Day 20: Diarmy Does Dallas

So as the days become melted into one long journey, I woke late this morning after arriving late in Plano, a suburb of Dallas but a city in its own right. My plan for the day was to go walk around Dallas and head south to New Orleans or Houston. After the pep self-talk the night before though I wasn’t going to set anything in stone. Then I was reminded that the TV show ‘Dallas’ (which I’ve never actually seen or watched) was filmed on a ranch named ‘Southfork’ just a few miles east in Plano – so naturally I had to take a look. Now, I’m a little too old to remember Dallas but I’m familiar with the ‘Who shot JR?’ conundrum and also know a little about Larry Hagman. I also had this niggling obsession lately about getting my hair cut as it was bugging me that it was getting out of hand – maybe the sun was making it grow quicker, but it was just annoying. I also had to get some money put into my MiFi as I’d eaten up all the data while trying to restore my iPhone and because I’d woken up early, I also needed to get breakfast and the ever popular trip to the gas station was also added to the now brimming itinerary.

Gas is cheap in Texas but it still pays to shop around. I decided to stay in Plano until I’d seen the Dallas ranch and then head into the city. So I punched in 3700 Hogge Drive, Parker, TX, into my GPS (which is working really well since I crippled the cripple that is Neverlost) and went east toward my destination, hoping to find a barber, cheap gas and a Starbucks on the way (the Starbucks and gas were a given, the barber might be trickier to find though). After cruising by some gas stations I chose the cheapest, a 7-Eleven selling unleaded 87 octane gas for $3.549 a gallon. Then after filling the Mailbu with juice, it was time to stop at what I saw was a sports-themed barbers to get what I consider a pretty OK haircut for a further $15. Then it was next-door to the Starbucks to get coffee and a cookie and onto the Verizon wireless store to pack $90 into the MiFi to last me the next few weeks. Count it up and that’s a hectic day for my wallet.

After driving through what was obviously a well-to-do neighborhood, I arrived in Southfork and proceeded to follow the tourists (myself included) around the tour of this ranch. It turns out it was originally built by a man for his family and when the original JR Ewing household in Frisco, Texas, burnt down, the producers from Lorimar showed up to proposition the Southfork ranch owner. After much back and forth, he agreed under certain conditions. The story goes that after JR Ewing was shot, people were naturally taken a-back by the plot line and the man who owned Southfork in real life was also named – co-incidentally – JR. At a football game a female announcer started talking about the show and mentioned that it was shot in the Dallas area and seemingly the following day, hundreds of fans descended on the estate to wish the family well after JR’s shooting (I kid you not!). Anyway, long story short, the estate changed hands a few times and is now fully developed into looking like what it would if JR were still living there. To be honest my expectations of the place were very low, but I was impressed by many things, chief among which is that the entire site is open to the public – unimpeded save for the admission fee of about $11. It’s well-developed and they have built a conference center and host weddings, birthdays, parties and proms at the ranch all year round. There’s a few gift shops and a café/deli and you have full access to the house and grounds for as long as you want to be there. It’s amazing to see all this, and the many people who showed up on a dry, warm Wednesday morning. Contrast this with the Fr. Ted house in rural County Clare in Ireland – where only very recently has the homeowner allowed people in for coffee – until then there were rumours the family would shout at passers by who wanted to see the Craggy Island Parochial house in real life. No tours were offered, no parking and no sense was really made by them. The same goes for the house and former set of Ryan’s Daughter in West Kerry. It’s barely marked on any map let alone easily accessible, and the entire village of Kirrary was knocked to the ground despite being of sound construction and the production company offering to finish it and donate it to the community – all because no one wanted it. The potential billions in lost revenue in sites like this all over Ireland really annoys me – people wonder why Irish people leave the country for vacation – that’s why! The mentality is that Ireland should stay for the Irish and excuse my language, fuck the rest of them.

Anyway, I decided to split the scene in Southfork early and go into downtown Dallas to walk around and see where John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. After parking up at an open lot and putting $10 into a machine for $4 parking which didn’t give change, I was annoyed. I’d lost $6. As I walked through the streets of Dallas though I was very unimpressed. It’s a highly commercial city but there were very few people around – either they were all working or on vacation – the place was eerily quiet (very little traffic even). I walked around Deacey Plaza, looked up to the window where supposedly Lee Harvey Oswold shot the president in his open-top limousine on that fateful day and mourned his loss for a few moments. As I walked back through Dallas however I noticed I’d lost $20 somewhere so I was down to the tune of $26 on the day. That combined with earlier purchases and the lunch I still had to pay for meant today was one of the more expensive days on the trip – and unnecessarily so to be honest.

I decided to stop by the In-N-Out burger joint I passed on the way into Dallas to pay my last respects to the one decent francise for fast food in America – In-N-Out is no where east of Texas in the United States, so from here on out it’s a lesser quality fare. From there I decided to adjust the GPS a little, adding in the avoidances of Toll Roads (no harm really) and avoiding U-turns, which should make the journey more interesting. I then decided to avoid the interstate highway for a while and take the longer, slower and more interesting route down through rural East Texas. Down through Athens, Palestine, Trinity and Crockett, I saw a side to the state I wasn’t expecting. It’s very green (and not from irrigation either) and very rural. And also there’s a high prevalence of home-businesses too. This is something I want to write about further and in more depth so I’ll leave it for the moment. Life moves slower in these areas and they’re very pretty but also very neglected. The town of Palestine in particular struck me as a beautiful little town (it’s not a city despite all the protestations) with lovely old buildings and lots of character and potential. But ill-fated investment and dereliction has left the town in a dilapidated state and it’s crying out for some TLC. Now lots of people would blame the economy for this, but if you look at the buildings and décor in the abandonment, you’ll see that much of these places didn’t see so much as a lick of paint since the early 1990s. So while the economy may be slightly to blame, it’s not the current on that caused the damage. I think malaise is more the culprit, but as I said I’ll write more about this and other observations later in the series – when I’ve seen enough to basically base my analysis correctly.

After all that touring around, I booked a hotel on the Hotels.com app and for €56 I got checked into an OK hotel in Galveston, a seaside island town south of Houston on the Gulf coast. From here I’m headed to New Orleans and maybe elsewhere too.