Downtown Dallas – homeward bound
I had a few minutes to kill downtown, before another meeting.
I jotted a few random images, working backwards, watching the city wake up on a summer’s Monday morning.
The way the pigeons would pick through garbage, in one case, from a place that obviously was open late the night before.
“Welcome Mary Kay” signs and marquees. Bet there was a pink convention happening.
Watching a comely lass struggle with a rolling-frame cardboard box, tan skin, white dress, struggling, and the girl was having troubles. She had that ruffled, “I had too much to drink last night” look about her. The cardboard box kept tipping over, revealing several large binders of information. She got to one address, looked up at the building, the stairs, the address on the paper, and then she stood there for a minute, lost in thought, a not-so-vaguely disgruntled look on her face. Apparently, judging from the actions and reactions, the delivery and the address on the paper didn’t match.
“How far away do you think the railroad is?” (Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
Amtrak was supposedly 24 minutes late out of Mineola (TX), but it was waiting for me when I rolled on into Union Station. Reunion Station. One of those, can’t remember.
It somehow oddly comforting, in a slew behind a series of tract homes, a big subdivision south of Ft. Worth, there was a great blue heron landing in a pond of some runoff. Barely visible from the lounge car, in the middle of the afternoon.
I was digging through my expenses, and I came across a Starbuck’s receipt, on the back, I’d scrawled a verbatim discussion – more like a monologue – from a counter employee. Bored, “I want to be a comedian” kind of a guy. Tall, clean-cut, probably early 20’s, good attitude, typical dry delivery, as he took note of the $20 I passed him to pay for the shot of espresso, “Wow, old 20 dollar bill, don’t see many of them anymore.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “no metal stripe with identifying strips of metal, tracking every transaction, closer and more accurate than credit cards.”
“I know, when I sell [unregulated substances> I always insist on being paid in old 20’s. I’m kidding man. I don’t insist that they pay in old 20’s.”
I laughed. I was just afraid no one else got the joke.
Another downtown image, there’s a location that used to be a photo lab, and these days, it’s a tacqueria. Food was good, breakfast tacos priced somewhere between fancy East Austin, $1.75 and Austin airport, $3.
I just wonder if they use the same chemicals in the vats in the back?
Bosque county and that lone fishing boat on the Brazos river. I’ll swear, I see it every time. Nod to the the fat guy on that topic. It’s harsh land, I’ve been on foot, I know, but it’s also, perhaps, some of the prettiest. Sure has been for the last couple of years. The Brazos River valley, on either approach, on the rails, it’s just pretty. It’s a wide valley, and as the train slows, the fir, the oak, the vines crawling up over the top of the telegraph lines, the big cut through the limestone rocks, some of those railway cuts must be near a hundred years old, or older, and the scenery, the vegetation. Okay, so it’s not the Rocky Mountains or anything, yet, there’s a lonely, harsh beauty to it all. Anyone who hasn’t seen just can’t appreciate the serenity of the summer’s greenery.
It’s about prickly pear cactus, evident in great profusion. Sure, it’s a cactus, but it’s more. Succulent leaves, a few thorns, it’s not like it’s a dangerous cactus or anything, and it was in abundance. It’s one of those that smart animals – and smart people – have an easy time avoiding.
The torrential rain from the hurricane, plus an almost unseasonably wet summer left the Brazos River Valley just gorgeous – sliding by in the big silver train.
