monster baked potato. Oh yeah, don’t forget the chocolate fudge brownie with vanilla ice-cream for dessert.

After another restful night, we made it to our last breakfast at the Inn and regaled our fellow travelers with tales of our visit to Waco. Once packed, we made our way north back toward Frisco after one stop at West, Texas (no, not the region of west Texas, that’s pretty big). The City of West is a small town with a long Czech heritage. When Texas was in its infancy, many European immigrants made their way here to own land, farm and ranch. Many Czech families got into the cotton industry, which flourished in the mid to late 1800’s and early 1900’s. West originally was a farming community centered around a fresh water spring and the area was originally known as Bold Springs.

A man named Thomas West settled in Bold Springs in 1859 and the railroad came through in 1881. Mr. West became a principal land owner, which led the town’s people to incorporate in 1891, and they renamed it West after Thomas. Descendants of the original Czech immigrant families still live and work in West today.

What is really significant is that when you think of the Czech people and traditions, you get...Czech bakeries. The Texas Legislature even signed a proclamation stating West was the “Kolache Capital of Texas”. West has about four real old European/Czech bakeries and restaurants in its old downtown. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and only two were open, neither was the recommended bakery but, hey, how bad can a Czech pastry be? We made it into the Little Czech Bakery just off the I-35 service road. It was about 11 a.m. and they were almost sold out but we were able to get some strawberry pastry rolls and some HUGE cinnamon rolls. Luckily there was a SONIC next door so we could get our RT 44 Strawberry and Cranberry Limeades to wash them down with.

Thus we returned home to Frisco rested and ready for the coming week. It’s clear we didn’t get to all the goings on in Waco and will have to make the return trip soon.

Sherman, Texas

We hadn’t been on a weekend road trip in weeks. Holidays led to some crazy Texas weather and just wasn’t conducive to travel. I scheduled a weekend trip to San Diego to visit my mom and a trip never could get traction. Finally, on a dreary, cold, rainy and windy day, we loaded up the Rogue, booted up Patty and made our way to the town of Howe, Texas.


We did it on a lark after Dianna had read a magazine article on a self-made chef, Robert Morf, who had established a restaurant in Howe to bring high-end cuisine to North Texas. In short, we failed. Well, we did find it but it was Sunday and wasn’t opened. Wyoming’s Restaurant Wyoming’s Restaurant - cuisine at 110 East Haning Street was dark and no “Open” sign blinking its siren song.

So, we made a pass or two through  Howe, a small town first settled around the time of the Texas Revolution in 1836. In 1843, it is said, the last Indian battle in Grayson County was fought in the area. Originally surrounded by grain farmers and developed around the Houston and Texas Central Railway railroad track. A weird factoid is that, originally called “Summit” because, at 810 feet above sea level, it was supposed to be the highest point between the Red River and the Gulf of Mexico. Kind of gives you a sense of how relatively flat this land is.

There was a cool Victorian style 1893 First Christian Church of Howe. The last (and quite fragile) example of four similarly built First Christian Churches in Howe. It is now closed and in serious need of restoration. But looking at the state of the town, that may not be in the future for this historic “fish-scale” sheathed structure. Next-door was the memorial for Mame Roberts who was a life-long resident of Howe and was instrumental in leading the charge to “beautify “ Texas. Her efforts were covered by Life Magazine and Reader’s Digest in the 40’s. Not able to eat at Wyoming’s or find anything else going on in town, we headed up the U.S. 75 to Sherman, Texas.

The city of Sherman, Texas is the County Seat of Grayson County which shores up the Red River and provides the border between Texas and Oklahoma. The original settlement was actually a pioneer way station on the Red River for trading and commerce along the river in 1846. It moved south to the location of the first wood framed Courthouse in 1847 about five miles west of the current County Seat where a new log cabin style Courthouse was built in 1848. It was said that it was customary for Juries trying cases to retire to the shade of the old Pecan tree then standing on the public square to consider their verdict.

There were a total of five Courthouses built until the majestic Courthouse of 1876 was built in the Courthouse Square. Sherman's 1876 courthouse was burned to the ground by arson in the Sherman Riot of 1930 (May 9th, 1930), during the trial of an African American man, George Hughes. During the riot, Hughes was locked in the vault of that courthouse and died in the fire. Unfortunately, this story repeated itself in a least three other similar lynchings at Honey Grove, Texas, at Benchley in Brazos County, and at Chickasha, Oklahoma. Many felt the onset of the depression had a profound effect on small communities like Sherman, for some reason, fostered this style of vigilante justice in many communities throughout the South.

A black farm hand named George Hughes, was accused of raping a young woman. Hughes had come to the farm on May 3rd, 1930, in search of the woman's husband, who owed him wages. Hughes left when the woman said that her husband was in Sherman but soon returned with a shotgun, demanded his wages, and raped the woman. He shot at unarmed pursuers and at the patrol car of the deputy sheriff who later arrived. He then surrendered.

On Monday, May 5th, Hughes was indicted. The trial date for Friday, May 9th. In the days preceding the trial, rumors spread about the case, among them, that Hughes had mutilated the woman and that she was not expected to live. Medical examination of both of them showed the rumors to be false. Officers removed Hughes from the jail to an undisclosed location as a precaution against mob violence, but rumors persisted that he was still there. A few people were even taken through the jail to show that he was not there, but an unconvinced mob gathered anyway.

In the early morning of Friday, May 9th, the famous Capt. Frank Hamer of the Texas Rangers, assisted by two other rangers and one police sergeant, escorted Hughes to the county courthouse. The Sheriff and deputies stood on duty in the courtroom and corridors. Only those connected to the case were allowed to attend the proceedings. Nevertheless, a crowd from all over the region gathered outside the building and filled the corridors from the main entrance to the courtroom doors.

The following morning, the crowd began to stone the courthouse. An American flag was carried around the grounds to incite the men to action. The first witness had begun testimony when the crowd forced the doors to the courtroom corridor, whereupon the rangers fired three warning shots. The jury was sent from the room, and Hughes was taken to the district court vault (bad idea) as the rangers used tear gas to disperse the mob. A few minutes before one o'clock the mob started toward the courtroom again, and again the rangers resorted to tear gas. The District Judge declared that he would likely order a change of venue (really?). Captain Hamer told him that he did not believe that the trial could be held in Sherman without bloodshed.

About 2:30 P.M., two youths threw an open can of gasoline into the county tax collector's office through a broken window. A fire started and quickly spread through the building. It was said that when the deputies guarding Hughes offered to escort him out, he chose to remain locked in the vault (another bad idea). Rangers attempted to rescue him but were cut off by flames. The mob held the firemen back and cut their hoses. By 4:00 only the walls of the building and the fireproof vault remained. To get to Hughes, mob members tried to tear down the walls of the vault. They also drove a small detachment of militia from the courthouse grounds to the county jail.

At about 6:30 P.M., they engaged in a pitched battle with national guardsmen sent by Governor Dan Moody at the request of Sherman officials. The mob forced the guardsmen to retreat to the county jail. Some guardsmen were injured by projectiles, and some members of the crowd were wounded by gunshots. Intent on getting to Hughes, the mob used dynamite and acetylene torches on the vault. The leaders of the mob worked on it until they opened it just before midnight. More than 5,000 people filled the courthouse yard and lined an adjacent street. The militia was gone. Hughes's body was thrown from the vault, then dragged behind a car to the front of a drugstore in the black business section, where it was hanged from a tree. Can you believe it? On May 24th , Governor Moody lifted martial law.

At its peak, about 430 national guardsmen and nine Texas Rangers were brought in to end the violence. Of the fourteen men ultimately indicted for that crime spree, of the estimated 5,000 people involved in the riot, only two had been convicted by October 1931, one for rioting and the other for arson. Both received two-year sentences. Wow.

Walking around the “new” Moderne (yes, with an “e”), austere, concrete and limestone 1936 Courthouse found several historic plaques and some atypical monuments found around most Texas Courthouses.

A prime example of how you can over do the official historic plaque dilemma is what many historians call, the “Washington Slept Here” syndrome. In the northeast corner was a plaque commemorating a visit and speech given by former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. He was on his way to a “Rough Rider” reunion and spoke for 15 minutes. He then hopped on a train for the ride south to Dallas on his way to the reunion in San Antonio.

Sherman was also a significant destination and distribution point on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, which passed through our former home in San Diego and ultimately terminated in San Francisco.

There is the obligatory obelisk to the memory of Confederate soldiers who served in the Civil War (TWONA). This one is of more interest in that it is the first such memorial erected by the Dixie Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy #0035 (now the United Daughters of the Confederacy ) dedicated on April 3rd, 1896. Two significant fighting forces assembled in North Texas were the Texas 7th Cavalry (7th Regiment, Texas Cavalry (Mounted Volunteers)) and 11th Texas Cavalry (company "B" of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment).

The 7th spent the beginning of the war wresting control of North Texas and the Oklahoma territories from the Native Americans then moved to Louisiana where they fought and ended their participation in 1865. The 11th also spent the early years of the war fighting Indians and ended up in Arkansas, dismounted in 1862 as part of the Army of Tennessee, remounted and ended the war in North Carolina.

A swing around Sherman saw a distinct lack of activity around the Courthouse Square so no places to eat. Dejectedly we drove back south on the US 75 for the quiet ride back to Frisco. On the way I recalled an Italian restaurant we had passed by several times before but had not tried, the Italian Villa 904 S. Central Expressway #212, Anna, Texas. Turns out they have a place closer to our home, in  Allen, Texas as well. Great food, I had the Chicken Piccata and Dianna had the sausage Calzone. The meal came with some awesome baked bread and they had a tomatoee house dressing that was great on the salad but just as good as dip for the bread. They actually provided a pasta-twirling spoon for the angel hair pasta that came with my chicken. Nice touch, my Dad would have been proud.

So, just ahead of another band of rain showers, we made our way home with a promise to get out on a Saturday and find Chef Morf and his Wyoming’s restaurant to try out his cuisine.

The Dallas Zoo

The weather in North Texas has been grueling. Within the month of February, we started with mild temperatures in the 60’s, it snowed, overnight lows in the teens, wind-chill down to single digits. Then an ice storm layered two inches of ice on top of crunchy snow leading everybody to slip and slide their way to work and school. It warmed up a little, allowing the ice and snow to melt and freeze again. Then another week of icy streets and sidewalks.

 

 

This part of the world doesn’t get enough snow to invest in plows so they throw copious amounts of treated sand and ice-melt onto the major roadways. They discovered a little too late that the ice-melt they were using would only work down to 10 degrees. Apparently, nobody knew this. They could have used cheaper and reliable salt but didn’t. At one point, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) had to bring in plows they had in the panhandle (where it snows a lot more) to get the commercial traffic moving and get people back to work.

Thus, we have not been going on our sojourns of late. At the end of February, it was Dianna’s birthday and a break in the weather allowed us to go to the Dallas Zoo. Now I grant you, the weather was still kind of nippy and it threatened to rain but I had promised her a trip to the zoo. Dianna is a big fan of zoos and had voiced a desire to go for some time.

I decided to go that weekend for a couple of reasons. The first was that I had heard the Dallas Zoo was not a very big and sophisticated zoo. Second was that it was the last winter hour weekend and it was only five bucks per person, normally $15 dollars a person (OK…I’m a cheap bastard too). It’s about 106 acres housing about 1,800 animals, which does make it the biggest zoological park in Texas, but not up to the standards we had experienced coming from San Diego. OK, you naysayer natives. We are not Zoo snobs. Hey, one of the coolest little zoos we ever went to was the 2.5-acre Big Bear Zoo in the city of Big Bear in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.

The Dallas Zoo was established in 1888 and though not as old as the Dallas Zoo, San Diego (1916) has been blessed with better funding and stewardship. San Diego Zoo is 100-acres and is home to over 4,000 rare and endangered animals. The Dallas Zoo also runs an aquarium in Fair Park where the State Fair of Texas is conducted. San Diego has a second park, the 1,800-acre Safari Park (formerly the Wild Animal Park) an expansive wildlife sanctuary that is home to more than 3,500 animals.

Environment has to be mentioned here. Clearly San Diego has an advantage in year-round weather and location. It’s hard to exhibit animals that are primarily from warmer climates in a place where temperatures can swing wildly. Dallas has tried to make accommodations with some indoor exhibits but they can be rather restrictive for the animals and not as much fun for the visitor.

That said, Dallas recognized this and has been in the midst of a redevelopment of the park with an all new southern side of the park which has more modern enclosures and a nifty monorail tour which takes you quietly over the enclosures where you can see the animals wherever they are in the enclosures (ala Safari Park). They even have an iPhone app to keep up with the goings-on at the park.

The Zoo was originally a City run function within its old City Park which is part of Dallas Heritage Park. It then moved to Fair Park in 1910 then to its current location in Marsalis Park in the Oak Cliff suburb in the 1920s. A Zoo commission was created and federal Works Progress Administration money helped develop the original “Zoo North” that exists today. By the fifties, a Zoological Society came into being and took over administration of the Zoo from the City of Dallas.  In 1991, they opened the "Wilds of Africa" exhibit and monorail. In 1996, The Dallas Area Rapid Transit District (DART) opened a station for it's electric rail train system. In 2010, the Zoo expanded to include the Giants of the Savannah exhibit.

And, there is the story of the Giraffe at the entrance to the park, a metal sculpture over 67 ft. 6” tall just outside the zoo parking entrance. The Giraffe was promoted as the "Tallest Statue in Texas" when it was built in 1997. When the giant Sam Houston statue went up on U.S. I-45 in 1994, it was the tallest at that time at 67 feet. There has been an on-going battle of wills since, over which Texas statue is the tallest. The Giraffe went up and it was discovered to be just short of the Houston statue. Not to be out done, the Zoo had a blade of grass welded to the Giraffe’s tongue (kind of lame) to add another foot making it the tallest to gain the 'Tallest in Texas' title. The sculptor is award-winning St. Louis artist Bob Cassilly.

As you may know, General Sam Houston was the first president of the Republic of Texas. He served from 1836 to 1838. He was re-elected again as governor in 1857 to 1861. He was also governor of Tennessee from 1824 to 1827. He is the only governor in US history to be governor of two states. A Texas-sized tribute to General Sam Houston, this is the largest and tallest statue of an American hero built of 66,000 pounds of concrete and steel. The Giraffe is 67'6" from the ground up. The Houston statue itself is 66 feet tall, but it stands atop a 10-foot base. Thus the controversy (if you can have one over statues).

On a personal note, I first saw the Houston statue as we headed south on I-45 on our first trip to Galveston. It was a hazy day and there was a bank of low clouds just above the treetops. As we came around a sweeping curve in the road, the statue suddenly emerged from the mist and just filled the view ahead like an alien giant on the way to destroy Tokyo. It has to be seen to understand. Very impressive.

On to the Zoo. It was cold and windy and few animals chose to brave the elements. We did see some great bird exhibits including a small birdhouse you can walk through and handle the birds that land on you. That’s a cockatiel from the Australian Outback on Dianna’s shoulder. Many other beautiful and brightly colored birds were within easy reach for photographing.

Outside we passed the obligatory Flamingo exhibit. These are Chilean flamingos. As you all know, Flamingos are pink or orange or white depending on what they eat. Flamingos eat algae and crustaceans that contain pigments called carotenoids. For the most part, these pigments are found in the brine shrimp and blue-green algae that the birds eat. Enzymes in the liver break down the carotenoids into the pink and orange pigment molecules deposited in the feathers, bill, and legs of the flamingos.

Flamingos that eat mostly algae are more deeply colored than birds that eat the small animals that feed off algae. Captive Flamingos are fed a special diet that includes prawns (a pigmented crustacean) or additives such as beta-carotene or canthaxanthin, otherwise they would be white or pale pink. Young Flamingos have gray plumage that changes color according to their diet.

People eat foods containing carotenoids, too. Examples include beta-carotene in carrots and lycopene in watermelon, but luckily, most people don’t eat enough of these compounds to affect their skin color.

We did take the monorail train around the Wilds of Africa and had a really talented and monotone (kind of creepy like the voice of the guide at the Haunted House ride at Disneyland) guide who gave us a pretty informative tour of the exhibits. It was afternoon (and feeding time) then and some of the animals had made it out into the feeble sunlight.

We walked by the Rhino exhibit with its lone African Rhino. At that moment, the female keeper emerged with a bucket of carrots from the back of the enclosure. Rhinos are chronically near-sighted but he perked up as he could hear and smell the food go by. The keeper was well ahead of him and all the Rhino could do was trundle along paralleling her path along the fence to the visitor walkway where she rewarded him with some big fat carrots.

By the end of our trek, we were ready to go. We had eaten some Zoo food court food and were thinking of something more substantial. For her birthday, I had decided to take her to one of her favorite restaurants, Buca di Beppo back here in Frisco. I had Nicole and Billy meet us there for their family style dining. I have never had a bad meal there and there’s always lots of take home leftovers. Don’t forget to get the peach Bellini’s. A great cap to a meal and our day.

Zest Fest 2011

In our eternal efforts to try something new, we decided to take in a rather unique event at the brand new 100,000 square foot modernistic  Irving Convention Center in an area of the Metroplex known as Las Colinas in Irving, Texas. The quadrangle shaped structure is rather interesting. The steel and concrete interior is sheathed in a box of sheet copper. The copper is punched with small squares which reinforces and continues the overall square theme. I think it’s great but it begs the question, in a region known for it’s extreme weather events, doesn't this mean the Irving Convention Center is a giant lightning rod? Inquiring minds need to know.

Las Colinas is a very beautiful mid-point between Dallas and Fort Worth. The area is considered kind of the “Silicon Valley” of North Texas containing several big name high tech companies and financial institutions. It is also the home of Valley Ranch, the headquarters of the Dallas Cowboy operation and where they hold their training camp before the new season starts.

Zest Fest 2011 was the Grand Opening event for the Convention Center. It is a gathering of all makers of hot and spicy sauces, spices, rubs and snacks. Hosted by Chile Pepper Magazine (of course), the convention floor was littered with vendors providing samples and products to buy which would leave the average pallet quivering in their mouths. As I may have mentioned before, Texans fanatically embrace spicy hot foods and bravely slather them onto everything they barbeque, fry and dip. We even came across a vendor that produced dried Habanero chips coated with Ranch and Cheddar cheese powders. Zest Fest is their altar to all things spicy and, as you can imagine, the place was packed.

See, if you firmly believe that that little cup of “hot sauce” you get at Taco Bell causes you to wince and exclaim, “Wow, that’s hot!”, brother, you are in the wrong place. There are the little mom and pop producers using hand grown or organic ingredients with cute names like “Get Lei’d” and “Hey Mon’ Carribean Sauce”, there were more ominous brands called “Crazy Uncle Jester’s” and “Defcon Sauces” .

As I went by the Defcon display, a wild-eyed young man with lots of piercings and tattoos approached and asked me if I wanted a sample. Ok, I'm a pussy when it comes to spicy. I like a mellow hot sauce that gives a gentle and trickling burn as it wends it’s way down my throat. Something quickly extinguished with a sip of rum and coke. I asked the lad if he had a full-bodied “mild” (I distinctly recall saying “mild”). He smiled and produced a little plastic cup just like the ones you get your meds in at the home.

The base was a viscous mix tinted yellow as it rolled about. I gave it a swirl and noted it tended to coat the sides of the cup like a fine wine does (then I remembered, napalm has the same characteristic). This  stuff had “legs” like a fine Bordeaux. Perhaps it was the neon lighting of the convention floor or maybe the reflection of the strobe and blaze of the deep blue and purple “black lights” of  the display that mesmerized me into throwing caution to the wind and downing the concoction in one fell swoop. Bad idea.

Ever open an oven and can see the shimering heat waves rise up to meet you and suddenly feel the heat strike your face? That was Defcon’s “mild sauce”. A mixture of horseradish-laden ingredients some of which you probably need a special license to possess by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s part of something they refer to as the “Death Match Series” of sauces. They even provide Nutritional Information for their products. This stuff hit my lips and tongue from about six inches away and then quickly flushed down and around my tonsils, collecting briefly at the entrance of my esophagus, before dropping down into my stomach. I had a Discovery Channel visual of the molten steel pouring from that big bucket sending red-hot sparks flying. 

The human body is an amazing thing and can give you signals when it knows something bad is about to happen. The first was the nasal hairs burning away as the cup passed under it which shut off my airway so I wouldn’t inhale the viral fumes. It didn’t matter because I failed to heed the warning and instantly burned a path along my lips, tongue and inner mouth. I now know what it feels like to consume drain cleaner, the really bad stuff containing lye. Thank goodness we had the foresight to have aquired a Bloody Mary from an earlier booth. I didn’t even taste the custom Tabasco-like additive of that vendors making. My eyes teared up worse than when ‘Ole Yellar died. My distress was noted by several passers-by who just giggled and passed me up like a robbery victim in New York.

Their website says it all:

“ You are about to embark on a journey that will introduce you to a new outlook for the human condition. You will experience the euphoria knowing that you have found the path to your taste buds Nirvana.

We offer different volumes of heat, depending on your physical need (you know you don't want it, you NEED it). So show the world you have achieved the highest level of consciousness possibly attainable through ingestion.”

What more is there to say.

Everybody there is vying for something called the Scovie Award which is dedicated to rewarding those who can produce the finest fiery foods and barbeque. Congratulations to the winners and even the losers. “That was some-a spicy meatballs.”

Of course, we were disappointed in the that there were no other foods to eat. We went under the misguided conception that there would be stands of barbeque or something fried to eat while we were there. With our stomachs now grumbling, we set back out to the toll way to seek out sustenance.

Luckily we came upon what turns out to be a chain Mexican restaurant in Plano, Texas called  Los Cucos. After taking in the extensive menu, Dianna decided on a chicken stuffed avocado dish and I got the  El Mono mixed platter. Dianna had the most interesting, the kitchen stuffs chicken and cheese into the center of a large avocado, rolls it in batter and deep fries it. They place it on a plate with some rice and black beans. I had a plate of mixed steak and chicken chunks in some caramelized onions with rice and beans. Plenty of hand made soft taco quesadillas rounded out the meal. Both prices hovered around $5.99 and arrived with more food than we could eat. We took two boxes home. A great place to eat along with exceptional service. A big thumbs up.