Sunday, December 21, 2008

Texas Stadium

Last night on TV, I watched the Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens play the last regular season football game in Texas Stadium. I never saw a game there, yet I spent some time in that area of Texas, and I have good memories of the people and things that I saw and did there.

When the stadium opened in 1971, I was still in the Army at Fort Bragg.

On major life changes, I drove past the stadium on 5 occasions as I traveled from coast to coast in ’71, ’72, ’90, ‘94, and ’97.

When I worked for Mitsubishi in the early ‘90s, I met a woman named Marilyn who worked in our warehouse there, and we remained friends.

As I began working with SAP technology, I made several visits to the SAP training center that was located in the area known as Las Colinas, situated close to Texas Stadium.

About ten years ago, I flew to Dallas for an SAP conference. I went early and spent a couple days with Marilyn, and we saw a great concert at Texas Stadium featuring Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart.

Leaving Marilyn, I hooked up with friends from work that arrived for the SAP conference. On our spare time we acted as tourists and did what anyone wanted to do. We went to South Fork to see the set of the TV show "Dallas", we visited the Sixth Floor Museum and Dealey Plaza to experience the Kennedy assassination, had drinks at the Reunion Tower, and tried to find the graves of Bonny and Clyde. I came away from that trip with two shot glasses: one from a Hooters restaurant where we stopped for chicken wings, and one from the Mustang Café in Las Colinas, where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner.

The shot glass from the Mustang Café was a beautiful frosted-glass piece that featured the mustangs seen in the fountain by the Cafe running around the glass; the mustang images on the glass were crystal clear as opposed to frosted, the liquor showing its color through the images of the horses. Jim McCall and I both bought one on that trip.

Jim passed away in 2004, and on occasion since, I would raise the Mustang glass and have a shot in his honor. That glass broke early this year.

So tonight, I’ll raise one for Texas Stadium, Jim, Marilyn and the other friends I met and traveled with during those years of many changes.

The Hooters glass survives.

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