As far as I’m concerned, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce might just as well close down during the months of July and August. No clear-thinking visitor, tourist or prospective resident would ever decide voluntarily to try to survive our local summer tradition of the double dog days of heat and humidity.
Once a newcomer is subjected to a good dose of sticking to wet clothes, which are sticking to the vinyl griddle of the car seat, brains are destroyed, clouding judgment and melting mascara. (This is your brain; this is your brain in Dallas in July in your car. No need for drugs to scramble your head.) Once unsuspecting out-of-towners come to their senses, they usually have already closed on a house with no shade on the west side and a 15-year-old air conditioner that works great in December, but is on the repairman’s perpetual list of stops between April and October. (Could be a freon leak. Could be the compressor. Can’t be sure of anything except the bill, which is $398 per house call.)
And why is it so humid in Dallas? With all the concrete and glass, where can the moisture be coming from? It can’t be coming from White Rock Lake. There’s not enough water.
Perhaps it’s coming from the Trinity River. After torrential rains, though, the Mighty Trinity usually can be mistaken for the runoff from somebody’s sprinkler system left on overnight.
Of course, now, there is no reason to continue to fry your buns in traffic jams to and from work because the DART train has arrived!
Thirteen years and $2 billion later, the train runs from Oak Cliff to the zoo to Downtown. Undoubtedly, cars will now be left in garages by the thousands and the ozone alerts will become a distant memory. The only problem is that people in Oak Cliff probably don’t drive their cars to work, and they probably don’t work Downtown. But the zoo’s business ought to improve.
Perhaps DART and the Trinity River could get together and build a NAFTA canal that carries passenger traffic and cargo from Dallas to Panama. What a great extension of DART’s master plan to spend untold billions of dollars to make something impractical a reality.
DART could operate a series of ferries and steamboats that could finally give Dallas the kind of international respect it deserves.
Every great city of the world has a canal – Venice, New Orleans, Erie. What a great opportunity to enhance and empower an already massive bureaucracy! We could even be a port-of-call for the Love Boat.
These are the only wispy dreams seen through a glass darkly, but they suggest the possibilities that exist when you let your imagination wander with someone else’s checkbook.
Don’t get stuck in the mundane, daily chugholes of basic obligations of local government. It’s much more impressive (and fun) to think big and think expensive. After all, at least our local leaders have their version of the “vision thing.”
Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for us, it is only very rarely brought into focus by common sense and frustrated citizens.
I think it’s time for reader feedback. The festivities over inaugurating the DART rail line have everybody excited about something new and different. But behind every big party is a guy with a hefty bill and a baseball bat.
What do Lake Highlanders think of the DART train? Will it ever come to our neck of the woods? Do we want it? Will we use it? Send your cards and letters to the Advocate.
In the meantime, ride the train if you want to stay cool. But ride something else if you need to go somewhere.
