Now Entering: DALLAS

there’s nothing wrong with being from Syracuse or Seattle, but since you have the good fortune to be here now, there are things you need to know. Not die obvious tidbits, like the reason there’s a hole in the roof at Texas Stadium (that way, God can watch His favorite team), but the deep-background stuff, like the time the Texas Rangers had four different managers in a single week. So before your next cocktail party, arm yourself with this essential info about Dallas and you’ll be prepared, whether the subject is sports, entertainment, history, or legend. Not only will you know where R.L. Thornton is; you’ll know who he was.

HISTORY PRIMER

THE NAME. Dallas is not named for George Mifflin Dallas, vice president of the United States under President James K. Polk; at least we don’t think h is. The town was named two years before this Mr. Dallas became V.P., so Dallas founder John Neely Bryan had probably never heard of him. Most local historians believe that the namesake was George’s brother, Commodore Alexander James Dallas, a distinguished naval officer.



THE NICKNAME :” Big D” is for tourists only. Savvy residents never use it, just as veteran New-Yorkers never call their town The Big Apple.

3. THE LOG CABIN. The quaint little building near the Old Red Courthouse never belonged to John Neely Bryan; his humble abode was swept away decades ago in a flood. The “Bryan cabin” belonged to a farmer named Gideon Pemberton.



4. THE AWL BIDNESS. True, the families of 1 t,L, Hunt and Clint Murchison grew wealthy on black gold, but more Dallas fortunes have been made in banking, insurance, retailing, technology, and real estate. Besides, those working wells on “Dallas” gave the world the wrong idea; little oil has been discovered in Dallas County. Only 231 barrels have been pumped from the ground here from 1986 through 1995. However, many Dallasites can pronounce “awl bidness”as if they’ve been in it all their lives. Just ask.



5. THE OUTLAWS. At one time or another, outlaws Belle Starr, Cole Younger, Frank James, and Doc Holliday lived in Dallas. During a three-month stretch in 1878, Sam Bass held up four trains in the Dallas area.



6. SKIN GAME. In 1875, thanks to the impetus of our first railroad, which had come to town three years earlier, Dallas became the world’s leading market in buffalo hides.

TOWN SPIRIT. In 1S77, when Dallas Hook and Ladder Co. No. 1 found the city cistern empty during a fire, local merchant Leon Caperan saved the day by donating 11 barrels of wine to douse the flames.

LAW OF THE UNO. In 1884, it was against the law in Dallas to bathe in the Trinity during daylight, employ a lewd woman as a beer carrier, maim an ass, carry a spear, curse in a tavern, fly a kite, bowl on Sunday, or operate a hobby horse without a permit.

9. RIVER OF NO RETURN. For decades, city leaders dreamed of bringing the world’s riches to Dallas via the Trinity River. When the steamboat Harvey made the 67-day voyage from the Gulf in 1893, businesses closed and citizens paraded in the streets to celebrate what was thought to be a turning point in the city’s history. Alas, the Harvey was the last large boat ever to make the journey.



10. THE RISK POOL In 1922, the United Fidelity Insurance Company of Dallas rejected an application for a $50,000 life insurance policy from Pancho Villa.

11. A ONE-PAPER TOWN. Dallas has just I one daily paper, The Dallas Morning News. After decades of spirited competition, the Dallas Times Herald published its last edition on Dec. 8,1991.

FIRST PRESIDENTIAL VISIT. Sam Hous-ton, president of the Republic of Texas, visited Dallas in 1843. Okay, no fair: The first visit by a U.S. president was in 1905 when Theodore Roosevelt stopped here on his way to a Rough Riders reunion in San Antonio.

NOVEMBER 22,1963. Dallas was branded as a “city of hate” after the assassination of President John F, Kennedy, but it took more than 20 years for the city to find an appropriate use for the old Texas School Book Depository building, from which, the Warren Commission concluded, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed the president. It’s now the Sixth Floor Museum, and it’s very much worth a visit.

MIXED USE. During World War II, the Fair Park grounds were used to house German prisoners of war.



FLEETING FAME. In 1927, Dallas treated aviator Charles Lindbergh to the grandest parade in the city’s history and named a street in his honor. In 1941, fed up with Lindbergh’s pro-Nazi sympathies, town leaders changed the name of the street to Skillman.

16. THE IN-URBS. University Park and Highland Park are not part of Dallas because they didn’t want to be. The affluent small towns voted against annexation back in 1945, despite Mayor Woodall Rodgers’ claims that they were thwarting “manifest destiny” and “drawing the blood from the heart of Dallas.” No, there are no current plans to reopen the annexation fight.

ON THE TOWN

THE MEXICAN DINNER. Originally, the small Mexican cafes here served dishes in separate courses, but this did not appeal to ex-dishwasher Miguel Martinez. Around 1918, he became the first to put enchiladas, tamales, rice, and beans on the same plate at the Martinez Cafe, which later became the first EI Fenix.



COOL IDEA. In 1927, Sammy Bert intro duced the snow cone to visitors at the State Fair of Texas.

19. THE REAL MARGARITAVILLE. In May 1971, Mariano Martinez combined his father’s ’rita recipe with an idea born from observing a 7-Eleven Slurpee machine, to create the first frozen margarita at Mariano’s Restaurant in Old Town Shopping Village at Greenville and Lovers Lane.

20. BARBECUE HEAVEN. Elijah Bryan started serving first-class barbecue in Oak CM in 1910. His son Red continued the tradition, as did Sonny, Elijah’s grandson. The original Temple of Beef, Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse at 2202 Inwood Rd., has no tables, only crowds. The establishment: cooks 800 pounds of beef daily, then closes when it’s all gone, usually by mid-afternoon.

21. HOW YEW HUN? The Pig Stand, the first drive-in restaurant in America, opened in Dallas in the 1920s, and in 1937 Sivils in Oak Cliff hired the first female carhops, who wore satin majorette uniforms and roller skates. The carhops at three Keller’s Drive-ins, on Northwest Highway, Samuell Boulevard, and Harry Hines, carry on the proud Dallas tradition of strapping trays of onion-laden burgers and longneck Buds on customers’ rolled-down windows.

FAIR PARK FARE. The Octo- ber S:ate Fair of Texas is a must; the junk food of choice since the 1940s has been Fletcher’s Original State Fair Corny Dog, a wiener on a stick dipped in a special batter, deep-fried in vegetable shortening for three minutes, then doused in mustard.



THE COWBOYS (AND LESSER MORTALS)

BOYS’ CAMP. Of course you can name the only three head coaches the Cowboys have ever had, but what about the training camps? The first was in Forest Grove, Ore., in the summer of I960. Then came Thousand Oaks (aka Thousand Aches), Calif. The ’Boys now get ready on the campus of St. Edward’s University in Austin.



OUR FIRST PRO TD. A touchdown pass from George Taliaferro to Buddy Young of the ill-fated Dallas Texans in 1952. The team’s first score came on a much-needed gift from New York Giants punt returner Tom Landry, who fumbled in the shadow of the Giants’ goal. The next year, the Texans moved northeast to become the Baltimore Colts. Landry finished a modest career as a player, then became The Man in the Hat on the Dallas sidelines tor almost three decades.

FIVE AND COUNTING. Write this down on your hand: The Cowboys have played in eight Super Bowls. They’ve won five: vs. Miami in 1972; vs. Denver in 1978; vs. Buffalo in 1993; vs. Buffalo in 1994; vs. Pittsburgh in 19%. They’ve lost three: vs. Baltimore in 1971; vs. Pittsburgh in 1976; vs. Pittsburgh in 1979 (and there were some terrible calls in that one).

26. HOW ULTIMATE IS IT? After the Cowboys lost Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts in 1971, eccentric Cowboys running back Duane Thomas was asked what he thought about playing in “the ultimate game.” Quoth he: “It isn’t the ultimate game. If it was, they wouldn’t be playing it next year.”

FAB FOUR. You must know the front four of the Cowboys’ Doomsday Defense in the late ’60s and early 70s: Bob Lilly, George Andrie, Larry Cole, and Jethro Pugh.



TEAM WIT. When sportswrit-ers asked longtime Cowboys tackle Larry Cole why his two NFL touchdowns came 10 years apart, Cole replied, “Anyone can have an off decade.”



POM-POM BRIGADE. Every year in April, a thousand or so young women compete for the right to wear very little while earning just $15 a game as Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. But the bouncy troupe didn’t start with the team in 1960. High-schoolers from the Dallas-Fort Worth area led cheers throughout the ’60s; cheerleading became big business in 1976 when the camera crew filming Super Bowl X found the sideline activity irresistible.



DANDY DON. The folksy, party-loving Don Meredith was not the first SMU quarterback drafted by the Cowboys; he was drafted by the Chicago Bears and traded to Dallas. The first SMU quarterback drafted by the Cowpokes was Keith Bobo, taken in the 12th round in 1974.

31. BASEBALL AT THE COTTON BOWL. Yes. Here’s the starting line-up for the old-timers1 game played there on April 12,1950: C-Mickey Cochrane, P-Dizzy Dean, IB-Charlie Grimm, 2B-Cbarlie Gehringer, 3B-Frank “Home Run” Baker, SS-Travis Jackson, OF-Tris Speaker, OF-Duffy Lewis, OF-Ty Cobb.

THE TEXAS HEAT.

You know about Nolan Ryan’s six no-hitters, a record that will likely stand forever, and his record 5,714 strikeouts. But the real trivia question -winning answer is Robin Ventura-he’s the White Sox player Ryan headlocked and pummeled during a bench-clearing brawl in 1993.

33. A WACKY WEEK EVEN FOR THE RANGERS.

In 1977, the Texas Rangers had four managers in one week: Frank Luchessi. Eddie Stanky, Connie Ryan, and Billy Hunter.

THE CHAMP. The first Dallas native to win a world’s boxing championship was Curtis Cokes, a local bank messenger, who took the welterweight crown in 1956 by beating Jean Josselin of France.

BIG HIT IN THE WINDY CITY. Ernie Banks, who hit 512 career home runs for the Chicago Cubs, graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas.

WHY DID FORMER MAVERICKS OWNER DON CARTER ALWAYS WEAR A WHITE HAT?

Two reasons: A) Because he’s one of the those real Texans you read about back home. B) Because he’s one of the nicest, most honest men in sports.



THE SHOT NOT TAKEN. At the peak of the Dallas Mavericks’ success in the 1984 NBA playoff’s, rookie guard Derek Harper, thinking his team was ahead, dribbled away the waning seconds of a tie game against the Lakers, who went on to win in overtime. It’s been mostly downhill since then. Don’t even ask about Roy Tarpley.



WHO WAS ROY TARPLEY AND HOW MANY MILLIONSDID HE COST THE MAVERICKS?

We said, don’t even ask about Roy Tarpley.

BUSINESS, POWER, AND POLITICS



IS THIS THE RICHEST MAN IN THE U.S.? This question was posed by Life magazine in 1948beiowaphotoofH.L. Hunt of Dallas. Hunt secured the family fortune in a 1930 deal with East Texas wildcatter CM. “Dad” Joiner in a suite at the Baker Hotel. The rights to the Daisy Bradford field returned $100 million to the Hunts over the next two decades. In 1960, H.L.’s son Lamar formed the Dallas Texans, who later became the Kansas City Chiefs. Sons Bunker and Herbert were largely responsible for the collapse of the world silver market in 1980. Daughter Caroline is a prominent Dallas philanthropist who developed the Crescent Hotel, and son Ray, from Hunt’s second family, is a powerful Dallas businessman.

DADDY’S MONEY. Informed that his son Lamar had lost some S5 million dollars on the Texans franchise, H.L. Hunt supposedly quipped: “Well, at that rate, he’ll be broke in 200 years.”

THE PEANUT AIRLINE. According to legend, the original route of Southwest Airlines, the Dallas/San Antonio/Houston triangle, was first drawn on a cocktail napkin.

YOU CANT GET THERE FROM HERE. Odd but true: from Dallas out of Love Field, you can only fly nonstop to dues within Texas or in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico. The reason is the Wright Amendment, which was passed to give an advantage to D/FW International Airport when it opened in 1973.

I LOVE YOU, YOU LOVE ME…

Barney, the purple dinosaur, was the brainchild of Sheryl Leach, a former teacher living in Allen, just north of Piano. She was struck while stuck-the mega-million-dollar idea came to her in 1987 while she was bogged down in traffic. Her first notion was a talking security blanket, but she settled on the dinosaur because her son was fascinated by the prehistoric creatures in a Science Place exhibit at Fair Park.

MR. CHIPS.

Texas Instruments, born as Geophysical Services, Inc. in 1930, changed its name in 1951 to denote the company’s new direction, which was emphasized the following year with the introduction of transistors. In 1958, TI’s Jack Kilby designed the integrated circuit, now known to the world as the microchip, the heart of a $600-billion electronic market.



IT’S NOT THE PYRAMIDS, BUT… Highland Park Shopping Village, completed in 1931 at the corner of Preston Road and Mockingbird Lane, was the first shopping center in the United States with stores facing away from the streets.

PEROT. H. Ross Perot started Electronic Data Systems in 1962 with capital of $1,000. He became a multimillionaire when the stock went public in 1968, then sold out to General Motors, after a stormy and unsuccessful merger, for $700 million. Perot’s $12-million gift to help build the magnificent concert hall in the Arts District earned him the privilege of naming the facility for his longtime business associate Morton H. Meyerson.

IN THE PINK. In 1963, Mary Kay Ash founded her cosmetics empire in Dallas, rewarding successful beauty consultants with pink Cadillacs, diamond jewelry, and exotic vacations.



OH, THANK HEAVEN.

In 1927, as a convenience to his customers at the small ice dock at the corner of Edgefield and 12th in Oak Cliff, Johnny Green started stocking milk, bread, and eggs. The next spring, when he reported a $1,000 profit to Joe Thompson of dock-owner Southland Ice Company, the convenience store was born. Called Tote’m at first, the name was changed to 7-Eleven in 1946. Why the name? The store kept those hours.

FROM THE STORE. At Christmas, Fortune and Vogue give way to the Neiman-Marcus catalog featuring the His & Hers selection of the season, a tradition started in 1960 with His & Hers Beechcraft airplanes.

PROFITABLE COVERUP. In the early 50s, Dallas secretary Betty Nesmith Graham (mother of Monkee Mike Nesmith) blended a concoction of tempura water-base paint in her kitchen mixer and sneaked it to work to paint over her mistakes on the typewriter. In 1956, she began marketing the product as Mistake Out, and later changed the name to Liquid Paper.

MORE NAMES TO KNOW: Robert Dedman, golf course, club, and real estate operator, major contributor to SMU; Harold Simmons, billionaire investor and corporate raider; Domingo Garcia, former city councilman and Hispanic activist whose voting registration efforts have given Hispanics a voice in local affairs; Raymond Nasher, developer or NorthPark shopping center; Nancy Hamon, generous benefactor, widow of oil tycoon Jake Hamon; John Wiley Price, Dallas County commissioner and black activist, whose controversial image crosses ethnic lines; Henry Wade, longtime district attorney who was on the losing side of the 1973 Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision making abortion legal (Norma Jean McCorvey, also of Dallas, was Jane Roe); Ruth Sharp Altshuler, one of the most influential women in Dallas, first female to head United Way, daughter of insurance magnate Carr P. Collins.

LOCAL LANDMARKS

ALL THOSE NAMES ON STREETS AND BUILDINGS CAN BE CONFUSING. Let us help:

Lew Sterrett Justice Center Named for longtime county judge (1948-4975)

Earte Cabell Federal Building: Former mayor (1961-1964) and congressman (1964-1972)

George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building: City councilman (1968-1977) was first African-American on council

Stemmons Freeway: Leslie Stemmons, developer

Harry Hines Boulevard: State highway commissioner

Marvin D. Love Freeway: Utility executive

Gus Thomasson Road: WPA official

Walton Walker Boulevard: WWII general

Woodall Rodgers Freeway: Dallas mayor (1939-1947)

R.L. Thornton Freeway: Dallas mayor (1953-1961)

HER MAJESTY. The magnificent Majestic Theater, opened in 1921, is all that’s left of Theater Row, as Elm Street was called from the ’20s through the ’50s when movie theaters lined it from Harwood to Akard.



RETAIL EMPORIA.

The eight-story building at the corner of Main and Lamar, now part of El Centro College, was once the thriving Sanger Bros. Department Store, the town’s leading retailer at the turn of the century. Herbert Marcus, co-founder of Neiman-Marcus with brother-in-law Al Neiman in 1907, got his start at Sangers’. Sanger Bros, was bought by Federated in 1951. The first Neiman-Marcus store burned in 1913; the present facility at the corner of Main and Ervay opened the following year.

STILL CROWDED TODAY. Preston Road, which dissects some of the most valuable commercial and residential land in the area, is older than Dallas itself. This was the trail taken by early settlers from Preston Bend, so named for a crooked section of the Red River, to the tempting black land prairie of North Central Texas.



DEEP ELLUM. That’s the way we spell it. This section of Elm Street, across the railroad tracks (later Central Expressway) from downtown, was the hangout for blues legends Huddie Ledbetter (“Leadbelly”), Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others dur-ing the ’20s and ’30s.

57. HARD-SHELL TO HARD ROCK. The Hard Rock Cafe, at the corner of McKinncy and Routh streets, was originally a Baptist church.

58. THE LOOP. In the 1920s. sever;il narrow roads were connected to form a loop around Dallas County. Now the most prominent feature of Belt Line Road, which passes through 21 zip codes, is the restaurant oasis at Addison, little more than a spot on the prairie when the road was created.

59. OLD RED. Our finest architectural survivor, completed in 1892, was the fifth county courthouse; the first four either burned or were torn down. This Victorian treasure, which has been described as “’elegant” by preservationists and “hideous” by detractors, was built of red sandstone from West Texas and granite from Arkansas at a cost of $350,000, an enormous sum in the 1890s.

TOUCH OF THE OLD SOUTH. Alfred Horatio Belo, a Civil War colonel wounded at Gettysburg, was the rounder of The Dallas Morning News. His turn-of the-century man sion at 2101 Ross Ave., with its stately columns and shaded veranda, is typical of the grand homes that lined this street when it was the city’s most fashionable address. In 1934, while the building was leased by a funeral home, the bodies of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were displayed following their ambush by law officers. It’s now the home of the Dallas Bar Association.



BEER BARON’S MONUMENT. The Adolphus Hotel, built by St. Louis brewer Adolphus Busch in 1912, has had an interior face lift, but its remarkable exterior has been virtually untouched.

62. DAILY DOUBLE. Our favorite horses are Pegasus, of the flying red variety, who once towered over the city as a beacon to approaching pilots from atop the Magnolia Building (tallest building in the South in the 1920s), and the Mustangs of Las Colinas, the magnifi-cent, life-like, bronze sculpturcs romping through the fountain ai Williams Square on O’Connor Road in Irving.



YOUR FIRST HOME TOUR. The Wilson Historic District, in the 2800 to 3000 blocks of Swiss Avenue in East Dallas, preserves outstanding examples of turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture. Frederick P. Wilson was an English Canadian who made a fortune here in banking, manufacturing, and real estate. The properties are operated by the Meadows Foundation, a near half-billion-dollar endowment of oilman Algur H. Meadows.

64. A PARK OF THE PAST. On Ervay just south of 1-30, historians have rescued and preserved an excellent accumulation of historic buildings from the past. A focal point of Old City Park is Millermore, an . antebellum mansion moved from its original site on the banks of the Trinity River where it was built in 1862. This was the first house in Dallas with glass windows.



A HOSPITAL BY ANY OTHER NAME… Baylor Hospital was born of the generosity of rancher/banker C.C. Slaughter. Directors gave passing thought to naming the facility “The Slaughter Hospital,” but then decided that might not be a good idea.



CENTRAL STRESS-WAY. Central Expressway was built on the right-of-way of the Houston and Texas Central, our first rail connection completed in 1872, and along the path of Central Avenue. City leaders talked about the need for a north-south thoroughfare for decades, but by the time the first two-mile stretch opened in 1949, it was already too small to handle all the traffic.

67. THE DRY SIDE OF THE STREET.

Dallas is governed by a bewildering crazy quilt of liquor laws. Examples: On a stretch of Industrial Boulevard from Corinth to Hampton, a five-minute drive takes you through 12 changes in liquor regulations-first wet, then dry, then wet, then beer and wine only, then wet, but only on one side of the street. There’s a Centennial liquor store at Hillcrest and Northwest Highway-okay, that’s wet. So why is the Tom Thumb grocery store-in the same parking lot-dry? It cannot be understood, merely endured.



MUSIC TO OUR EARS. Dallas is the only major city in America to own its own classical radio station, WRR-FM 101.1. On Wednesdays you may hear a thunderous eruption of sound and fury, broken by passionate pleadings and operatic bombast. Wagner? No, the Dallas City Council. WRR broadcasts its meetings each week.

69. HOWDY FOLKS, HO, HO, HO! Before becoming Big Tex, the king-sized symbol of the State Fair of Texas, the frame figure was a Santa Claus in Kerens, Texas.

SHOW STOPPERS

70. DALLAS IN THE MOVIES. Back in the 70s, Oz, a stainless steel and chrome-plated private club on LBJ Freeway, was prominently featured in the science fiction classic Logan’s Run. City Hall was among the sites used in RoboCop; Oak Cliff appeared in Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July; and the former Texas School Book Depository, as well as the streets around it, got spiffed up for their appearance in Stone’s JFK.

AND THE WINNER WAS… Dorothy Malone became the first Dallas native to win an Oscar for her supporting role in Written on the Wind in 1956. Ginger Rogers, who took home an Oscar in 1940 for Kitty Foyle, got her start in Dallas by winning a Charleston contest, but she grew up in Fort Worth. The late Greer Garson, a 1942 winner for Mrs. Miniver, made her home in Dallas in later years.

GHOULS AT TEN. Ted Cassidy was a Dallas TV announcer before capturing die role of Lurch, the barrel-voiced butler on “The Addams Family” series. Movie buffs will remember him as the victim of Paul Newman’s kick to the groin in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.



CENSORED. Dallas was the last major city in America to have its own Motion Picture Classification Board, a relatively impotent body that backed down whenever one of its no-no ratings provoked a lawsuit from a movie company. In 1973, the board rated Paper Moon as “not suitable” for viewers under 16 because of a dirty word uttered by 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal. The City Council voted to ax the board in 1993.



HI, I’M LAKE RAY HUBBARD. Ray Wylie Hubbard, author of “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” attended Adamson High School in Oak Cliff. He added the middle name because people confused him with the local lake.



STEVE AND BOZ. Rock stars Steve Miller and William Royce “Boz” Skaggs played in the same band, the Marksmen, while students at Dallas’ St. Marks School for Boys in I960.



SCHL0CKME1STER. Hit producer Aaron Spelling, responsible for mass audience TV favorites “Starsky and Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island,” and “Dynasty,” among others, grew up in South Dallas. His father was a tailor who made suits for Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor; Aaron worked at a grocery in Deep Ellum for a dollar a day.



A SONG FOR YOU. Five songs about Dallas: (1) “Have You Ever Seen Dallas from a DC9 at Night?” (Jimmie Dale Gilmore/Joe Ely); (2) “Goin’ Back to Dallas, Texas (to see if anything could be worse than losing you)” (Austin Lounge Lizards); (3) “Goin’ Through the Big D in Big D” (Mark Chesnutt); (.4)”Broke Down South of Dallas” (Junior Brown); (5) “Big D, Little a, Double 1-a-s” (from the 1956 Broadway musical The Most Happy Fella).

The irresistible urge to rhyme the names “Dallas” and “Alice” has shown up in at least five songs; “Let Her Roll” by Guy Clark, “Willing” by Lowell George and Little Feat, “Broke Down South of Dallas” by Junior Brown, “Dallas Alice” by Joe Stampley, “Alice You’ve Made Dallas” by Lee Ferell.

83. TEENAGE VAMP. In 1964, Patsy McLenny, a 14-year-old sophomore at Lake Highlands High School, bombed during the Miss Teenage Dallas talent competition with a scene from St. Joan. Years later, influenced by Vanessa Redgrave’s movie Morgan!, Patsy changed her name to Morgan Fairchild.



84. ALL SHOOK UP. On Oct. 11,1956, Elvis Presley set an all-time Dallas attendance record by a single performer (up to that time) when he drew 26,500 admirers to the Cotton Bowl, where he was separated from his frenzied fans by a 10-foot wire fence.



85. WHO SHOT J.R.? The shooting on “Dallas” was a question of international importance in 1980; gamblers took in millions in wagers.

Finally, on Nov. 21,1980, the world learned that Kristin, pregnant with J.R.’s child and about to be framed for prostitution, had pulled the trigger. In the real Dallas, though, the fashionable answer was “Who cares?”

Indispensable Books on Dallas



78. BIG D, by Darwin Payne. Informative book, unfortunate title; a readable account of Dallas’ power, politics, crime, and social evolution.



79. DALLAS REDISCOVERED, by William L. McDonald. The best published collection of “the way we were” photographs taken between the Civil War and World War I, depicting what we have sacrificed in the name of progress.



80. DALLAS UNCOVERED, by Larenda Lyles Roberts. Offbeat and loose-knit sketches of people and places from Dallas’ past, present, and future-a good place to start if you want to catch up quickly.



81. WPA DALLAS GUIDE AND HISTORY. Completed in 1942 by writers funded by the Work Projects Administration, but not published until 50 years later. For serious students of Dallas history.



82. THE PARK CITIES: A WALKER’S GUIDE AND BRIEF HISTORY, by Diane Galloway and Kathy Matthews. Tidbits about Highland Park and University Park organized in the form of a guid- I ed walking tour.