EDITOR’S NOTE A NEW EDITOR DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS

“Big D,” my mother murmured, wanderlust completing her sentence. No tears, thank goodness, at the news 10 years ago of my departure from South Florida. Just a distant look that said she wished she were going, too.

Then we sat down at the kitchen table to speculate about what life might be like in Dallas and about my new job at The Dallas Morning News,

One of my great aunts had lived briefly in San Antonio, and loved it there, but no one else in the family had even come close to the Trinity River or the Rio Grande. The family tree was rooted firmly in Chicago and Massachusetts, with a thriving branch in Miami.

Yet our conversation that afternoon was oddly familiar, because long before I knew I would live here my mother had unconsciously instilled a certain Tex-Mex flavor in the lives of my father and all of us kids.

First came the music.

Urban Cowboy had yet to blow Texas across the American landscape and into the pop psyche when Waylon and Willie captured my mother’s heart and imagination. Album after album, we learned the lessons of hard times and difficult women.

And once the Honky Tonk Heroes moved into the house, they never left. Almost 20 years later, her fascination is no less intense for the old-timers, even though k.d. lang and Ry Cooder now get air time, loo.

Then there was the food.

My father had put his fork down at the first taste of jalapenos in the scrambled eggs, but no one walked away from my mother’s “Texas Jailhouse Chili” (no tomatoes, heavy on the cayenne and garlic). This was the real thing, my mother kept reminding us. No one dared ask how she knew that.

What I didn’t see at the time, though, was that my “Austin City Limits”shaped view of Texas didn’t give me the whole picture. Austin. . -Amarillo….Dallas-how different could they be?

On the most superficial level, my first visit to NorthRark began to answer that question, me in jeans and T-shirt amid a sea of women in big lace collars, full makeup, and Big Hair. In August. Even my new Neiman’s credit card couldn’t soften the shock.

Of course, the bust was still five years away, so my other early images of Dallas were often equally unsettling, and true to stereotype: medallioned cars, fringed excess, all the glitter that was gold.

I wanted the Real Dallas, whatever that was, and it was not always easy to find, even as an editor seeking the stories that defined the city.

In the same way that the character varies from street to street in Old East Dallas, so did Dallas as a whole seem to shift and change. From Mesquite to Carrollton to Hurst-Euless-Bedford, every place felt slightly different, and yet combined, with Dallas, the area was becoming clearer in my mind. And harder to imagine without all of its components. Kind of like Texas.

Of course, Dallas of the Eighties was a part of the Real Texas-as well as the myth- and the same will hold true in the Nineties, for both the city and D Magazine. As its sixth editor, 1 inherit a 17-ycar tradition of revealing the provocative, exploring the underappreciated, challenging the self-anointed, and generally having a good time.

The magazine will continue to talk about money lost and found, and religion and politics and history and sports and crime and hard times and where we go from here. We will explore who and what make Dallas Dallas, why we live here, and how we live here. We’ll figure out whether the “New Texas” also means a New Dallas.

As for my view of this city and state, I’ve abandoned the cliches and found some of the originals: a fish on the line at Matagorda Island; chicken-coconut soup at Thailanna; a Cowboys win with Jimmy Johnson (see page 27); driving by the School Book Depository on the 20th anniversary; Nolan Ryan on any summer night in Arlington Stadium; winter sailing on Eagle Mountain Lake; Zan Holmes preaching on Easter morning; two-stepping in the dirt under a Big Bend sky; my father and me and margaritas at Joe T. Garcia’s; Michelle Shocked at the Arcadia and Queen Ida at Poor David’s Pub; tamales-to-go from La Popular

Much more remains to be discovered and understood, and this job gives me a fresh road map.

As for those jalapeno eggs just like mymother makes? Look under an umbrella atTwo Pesos some weekend morning. I’m theone with the fajita-and-egg taco.