Barely a rut in the prairie in 1850, Dallasis now the center of a vast urban area of more than 6 million. I'm here with my wife to escort our daughter into the next stage of her life, neo-adulthood, as defined by the college years. Her future alma mater is a quiet campus on the leafy outskirts of the metropolis, within earshot of DFW Airport and, paradoxically, the chime of church bells. Prosperity, technology, dynamism, architecture: all are on display here, and life moves at a pace that far out-accelerates the train de vie in our more southern part of Texas. In fact, if nobody's nicknamed Dallas "the Southwestern Chicago," they've missed a bet. There's an echo of the Windy City here. Even some of the sprawling lower middle-class neighborhoods, through one of which I took my sweaty morning constitutional this a.m., remind me of Chicago: small, neat houses, postage-stamp lawns, American flags, old ladies watering plants, etc. Long staight avenues, corner convenience stores, Czech names here, Mexican there. And, need I add, the traffic proceeds with a Chicagoan frenzy, commuters whipped into an unwilling stampede the minute they merge onto the freeways, the speed limits a bad joke and a perfect example of a poor law poorly enforced.
But it's now my girl's new home and, as such, one of mine.
