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Dallas Almanac

By D Magazine |

Did you know?

Dallas was founded in 1840 by John Neely Bryan, who built a single log cabin as a trading post on the Trinity River. The city is believed to be named lor Joe Dallas, an Arkansas settle.

Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas is the only high school to produce two Heisman Trophy winners: Davey O’Brien (1938) and Tim Brown (1987).

Before he was elected governor, George W. Bush lived in Dallas; his twin daughters attended Preston Hollow Elementary.

The world’s largest bronze monument, located at the Dallas Convention Center, is made up of more than 40 longhom steers, horses, and cowboys in a Texas cattle drive.



You need to know…

Those towering oaks in your front yard provide shade in the summer and become a multi-colored tapestry in the fall. Now that you’re settling in for your first Dallas winter, be forewarned: The squirrels scampering up and down those trees and across your roof will seek refuge in your attic once the temperatures begin to drop. Call your roofer. then consider the following: Cayenne pepper sprinkled all over your attic will act as a repellent. Specialists known as “rehab-ers” trap and relocate squirrels, raccoons, and opossums (Texas Parks and Wildlife keeps a list of referrals). As for Dallas Animal Control-which will loan traps and retrieve the offending creatures-“they’ll come get the animal, but then the animal is killed,” Caroline Hawbaker. director of the Dallas Humane Society, notes.



Traditions:

The venerable Cotton Bowl Parade has been replaced with Texas on Parade. Beginning on Ross (near Pearl) and continuing through the West End. the parade features 18 high school bands, the Kilgore Rangerettes, assorted floats, and Miss Texas, Tatum Hubbard. 4 p.m.. New Year’s Eve Day. Information: (214) 741-7180.

The Southwestern Bell Cotton Bowl Classic-pitting the best of the Big 12 Conference against the best of the Southeastern Conference-is held New Year’s Day at Fair Park. Tickets: $55. (214) 638-2695 or (888) SWB-BOWL.

Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. America’s oldest slock show and first indoor rodeo, turns 103 this month. Highlights include the All-Western Parade, Midway carnival, and-of course-the rodeo. Rodeo tickets: $16 to $18. From Jan. 22 through Feb. 7. at Will Rogers Memorial Center. (817) 877-2420.

Yesterday: Miss Naughty Dallas

One of the country’s most notorious strippers got her start right here.

Juanica Dale Slusher was not the ideal candidate for civic honor. Born in Edna, Tex.-a blip on die highway between Houston and Laredo-she ran away from home at age 14 and wound up as a prostitute on the streets of Dallas. Her fortunes, or at least her fame, took a marked turn for the better five years later when she became Candy Barr. stripper extraordinaire.

The methodical exposure of the female anatomy was a semi-respectable profession in Dallas in the 1950s. Abe”s Colony Club, where Ms. Barr performed across from the Hotel Adolphus on Commerce Street, was a popular destination, not only lor the hotel crowd, but for local, middle-class couples, as was Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club next door. Candy, often sporting little more than cap pistols and a cowboy hat, was viewed with a certain untouchable awe.

Regrettably for her, Ms. Barr’s popularity did not permeate the upper echelons of the local constabulary. In 1958, Juanita Dale Phillips was sentenced to 15 years in prison for possession of marijuana. (She had kept the legal name “Phillips” in honor of an ex-husband she had wounded with a pistol shot to the stomach.) As her attorneys vigorously pursued her appeal, sympathy tor Candy mounted, and her fame spread across the country. While out on bond, she knocked down two grand a week at El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas until she was ousted by one of Nevada’s intermittent moral uprisings. Without missing a bump or a grind. Candy moved down the mad to Los Angeles* Sunset Strip, where she became romantically involved with mobster Mickey Cohen, who renewed her bond, then reneged when the high-profile twosome had a lovers’ spat.

When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her final appeal. Candy was transported to the Goree Prison Farm for Women near Huntsville, where she whiled away three years and three months singing in the prison choir and writing poetry. Still remembered fondly here, she lives in relative peace and quiet near Brownwood, Tex.

-Tom Peeler

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