Dallas-Amarillo - Day 127-136 of 178 Day Trek

Here's a line from our favorite TV show, "The Big Bang Theory" uttered by the hugely eccentric Dr. Sheldon Cooper:
          "I'm not crazy.  My mother had me tested."
     
Back to the blog.
     

     Texas is a big state, probably a little too big for our puny driving efforts.  Our trek on Sunday, September 8, from one Texas city to another was 475 miles, about 9 hours on the road.  That's way too long for old farts like us.  (Actually, I'm the old fart; Diedre is more like a breath of fresh air.)  It was the farthest and the longest we had traveled in one day since we bought Air Barty One.
     I was rewarded for my untiring efforts with a trip to Grimaldi's Pizzeria, a chain pizza place that is one of my favorite (and least glucose-threatening) restaurants.  I also love their Caesar salads; a small one is big enough for the two of us, and we always ask for extra anchovies ... really!  Pretty unusual to have two people who both like anchovies.

At the Vineyards RV Resort - not our RV though

     We noticed that our RV park, the Vineyards Campground in Grapevine, Texas, had been voted the country's number one small campground in 2012.  And we can believe it:  it has huge camp sites, wooden decks for the RV'ers, a wonderful lake upon which we had a prime spot, and all the other amenities you'd hope to have but so often don't.
    Just a quick note about Dallas freeways.  So far on this marathon vacation, we've driven to 14 states, logging almost 7,000 miles, and not once has Penny, our faithful GPS girl, ever let us down.  But in one afternoon driving the maze-like Dallas freeways, complete with road construction on every square inch of their roadways for over 50 miles, she was so confused that she ended up giving us directions in Swahili, then gave up and tried to run off to Mexico with our toaster.
     Dallas roads are a zoo, and their drivers aren't any better.  In Missouri, an electronic sign over the road promoting safe driving said Missouri had lost 650 people so far this year to traffic accidents.  The same sign in Dallas cited over 2,200 deaths, and that was just since last Thursday.  These are some aggressive drivers.
     Other problems included us getting stuck in an infinite loop that had us passing the same homeless guy on the corner asking for money 6 times.  I was sure we had arrived at the nexus of the universe.  Diedre became so upset with the driving situation, she decided to quit the RV life and join a monastery.  Fortunately, I was able to talk her down from that ledge ... I told her the cats would really miss her.
     Moving on.
     

On Monday, we had dinner at my cousin Sydney's along with her husband Forrest, their son Alexander, and Sydney's sister and my other cousin, Alexandra.  It got a little confusing with three people being called "Alex" at dinner, so I opted to have them call me by my favorite nickname, "Toodles McGee."  Of course, there would have been no confusion if they had learned to pronounce the 2nd "X" in my name.  Note the "Tri-Alex" picture, henceforth known as "Alex Cubed."
     The next day we made it to our 9th and final professional baseball game of this year's trip; the 9 games included 7 major league and 2 minor league stadiums.  We've now seen 16 of the 30 major league baseball parks.  We'll hopefully see another 10 in 2014 and the final 4 in 2015, so I do NOT want any new ball parks built before we're done!

     ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, BALL CLUB OWNERS?!!
     Tuesday's game was in Arlington, Texas, between two teams battling for the lead in their respective divisions: the Pirates of Pittsburgh (National League Central) and the Rangers of Texas (American League West).  Now, I had the foresight to order six tickets for this key game four months ago for us and my two cousins and their husbands.  One would think that four months lead time would be enough ... and, of course, one would be wrong.  Three of the four bailed on us with lame excuses about having books due back at the library.  Fortunately, cousin Alexandra, the only one who couldn't come up with an excuse to avoid going to a ball game with me, was willing to stand on the street corner and go, "PSSST ... buddy ... you want a good deal on some hot tickets?"  When that didn't work, she was able to get three friends to go (including an "Alexis," giving us two nights in a row of "Alex Cubed."  Geez, how did I miss having a picture taken on this one?)

   We also lucked out on parking.  Just two blocks from the stadium, Diedre had found on her ever-vigilant "Genie the I-Phone" a parking lot where they charged just $5.01.  From there, every half-block you walked closer to the stadium, the lot fees increased: $10 for a block-and-a-half, $15 for a block away, and $20 for just a half-block from the stadium.  It was $250 if you wanted to park on second-base.    Alps would be so proud of me ... er, I mean "us" for this one.  And remember, it's not that we're so cheap.  We did buy an RV for nearly six-figures.  At the time, I had one of those Happenings coupons where if you buy one RV, you get the 2nd one free.  But we thought, "Hey, what are we going to do with a 2nd RV?" so we opted for just the one.
     

Practically every stadium in the bigs now has a statue out front of one of the greats in their particular teams history.  And the Rangers were no different.  Here's a picture of me with Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan.  The really stiff one is me.
     Pittsburgh squeezed by the Rangers, although it was an exciting game, coming down to the Rangers' best hitter up in the bottom of the 9th representing the winning run.  He struck out, extending our losing streak for the home teams to 4.
    Wednesday, September 11, is a day that you'll always remember: it was "Day 600" of my 3-mile a day walking streak.  That 1,800 miles is the equivalent of my walking from Phoenix, Arizona, to Hudson, Wisconsin.  Funny note about the streak:  two days earlier after dinner at my cousin's, we arrived back at the RV park 11 PM.  It was only then that I realized I hadn't yet done my 3-mile walk for the day.  So as Diedre relaxed in her flannel jammies, the ones with the "footies" still in them, with a three-olive martini in her hand, three furry, snuggly cats on her blankie, and the "Food Channel" blaring on our giant flat screen TV, I grabbed a flashlight and set out in the dark to walk the wild uncharted badlands of Texas.  Now, that's dedication ... either that or "stupidity."  You decide.
     

My Wednesday three-mile walk was part of our Grapevine, Texas, pub crawl.  Diedre, of course, sampled the great beers of the world and some fine local brews, whereas I, on the other hand, went out on a limb and tried some of their more obscure drafts such as Miller Lite, Coors Light, and Bud Light.  That's just how I roll.
     Grapevine is a fun little town in which to walk.  Practically every building is on the National Historic Registry.  And I noticed during our trek that the Grapevine women were hot ... wait a minute, it was 97-degrees ... everyone was hot.
     The people there were almost universally nice, although I did get into a confrontation with a guy I perceived to be the town's mayor (see photo).  He was like a rock during our argument.
     The next day Diedre came down with what I think the locals call "Grapevine's Revenge," so I was off on my own for "Alexx's Fun Day of History-Part 2."  I easily made the post-rush-hour-traffic trip into Dallas and parked right behind The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza ... better known as the old "Dallas School Book Depository," site of Lee Harvey Oswald's infamous assassination attempt.  At the time, I was in Mrs. Moeller's 8th grade science class back on November 22, 1963, when the principal broke in over the intercom and began broadcasting the radio report of the shooting to the entire school.  Things have never quite been the same.
     On the plus side of my tour that day, a tour which included standing both just feet from where Oswald shot the gun and to within a foot of the spot on Elm Street where President Kennedy was when he was hit by the final bullet, upon further inspection I think I may have uncovered some new clues that may help solve the whole "2nd shooter" theory.  We'll talk.
     Friday was a huge day for us.  It was the day we got to meet with Billy Huckaby ... no, he's not some hot new country singer.  He's the publisher of my book.  Just in case there's a one-in-a-million chance you haven't heard me go on about my book, it's called The Fastest Gun in Hollywood: The Life Story of Peter Brown.  Note that film rights are protected, so don't go around trying to shoot this cinematic bio on your cheap little Tracfone.
     Billy is such a good guy, actually "a good ol' boy," Texas cowboy from top to bottom.  And the extra good news is, he's most likely also going to publish my first novel, Single Elim, which has been lining the bottom of our bird cage for the last several years.  Upon his acceptance of yet another book by me, I went immediately from Cloud 9 to about Cloud 14.  Now, we're also working on a book-signing with Billy and Peter at the National Rodeo Championships in Las Vegas in December.  That would be huge for us.  He has a table there at Mandalay Bay, rodeo headquarters, for the entire two weeks of the rodeo, so the book should get some nice exposure to people partial to cowboys.  YEE-HAW!!
   

 Since our meeting was on the Fort Worth side of town, we decided to take in the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District," about 15 square blocks of tradition, nightlife, shopping, and family fun.  It's sort of a Disneyland for cowboys.
     It seems the difference between Dallas and Fort Worth is like this:  Fort Worth's big nightclub is called "Billy-Bob's Honky Tonk."  In Dallas, a comparable establishment would be named "William-Robert's Bistro and Fine Dining."  Fort Worth was our kind of town.  I may have had a sarsaparilla or two too many, because I ran into the local Deputy Fife.  Here I am being bailed out by Diedre.
     On Saturday, our last night in town, Alexandra's husband Gordo had returned from his business trip to Canada.  If I have this right, Gord, through his company, is responsible for all the audio-visual features at Graceland.  In fact, he's gone through the tour so many times that he's all "Elvised" out, if such a thing is possible.
      Alex and Gordo came out to the campground to see how the other half lives.  Diedre had gone out earlier shopping for groceries, but had managed to make a stop at the local Grapevine winery, where we had coupons.  Since I don't drink wine, Diedre felt in was in all our best interests if she drank both our free glasses of wine.  What a gal!
     We had cocktails lakeside, then went out for pizza.  That Gordo is just the best guy; not only did he spring for dinner (much over my feeble protestations), but then he went beyond the call of duty and bought 20 copies of my book (Have I mentioned my book?  It's called The Fastest Gun in Hollywood: The Life Story of Peter Brown.)  TWENTY COPIES?!  I guess he thinks he can re-sell them on the Chinese E-Bay market.   What a guy, Gordo!
     

Sunday, September 15, we broke camp, doused the campfire, got the cattle ready for herding (maybe that should be "cats"), and hit the dusty trail for that great cow-town of northern Texas, Amarillo.  The name "Amarillo" means "yellow" in Spanish; I guess it comes from the yellowish color of their soil.  Anyway, I've been driving through Amarillo at least twice a year for all those years we had houses in both Minnesota and Cave Creek, AZ.  And during all those drives, we raced right through Amarillo on I-40, never once stopping to look around.  But on all those trips, I had always noticed a giant yellow restaurant with all sorts of eclectic decor out front summoning me from the seat of my Ford Explorer.  It's called "The Big Texan Steak Ranch."

     All the Big Texan's signs for the last 200 miles promoted their special: eat their ... wait for it ... SEVENTY-TWO OUNCE STEAK (Yes, that's 6 pounds of cattle flesh) plus a baked potato, broccoli, rolls, and, I think, your napkin, and you get it free.  Chuck Pappas has often said to us, "FREE?!  NOTHIN'S FREE!"  And here it's certainly not free if you don't finish it all in one hour.  In that case, your dinner tab is $72.
     Well, this time we finally stopped at The Big Texas Steak House, much to the anguish of my wife's pleading eyes who would have preferred "Salads Are Us" for dinner.  But I had seen this place for at least 20 years and I was not going to miss the chance of seeing some bozo take on a 6-pound steak.  Actually, THEY (the steak house) sent  a limo to pick us up.  They know a big eater when they see one (Diedre, not me).  Upon arrival, we could see that everything there was huge.  Here's Edith Anne ... I mean, Diedre, sitting on her dining room chair.

     I think the challenge is now out there for known eaters such as Mr. Steve Alpert (St. Louis Park), Mr. Howard Deichen (Carleton College), and Mr. Wendell Curtis (The Rox Over-60 softball team).  The contestants that night (there were six big, strapping cowboys) were seated at an elevated table in the center of the dining room.  Steak groupies gathered around them,grabbing at their clothes and seeking autographs.  Above them was a massive digital  timer just like they use at the Olympics.  The striped-shirt referee raised his hand, shot off a starter's pistol, the clocks sprang into action, and the eaters chowed viciously down.
     Final score: Steaks-6, Cowboys-0.
     The steaks won.
     Here's a September 16 fun trivia fact for you Alexander Adventurers blog-fans: 156 years ago today, the song "Jingle Bells" was copyrighted.  The really amazing thing about it:
     it was actually written for ... wait for it ... THANXXGIVING!  Who'd a thunk it.
     As we're finding out, every city has places to see.  Even Lusk, Wyoming, population 345, kept us entertained for a day.  And so did Amarillo, Texas, a city previously thought only to exist as a rest room stop on I-40 for wayward truckers.  But today, we got out and about and saw what Amarillo really had to offer.
     Did you know that the Amarillo Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts houses not only the Amarillo Opera, the Amarillo Symphony, but also the Lone Star Ballet?  Really!  That's a lot of class for a little cow town out in the middle of nowhere.  Of course, the ballet is the only one in the world where the dancers do plies' while wearing cowboy boots.  Hey, you try it if you think it's easy!  They also have the Texas Pharmacy Museum, one of the few museums Diedre was really interested in seeing.  But I had to draw the line somewhere.  I mean, what's next, "The Insurance Salesman Hall of Fame"?
     

We started off downtown where I posed next to a statue at a Wells Fargo Bank of the Mighty Casey, star of the Mudville Nine baseball team and goat of the big loss in the epic poem, "Casey at the Bat."  Note in the photo that I'm wearing my Cubs tee-shirt and my Texas Rangers hat, two notable losers (the Cubs for the last 115 years, the Rangers for the last two weeks), who appropriately go along with the Mighty Casey, known loser from the 2nd greatest baseball poem ever.  The best, arguably, goes as follows:
     "These are the saddest of possible words,
          Tinker to Evers to Chance!
     Trio of bear Cubs fleeter than birds,
          Tinker to Evers to Chance!
     Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble;
     making a Giant hit into a double;
     words that are weighty with nothing but trouble ...
          Tinker to Evers to Chance!"
     (And "No," I have no idea what "gonfalon" means.)
     I also have no idea why his statue is in front of a bank building in Amarillo, TX, so I put ace research assistant and all-around good gal Diedre Kaye on it using the vast resources of "Genie the I-Phone" and amazingly enough, in less than five minutes, she was fast asleep.  Just thought you, my adoring public blogsters, would want to know.
     We then got our 3-mile walk in by traversing the rails-for-trails track in beautiful downtown Amarillo.  The trail had formerly been used for that famous set of train tracks, the Rock Island Line, which I'm told, is a mighty fine line.

     From there it was off to the Amarillo Zoo, all 16 acres of it.  It did have my three favorite animals: tigers, lemurs, and raccoons.  On Mondays, all the staff takes the day off, so there was no charge to see the animals.  They leave the baboons in charge.  To my eyes, the zoo seemed to be more efficiently run on Mondays.  Just an observation.
     Although what the zoo lacked in variety of animals, they more than made up for in imagination.  What they claimed was a rare Australian Dingo-Buffalo was, I'm pretty sure, a Texas Longhorn Steer with a mustache painted on.  And I know their vicious Saharan Desert Devil was just an ordinary Billy-goat with an attitude problem.

     We finished off this gala day (If a gal a day isn't enough for you, I don't know what is--Groucho Marx) with a trek out to Amarillo's art-in-the-wild Mecca to see a performance piece of some great size: The Cadillac Ranch.  It turned out to be 9 half-Cadillacs planted tails-up in a cornfield, then covered with graffiti-laced spray paint.  I may not know art, but I definitely know what I don't like ... and this was it.  Now this artist-as-farmer must know what he's doing planting these here Cadillacs.  The crop looked so good that my mouth started watering.  I mean, we all knows them Cadillacs is good eatin'.  (I have no idea where that all came from.)

     Diedre and I always look forward to the start of the fall TV season, so we can see what tripe the networks have come up with and plan our viewing schedules accordingly.  Tonight was the premiere of the first new show of the season, "Sleepy Hollow."  It was a sort of "Ichabod Crane Meets Rip Van Winkle and Wakes Up in 2013 New York Along with the Headless Horseman" kind of show.  I mean, really, hasn't that just about been done to death?  We gave it the obligatory first show watching, but by the end, it was so confusing that we knew two meager intelligences such as ours would not be able to follow the story line, especially while out on the road with various degrees of antenna or cable reception.  "Sleepy Hollow" gets a "No" vote from us.
     OK, on Tuesday, since I had finished my homework (the heroically written Memphis blog) while my wife was a few weeks behind on writing her cookbook for heart/diabetes patients, I was allowed a "Senior Skip Day."  That meant a day trip for me alone out to the Palo Duro Canyon.

     Never heard of it?
     Neither had I.  And more's the pity ... it's the 2nd biggest canyon in the U.S. after that big hole in the ground in Arizona.
     On the drive to the canyon through the hinterlands  I noticed that the little rural, two-lane, decrepit roads had a speed limit of ... SURVEY SAYS? ... 75 MILES an HOUR???!!!
     Are they insane?  It shows that Dallas isn't the only place in this state with nutballs for drivers.
     The PDC is 600 feet deep and 120 miles long.  I walked 3 of those miles before rain sent me high-tailing it back to the safety of their gift shop.
     Amarillo surprisingly had some heavy memories for us.  A year ago in July we, along with DK's brother Remy, had rented an RV in attempt to relocate Diedre's 94-year old mom, Barty, from Tampa to about 10 minutes from us in Scottsdale, AZ.  The nearly 3,000 mile trip was supposed to take us 5 days.  Unfortunately, Barty only lived in Scottsdale for 5 days before she passed on to that big golf course in the sky.  So memories of that trip aren't great for us, although Amarillo always brings a smile to the our faces.
     You see, while driving along on day 4, Remy decided since we were in Texas, he had to have himself some Texas bar-bee-cue.  Diedre jumped on the magic Genie and within seconds, she found us "Henk's" just off I-40 in the heart of Amarillo.  It was a little nutritionally-challenged hole-in-the-wall, and those are always the best kind.  Remy and I barely let the RV come to a halt before we leaped out the doors and into the aforementioned Henk's.  Diedre had stayed back preparing her mother's usual soup and sandwich.  But at that point, the unsinkable Barty boldly announced, "NO!  I ... WANT ... BARBECUE!"

Barty at Henks in July, 2012

     And so the four of us had barbecue.

Diedre returning to Henks in September, 2013

     Barty had rallied, maybe for the last time.  She voraciously chowed down on some good old Texas pork ribs.  There was sauce flying everywhere as she downed the complete plate of ribs, cole slaw, and baked beans.  It was the most she had eaten on the trip.  You have never seen such a smile as she had on her face at that moment.
     So back to 2013.  Diedre and I thought we'd try to recapture the moment with a return to Henk's.  But I think it was Oliver Hardy who said, "You can't go home again."  And we couldn't.  The place was the same, yet different.  The food was just average this time.  The moment had passed.
     

Final resting place for Barty's violets

We had given Barty African violets for her birthday several years ago, and she had kept them alive.  After her passing, Diedre took the violets and nurtured them well.  They seemed to be blossoming every few months.  So we took them on the trip this year in Air Barty 1; for the 1st 4 months, they did very well, as if Barty was along with us for the ride.  But in the last month, they started to fail.  So, we decided to return them to the last place Barty seemed truly happy -- the ignominious Henk's.  Just outside Diedre found a patch of grass where she planted what was left of Barty's African violets.  Maybe, just maybe, in a few years we'll come back and they'll be thriving.  One can only hope.
     On our return to the campground, our spirits were lifted when we were hit with some great e-news.  Steve Peterson, the artistic director you'll no doubt recall we had met with back in the Minnesota-Part 2 blog, had confirmed with us that  HE WAS INDEED GOING TO PRODUCE "BUZZARD BALL," my first play, in the Twin Cities area next March.  What an exciting bit of news!  So all you Minnesota types, keep your calendar open for the Minnesota premiere of "Buzzard Ball" March 7-16.  Diedre and I will fly back for the first two nights' shows on Friday-Saturday, March 7-8.  Stay tuned for more info.
     Proving that gluttony is really no sin, we made a return trip to the massive Big Texan Steak Ranch on our way out of town, this time for their Texas sized breakfast buffet.  The deal there was, if you ate 51 eggs, they'd tell you, in no uncertain terms, that they liked you.  Not quite the prize we were looking for, so we opted for spam and porridge.
     On to Santa Fe, New Mexico.