Their personalities are so magnetic that they can’t carry credit cards. Their charm is so contagious that vaccines have been created for it. The grass is greener on whatever side of the fence they are on. They are …

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The most interesting people in Lake Highlands

 

1. Maryon Van Gilder. In 1951, this clothing designer ran into a production snafu that left 100,000 pair of pants too short, and simultaneously started a clothing craze that is still with us today. “Thankfully, it occurred to me the pants would be excellent for bike riding because they wouldn’t get caught in the spokes,” Van Gilder says. “I told one of my assistants to go ahead and put in a hem, and we’d call them ‘pedal pushers’.” Hence, this neighborhood resident invented the first round of Capri pants.

 

2. Cindy Causey  This neighborhood novelist has documented her publishing journey on her blog at cucausey.blogspot.com. Her romances, such as “A Hot Time In Texas” and “Different Drummer”, carry quintessentially sexy covers, about which, judging by her blog posts, she has a sense of humor. “The cover for my new book is ready to go,” Causey writes on her blog. “Kinda hot and steamy, huh? Just like summer in Texas. It’s a little more serious than the actual book, but hey, erotica, suspense, mystery, drama — they all sell, right?”

 

3. Bob Iden. The whole neighborhood was surprised when the gregarious Lake Highlands High School principal announced he was leaving his post after 32 years in public education (11 of them at LHHS). But retirement, for Dr. Bob, didn’t mean a life of golf and fishing trips — a few months later he took a sales job at Ebby Halliday, and last summer he signed on as the new teacher and assistant football coach at Bishop Lynch High School.

 

4. Peter Snell. In New Zealand, the three-time gold winning Olympic runner holds the title “Athlete of the 20th Century”. There, he has his image on a postage stamp, a statue in his honor, his shoes on display in a museum, and he was recently named second on an annual New Zealand Reader’s Digest “Most Trusted Person” list. Here in our neighborhood, Snell enjoys relative anonymity. A Ph.D. now, he has turned his physical genius into scientific practice as an associate professor of medicine at the UT Southwestern medical center. His name still appears regularly in Running Times magazine.

 

5. Steve Pickett. The award-winning CBS 11 news reporter is always on the go, but takes time out for his favorite hobby, photography. “Photography is sort of my second passion,” he says. The nationally renowned journalist who has received accolades for reports on wars, education, race relations and crime also shoots weddings on the weekends, and says that if he weren’t a news reporter, he’d like to be a fashion photographer.

China has the Great Wall. Australia has the Barrier Reef. Lake Highlands also has a …

 

Structure that is quite possibly visible from outer space

 

Yep, it’s the Lake Highlands High School Wildcat-Ram Stadium Press Box.  

When it comes to public restrooms, cleanliness is key, but we want to recognize those spots that do a little extra to make your visit comfortable, or at the very least, convenient. Here are …

 

Perfect places for a pit stop

 

1. NorthPark Center. It’s a well-guarded secret among women in the know: The best bathrooms at NorthPark are downstairs next to Cibus. Not only are these bathrooms clean, but they also never have a wait line, making them somewhere near the 99 percentile of mall bathrooms. And if you’re nursing or have kids in tow, there are private family-sized restrooms here, too, with tiny toilets for teeny tushies.

 

2. Schlotsky’s near Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake. This one gets points for being so conveniently placed near the trails of White Rock. (Green Spot’s outside-the-store stalls score points for convenience, too, but you’ll have to go inside to ask for a key.) Schlotsky’s is consistently clean, spacious, and it beats using the Port-a-Potty across the way.

 

3. The Port-a-Potty across the way. Not as nice as Schlotsky’s, but when you’re running, walking or biking the trail, the Port-a-Potties along the trail behind Doctors Hospital, we suppose, beat using the bushes.

It’s carwash time. You start with the inside, dropping 50 or 75 cents into the vacuum cleaner slot and … you’re off to the races. Vacuuming furiously, you move hurriedly from one side of the vehicle to the other when the hose gets hooked on a door — oh no! — wasting precious seconds. Will you finish before the time is up? Or will you need to drop another 75 cents on that one measly remaining floorboard? To better your odds of beating the car vacuum clock, we’ve checked out neighborhood carwashes, stopwatch in hand, to find…

 

Five car vacuums that go long

 

1. National Pride Carwash at Northwest Hwy and Plano

 

2. Gator Wash on Plano near Walnut Hill

 

Best place to have someone else clean your car

 

Lake Highlands Car Wash. They’ve been in the car cleaning biz for decades, and they know what they are doing, so have a seat in the clean and cool waiting area at Audelia and Walnut Hill, and let them do the work at a reasonable price.

Had enough of the daily grind? Grab a good book, or your Advocate, and steal a moment for yourself. Here are a few …

 

Quiet corners where you can crack a book

 

1. Mockingbird-Peavy overlook. It’s a simple little green space atop the Buckner overpass with a perfectly placed pavilion and one of the prettiest views in the city. Plop down at the picnic table and take in a fall afternoon and an entertaining magazine article. (Oh, and improvements at the accompanying playground are underway.)  

 

2. Half Price Books. Try visiting your local boutique, trying on a dress, and then wearing it around the store … for hours. Or going to your favorite grocery store, opening up a bag of chips, and consuming it right there. If you didn’t get thrown out, you’d at least be frowned upon. Not so at Half Price. At the flagship on Northwest Highway near Central Expressway, it’s perfectly acceptable to cozy up in a nook or cranny of the store with a book for as long as you wish.

This one is all about the unexpected. You are at a standby eatery and discover some item on the menu — something you did not intend to order — that throws you for a pleasant loop. For example, here are …

 

Menu items that might make you say, ‘OMG! How did I miss this?’

 

1. Matcha Latte at White Rock Coffee. Most of us hang here for the live music, homey atmosphere, free WiFi and ready access to our favorite legal drug — everyone knows this coffee shop on Northwest Highway and Shoreview has the best java this side of Columbia. But we know a few coffee drinkers who have turned to tea after trying the rich, foamy and honey infused matcha tea latte hidden deep within the “other hot drinks” section of the menu.  

 

2. Artichoke Salad at Tony’s Pizza. We’d known well for many years that Tony’s was an entirely reliable joint when it came to pizza, pasta and calzones, but it wasn’t until a recent diet effort that we discovered the artichoke salad on the menu. At $4.95, the robust salad is packed with lettuce, Italian ham, mozzarella (drop this if you’re doing the diet thing), black olives and artichoke hearts. The diets didn’t last, but we regularly return to this Northwest Highway and Ferndale restaurant for the salad.

 

3. Individual Pies at Chubby’s. Connoisseurs of greasy breakfasts and home-style cooking turn to Chubby’s Family Restaurant on Northwest Highway at Jupiter for sausage, eggs and, arguably, the best chicken fried steak around, but others in the know go just for the individual pies that come in lemon, chocolate or coconut. Your Chubby’s meal will satisfy, but your sweet tooth will thank you when save a little room for this dessert.

Long week at the office? Need to work out some anger issues? The spots on this list have one thing in common — they are places at which hitting things and hitting them hard is perfectly acceptable. Relieve your stress at …

 

The perfect places to purge your pent-up aggression

 

1. Top Golf, Park and Abrams. Swing at golf balls during daylight, dark and in any kind of weather.

 

2. Dave & Busters, Walnut Hill

 

and Central Expressway. Hit things, throw things, and eat greasy food.

 

3. Jupiter Lanes, Jupiter and

 

Garland. No frills pin smashing.

Best biodiesel and gourmet tacos

 

Sure, there are probably a handful of places where you can fill up on gas and tacos in

 

one stop, but the biodiesel and top-of-the-line taco options make Green Spot on Buckner

 

near White Rock Lake a unique neighborhood commodity.

Waiting for the light to turn, the line to move or the mechanic to tell you the bad news — seems like we’re always waiting. Here are a couple of …

 

Places where waiting isn’t so bad

 

1. East Lake Veterinary Hospital

 

Because the vets here treat so many types of small pets,  it’s not unusual to have a pot bellied pig or a rare exotic bird waiting alongside you — needless to say, this makes the wait interesting (especially if you have a curious Boxer in tow). And it doesn’t hurt that the waiting area on Northwest Highway near Audelia is clean and spacious and includes scattered hard-candy bowls for humans.

 

2. Dr. T. Bob Davis’s office. This dentist who moonlights as a musician has in his Greenville and Royal waiting room a computer for kids, recliners and a piano — and if his schedule allows, he might even play you a tune.

Our neighborhood is teeming with talent. In fact, it gave roots to several celebs — not the reality TV show ilk (though we claim some of those too), but legitimate actors, artists and athletes whose accomplishments have earned them a pretty penny and a place in history. In fact, we’ve come up with a whole list of…

 

Famous people from Lake Highlands

 

1. Morgan Fairchild. The blond B movie bombshell who has appeared in a couple hundred television, film and stage productions got her start right here in Lake Highlands, and at 59, she’s still looking quite fabulous.

 

2. Darvis Patton. The Olympic track star says Lake Highlands coach Buzz Andrews was his mentor. “I’ve always known I was fast, but the first two years of high school, I was ineligible for sports due to grades,” Patton says. But early during Patton’s junior year, Andrews took the future Olympian under his wing. “Buzz was like, ‘Uh uh. You are not going to fail anymore.’” Under Andrews’s auspices, Patton hunkered down and became a world-class collegiate runner and has since represented the United States in the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games.

 

3. Annie Clark. This 2001 grad recently appeared on David Letterman’s show to promote her latest album, “Actor”, which is chockfull of sultry, raspy vocals and soothingly intense acoustic guitar, piano and bass — all of which Clark plays herself. Watch out for this ivory-skinned, red-lipped beauty — she’s a rising star.

 

4. Mark Salling. The 2001 LHHS graduate plays the good-natured punk, Puck, on the incredibly of-the-moment TV show, “Glee”, and he was recently named on People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” list. His parents, John and Condy Salling, still live in the L Streets. Condy works at Lake Highlands Junior High, where she still can’t get used to people remarking on her son’s acting. “The whole idea of watching my child on TV is overwhelming,” she says.