When I first moved
to Fort Worth, some fifty-plus years ago, I knew nothing of the city and little
more of Texas. My parents visited my brother at the Corpus Christi Naval Air
Station and reported an almost tropical landscape. My then-husband, on the
strength of one visit to Turkey, Texas described a brown and desolate landscape.
I was puzzled. But uniformly people told me not to worry about living in Fort Worth,
because we would be going to Dallas all the time.
It has not worked
out that way. We arrived in the summer after the JFK assassination, and after
having lived through that long weekend via TV, I was terrified at the thought of
seeing the assassination site. But beyond that, Fort Worth kept us busy, and we
found few reasons to go to Dallas.
By now, I have
been to Addison and Frisco a lot to see one child and his family, but trips to
Dallas itself? Few and far between. So it was an adventure for me to go with
Carol Roark today, so we could lunch with Texas publishing giant and good
friend Fran Vick. Carol drove, of course, and I was overwhelmed by the traffic,
the changed skyline, and the dramatically changed patterns of the freeways. I
could not even imagine myself driving there, but Carol, who worked in Dallas
for years and still goes there once a week, zipped from lane to lane like she
knew what she as doing and where she was going—and except for the actual
location of the restaurant, she did know. I was in good and safe hands.
When I was
director of TCU Press, Fran was director of UNT Press, and with Gayla, from
A&M, we called ourselves Three Women of Publishing. We not only
collaborated professionally, but we were good friends outside work—and that included
sleepovers with conversations that required much wine and lasted into the night.
My youngest son went to work for Fran’s husband and, years later, bought the
toy manufacturer’s representatives business from him. We were family, and we knew
each other’s families.
Carol and I have
worked together and been friends for years. TCU Press published several of her
books. As a friend, she was the first and most persistent to get me out and
back to life in the world after my hip surgery left me on a walker. Meanwhile,
at meetings of the state historical association and other groups, she and Fran
got to be friends and colleagues.
Time and
circumstances have kept us apart, so today’s lunch was a real reunion. We talked
about publishing and the recent deaths of three of Texas’ literary giants,
today’s politics (we’re all on the same page), families, food, aging (I tried
to persuade Fran it’s all in her head) and who knows what else. It was soul
satisfying and wonderful.
On the way out of
the restaurant, Carol decided we should take a selfie. We were obviously bumbling
around about it, so a lovely young woman at another table hopped up and
volunteered to take the picture above. We had no idea who the man in the wall
art is, though something is dinging around in my mind that he was an
iconoclastic Dallas figure who drove an outrageous Cadillac with longhorns on
it. But I can’t get beyond that thought to identify him.
Tonight,
unexpected thunder and a bit of rain have lowered the temperature, added humidity
we didn’t need but brought the nice new rain smell. I’m a happy camper.
