It is Dallas Time!

I was so tempted to title this entry Sophia Does Dallas, just for the connotation attached to some fictitious Debbie, ‘doing’ the same town. I think everyone knows what Debbie did in Dallas and, just for fun and maybe spurious imagination, I thought recreating that title with my name would be a kick.

I’m not that kind of girl, and I don’t want that kind of thought attached to me. So, the title is Dallas Time instead.

In a lot of ways, I was most looking forward to my visit in Dallas. I worked in Dallas for 11 years and made some very good friends there. In fact, most of my Texas friends live in Dallas or nearby. Even though I had allotted 10 days for visiting in Dallas – longer than I had allotted for my son’s and brother’s visit, even, I was not certain of how I would manage to see everyone and do everything I had to do in those 10 days.

A lot of visiting would be contingent on the generosity of my friends. Dallas mass transit is not necessarily affluent. Sometimes one has to wait up to 40 minutes to catch a bus or light rail train anywhere. And, mass transit doesn’t cover the entire city or its suburbs. I am grateful that the city even has mass transit but, come to find out I didn’t need to rely on mass transit at all. I have very generous and helpful friends who thought nothing of picking me up and dropping me off at my hotel.

I’ll talk more about the hotel in a later entry. The one about financing this trip.

It was only when pulling into Weatherford, a small town about 50 miles west of Fort Worth that a visiting schedule came to me. You see, there are so many good people to visit in Dallas that I didn’t know how I was going to spend quality time with all of them. Besides, there were things in Dallas that I needed to do, and other things I wanted to do without company, like eat a Braum’s burger, or visit my old workplace (in which case I would be visiting with a lot of folks, and not be by myself).

I’ll tell you about Braum’s burgers and food in general in another entry, how’s that?

My first few days in Dallas I had to take care of some business: getting business cards printed up, taking care of banking issues and crystallizing my idea to formalize my writing career. After that, the floodgates opened and the visiting began.

I often utilize a concept borrowed from Stephen King. It is called ‘The Boys in the Basement.’ If I can’t consciously work a problem out, I kick it down to the boys in the basement and let them work on it. Those ‘boys’ live in my subconscious. They fix problems that I cannot consciously reason or rationalize out. Many times, when I’m trying to figure out a plot point while writing or I have a real-life problem that I’m trying to figure out, I kick it down to the boys in the basement and go to sleep. By the time I wake up, ‘the boys’ are ready to present me with a solution to whatever is nagging at me, all neatly tied in whatever garish ribbon my imagination can come up with.

‘The Boys’ are the ones that figured out the visiting schedule for Dallas. I snoozed while the bus rolled first into Mineral Wells and then into Weatherford, but when we stopped at the depot in Weatherford, I grabbed my notebook, made out the schedule and started working the phone.

“Yes” said Mark to my proposed Sunday lunch, and “Yes” said Kevin to a Saturday lunch and “Yes” said Janie to dinner on Friday night. My entire schedule was met with “Yes”, except for Ann and Ron who had something do to on Monday morning. No problem. Just swap their tentative Monday morning for a definite Tuesday morning, which worked out all the better for all concerned.

Those Boys in the Basement don’t do a half-bad job, do they?

One of the things I wanted to do in Dallas was take some downtime. So far, the summer had been a whirlwind of travel and visit, travel and visit. I needed some quiet time to recharge my batteries, before I go on with this madcap dance of traveling and visiting. Those first three days in Dallas were it. Downstream from Dallas in the traveling/visiting itinerary there would be precious little time for downtime; I figured I had better take a breather while I can.

Again let’s let my visiting time with my friends be private, please. Suffice to say that, to see my dear friends, my loved ones again… well, there are no words to express that joy. Precious moments we spent together, conversation that flowed, the tears we shed and the laughs we had. All of that lives on in my heart and mind. There are no words to express my sorrow at leaving them, after only a few hours of their company.

Our friendship goes on, via email and via skype. I’m so grateful for the electronic means we have to stay together and stay caught up, but you will never hear me say an email is the same as a hug. Thank you, THANK YOU for all of your hugs, your love and for the slice of time we spent together. And thank you for your ongoing friendship and faith in me.

I did not allot enough time for Dallas. I did get most of my business taken care of, and made serious inroads to business as yet unfinished. But who cares about business? What matters is that I had only planned on spending one afternoon at my old workplace, and I see now that I seriously underestimated the number of people who would be glad to reunite.

I thought touring the plant would be a breeze. Simply walk in, surprise my gang by reading the minutes at the start of day meeting, visit for a few minutes with each person individually, give them their gift and move on. It didn’t work that way. Word went around the plant like wildfire and soon, not just my gang but EVERYBODY in the plant who had known me to any degree prior to my resigning last year hunted me down, hugged me fiercely and demanded to know what my life was now like. I wanted to know what their life was like, too.

I am so sorry that I only planned on spending one afternoon in the company of people who deserved at least two days worth of time. Some I only had the chance to wave to in passing, others I had to put off because I was rushing to catch up with someone else. I felt like such a heel. I wanted to visit with everyone. The quicker the minutes flew by the more I realized I would not be able to do so. I wanted to peel up a floor tile and disappear.

The plan was to visit the plant from 2:30 until 6:00PM, whereupon Ron would rush me from the plant to the train station. I had a really tight schedule at this point: I was due in Fort Worth later that evening to visit with my sister and my niece and nephews, prior to leaving out the next day. I called Donna and told her I had to delay my departure from the plant by one hour and would arrive in Cowtown later than originally anticipated. I couldn’t bear to leave the plant so soon!

Even with that schedule modification I did not get to visit with everyone. The realization that I had perverted what should at least have been an ordinary day or, at best a joyous occasion for most left me feeling miserable and depressed. It was nobody’s fault but mine that I did not plan appropriately, and I still feel terrible.

Thankfully, Ron kept me to my schedule. Otherwise, I might have lingered on and missed the last train to Fort Worth. As it is he had to march me out of the plant and into his waiting car. Still, I wanted to dally.

I should have. It was so hot in Texas that week that roads and train tracks started buckling. Track switches were stuck in positions guaranteed to cause tragedy and all transit systems were affected. Not just the train to Cowtown but city buses, tractor trailers and even Greyhound buses.

Read on to see what happened next…