2018 December Oak Cliff

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COVER PHOTO BY DANNY FULGENCIO

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Oak what? A national mag says these tacos are the best

So they described it as “located in a small shack in Oak Hill,” but Conde Nast Traveler named one of our neighborhood taquerías in its list of the 20 best restaurants in Dallas. Taquería El Si Hay makes the list along with the likes of Lucia, the French Room, and Tei-An. The taco stand, on West Davis at Llewellyn, has received attention from publications including Texas Monthly in the past and is beloved for its elotes and the tail-gating ambience of street-corner tacos. It’s so hard to name all of the great taco spots in Oak Cliff, but there were several spots in our neighborhood in Texas Monthly’s list of 120 tacos to try before you die a couple of years ago. Also making the Conde Nast list is Off Site Kitchen in Trinity Groves, which is owned by Oak Cliff resident Nick Badovinus.

Roundabout grousing

After our report on neighborhood roadwork projects ran in November, readers weighed in on the planned roundabout on Sylvan near Kidd Springs Park.

“I see more accidents and traffic problems occurring as most people are unfamiliar with roundabouts in Oak Cliff or Dallas for that matter.” —Anna Hernandez Rodriguez

“Waste of money!” —Lynn Davis

“Think of the uproar if they tried to put one of those on Preston Road.” —Buddy Hradecky

“Slowing traffic is good. Restoring twoway streets is good. Cutting down on the monthly deadly car crashes is good.” —Leo Watts

“Roundabouts are the answer for a lot of points here in Dallas. You don’t know what you are missing.” —David Núñez Murillo

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DEC. 1

ROARING ’20S PARTY

Celebrate flapper style and be among the first to see inside (and party at) the newly renovated Eagle Ford School at The Well Community’s annual fundraiser, Recovery Live. Famous as the elementary that the outlaw Bonnie Parker attended, the 1923 school is due to become a historic landmark because of its significance as part of the Eagle Ford, Cement City and Ledbetter communities. The 7:30 p.m. event supports the faith-based nonprofit’s mission to serve those who face challenges from severe mental illnesses.

Cost: $75.

Eagle Ford School, 1601 Chalk Hill Road thewellcommunity.org

5 things to do in Oak Cliff this December

DEC. 7-9

Jingle Bells on Bishop

Photos with Santa and his elves, carolers, music and more make up a weekend of fun in the Bishop Arts District. A poinsettia walk is from noon-3 p.m. Sunday. Buy a ticket online in advance to save $5 off the $25 ticket, which buys a glass that participating shops will fill with a fizzy poinsettia cocktail.

Where: Bishop Arts District, Seventh Street at Bishop Avenue

More info: prekindle.com

DEC. 14

You have a way with words

Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, hosts of NPR’s “A Way With Words,” bring their “show about words and how we use them” to Dallas at 7 p.m., $30.

Where: The Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd. More info: thetexastheatre.org

DEC. 20

Tex-Mex Christmas

The great Flaco Jimenez returns to the Kessler stage performing conjunto and holiday favorites with Los Texmaniacs. The show starts at 8 p.m., $28-$272.

Where: The Kessler Theatre, 1230 W. Davis St. More info: thekessler.org

DEC. 21

First day of winter

Celebrate the winter solstice with a Yule-log burning, labyrinth walk, earth-loom weaving, storytellers, craft vendors and more, from 8-10 p.m. Free.

Where: Unitarian

Universalist Church of Oak Cliff, 3839 W. Kiest Blvd. More info: labyrinthwalkcoffeehouse. com

Photo courtesy of Heritage Oak Cliff

UP FRONT

QUEEN OF THE (FOOD) DESERT

Anga Sanders won’t stop until there’s a major grocer in her neighborhood 

Interview by RACHEL STONE / Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Anga Sanders walked into Albertson’s in Uptown to buy groceries after work as usual, but on this day, she was stricken. “I don’t know if you remember that Albertson’s, but they had this fresh make-your-own-salad bar right where you walk in. It was beautiful. It had everything you could think of,” she says. “I just froze, and I realized there’s nothing like that south of Interstate 30. So I took a picture.” Ninety-nine Facebook comments and one hour later, the idea for Feed Oak Cliff started to brew.

She held a community meeting at her house in Kiest Forest Estates, and about 30 people showed up. They were young, old, black, white, Hispanic, a mix of demographics, but all of them were her neighbors, and all of them were fed up with their lack of nearby access to fresh food.

If living in a so-called food desert is that great a concern for homeowners and professionals with the means to commute to Dallas every day, imagine what it’s like for a single parent who doesn’t have a car.

Hot Pockets it is, when that’s what’s across the street.

Feed Oak Cliff organized the fourth-annual Dallas VegFest at Kiest Park, which has grown every year, this past fall. The nonprofit’s goal is to recruit a major full-service grocery store to Oak Cliff’s food desert.

Sanders dives deep researching the demographics of her neighborhood. She is certain there is enough earning power here, regardless of the typical corporate answer, so she persistently asks what the rest of Oak Cliff wants to know: “Why can’t you put grocery stores here?”

Why can’t a major grocer put a store here?

If they respond at all, they give us the typical answer that there aren’t enough rooftops. Rooftops means buying power, income. They believe it is a high-crime, high-thug, low-income neighborhood. And that’s not where I live. It’s their erroneous perceptions about Oak Cliff. The biggest problem Oak Cliff has is public relations.

Isn’t that the idea behind Dallas VegFest?

Dallas VegFest is about healthy nutrition, but it also has a secondary goal of putting different eyes on this area, to let people know that we eat more than fried chicken over here.

When was the first one?

September 2015. I thought, “Lord, just let me have 30 people so I won’t be embarrassed.” We had 300, and it doubled every year. We had over 1,500 last year, and we had vendors from Houston and Austin. We had a food truck that came from Missouri, so the word is out. We had to turn away vendors this year because we didn’t have enough room. There’s a waiting list for next year.

What else are you working on?

We’re still considering building our own nonprofit grocery store.

Are there models for something like that?

Not many, but yes. There’s one in Waco. There are a few scattered around the country. We’re looking at a space and putting all the logistical pieces in place: Location, funding, sources of supply, distributorship. There’s a lot of pieces that go into that.

What is it that pure by-the-numbers spreadsheet guys aren’t seeing about this market?

There are 17 Tom Thumb stores in Dallas. There’s one south of Interstate 30. Nobody can explain to me why that is. There’s a Tom Thumb at Greenville and Lover’s Lane, right across the street from Central Market. Less than 2 miles away, there’s a Tom Thumb across from NorthPark. I understand that the profit margins are small. But even poor people eat. And we’re not even poor. It takes vision. Grocery stores typically will select a locus point. Then they draw a 1-mile circle around that and look at what’s in that circle. Well that’s very shortsighted because if you’re the only game in town, you’re going to draw from way outside that circle.

“But even poor people eat. And we’re not even poor.”

For example, that you were buying all of your groceries on Lemmon Avenue. Exactly. The corporations need to understand that the first person to put a grocery store over here is going to get rich because we’re a solidly middle class neighborhood. We have high traffic counts. Ledbetter and Hampton, for instance, is one of the busiest intersections in Dallas. So is Kiest and Illinois. There’s a lot of traffic there. We have the money to spend on groceries, and we do. It’s a Catch-22 because they say, “As grocery store developers, we look at the dollars spent in the community on food.” But if there’s nothing you want to buy there, you go to another community. It’s not that we’re not buying it. We’re just buying it other places because it’s not there.

Your commitment to this cause is impressive.

I’m a big Elvis fan, and Elvis said, “This time you gave me a mountain, a mountain I may never climb.” I’m not going to accept that. Either I’m going to die on the side of the mountain, or I’m going to be waving from the top. Because I’m not coming down. I’m not coming down until this is done or I’m dead.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

A NEW KIDD SPRINGS

Don’t dump your ducks at Kidd Springs Park.

The Dallas Park Department noticed a surge of people abandoning their unwanted waterfowl pets at the

park, which have to be trapped and relocated.

Also, nobody likes to hear this, but, please don’t feed the ducks and geese, either.

Bread is especially bad for waterfowl because it is high in calories and low in nutrition. So birds can fill up on it and deny themselves needed nutrients. That can cause a disease called “angel wing” that can render them incurably flightless, according to Popular Science. The city installed “Do not feed the ducks” signs in July.

But it is OK to fish in and have contact with the Kidd Springs pond and water rill.

The city found the source of the

Story by RACHEL STONE

Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

park’s spring and earlier this year finished building a water rill that flows spring water into the pond.

The city also improved the dam and shoreline. Those projects cost about $726,578.

Plus, the city broke ground on a $4.5 million aquatics center, a six-lane lap pool and a separate pool with flume slides and a jungle gym, plus a 3,000-square-foot bathhouse with showers and dressing rooms. It is expected to open in 2020.

Opposite page: Look but don’t feed. Bread and other junk food can harm the health of waterfowl. Top: The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality identified the Kidd Springs Park emergency spillway as needing improvements, so the city had to update it.

VERMONT VILLAGE

A postcard for Tallent’s Furniture gives us this aerial view of Vermont Village. Tallent’s Furniture opened in about 1947. One of its owners, Shirden Tallent, lived at 1434 S. Marsalis Ave. A post office, the third one in Oak Cliff, opened on Vermont at Idaho in 1948 (now closed) to serve the Trinity Heights and Lisbon communities, both former villages that were incorporated

into Dallas. When a real-estate group from Chicago began developing Trinity Heights in 1912, it had a few scattered cottages. A couple of years later, there were about 25,000 homes. While Vermont Village has seen decline in recent decades, there are new restaurants, Recipe Oak Cliff and Faye’s Place, plus updated office space. —RACHEL

STONE

Photo by DANIEL ROCKEY

ALL THE MEAT IS DOWN THE STREET

MACELLAIO MAKES THE SALUMI BOARD OF YOUR DREAMS

BY THE TIME OUT-OF-TOWNERS reached Hunky’s and We are 1976, they used to mosey back toward the valet stand.

“Is this all there is?” a tourist from Sweden once asked me.

But now there’s something further, farther along past the Laughing Willow’s inviting cottage boutique and toward the budding South Congress-like future that eventually will line a complete street from the historic Bishop Arts District to Jefferson Boulevard and Top Ten Records.

Macellaio 287 N. Bishop Ave.

Hours: FridaySaturday, 5-10:30 p.m.; Sunday and TuesdayThursday, 5-10 p.m. macellaiodallas.com

The early beacon of this young development is Macellaio, the visionary neighborhood bar from Lucia chef David Uygur and wife, Jennifer.

“That’s what I wanted Lucia to be,” the chef says.

Lucia instead turned out to be a five-star restaurant where reservations are needed a month or more out.

Where Lucia has 36 seats total, Macellaio has 57, plus a patio. The kitchen is big enough that it produces all the salumi and bread for

Story by RACHEL STONE

Photography by KATHY TRAN

Know before you go: Macellaio’s jars of house-made curried peanut butter ($6) and chicken-liver mousse ($8) make festive party-guest gifts.

both restaurants, allowing the Lucia kitchen more room to focus on its glorious handmade pasta. Uygur says he’s worn a path between the front door of Macellaio and the backdoor of Lucia.

Cured meats rule here.

A salumi board could include capicola made with Berkshire pork collar, mortadella smoked with pistachios, rabbit terrine, marbled culatello aged for more than a year or red-wattle pork loin with black pepper and rosemary.

The chef’s board of six choices costs about $30, and the individual salumi board is about $10.

Dinner options could include a $90 wagyu cut or a Berkshire chop for $32. Small plates (think chanterelles en scapece or pommes aligot) and breads (crostini with chicken-liver mousse) for $8-$15.

No reservations necessary. Have a cocktail, glass of wine or beer at the bar and indulge in a mini vacation with a selection of delectable meats or an $8 dessert.

Shayna’s Place

Opposite page: Board with a chef’s selection of salumi. Above: Riz au lait dessert. Below: Curried peanut butter

Oak literature

GIVE A GOOD BOOK WITH A LOCAL TWIST

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Billy Lee Brammer grew up at 922 S. Windomere, a “menopause baby” whose older parents alternately doted on him and left him alone, according to a new biography about the author’s life.

“Hence, his frequent boredom,” writes Tracy Daugherty in “Leaving the Gay Place.”

Brammer’s father worked as a lineman for the Texas Power and Light Co. and kept a spare fridge filled with cold Dr Peppers on the screened-in porch out back, according to the book.

Brammer had two much-older siblings, and bridge parties were the highlight of his parents’ social life.

“The greatest excitement in the neighborhood was to watch for the Oak Farms milk truck making its morning deliveries” or hop a streetcar to the Texas Theatre, which had “a night-sky tableau on the ceiling featuring projected clouds and winking-light stars,” Daugherty writes.

Brammer first gained an interest in politics in 1938 when thenCongressman Lyndon Johnson convinced President Franklin Roosevelt

to force the Texas power company’s hand in bringing electricity to rural parts of the state.

Brammer would later work for LBJ in the United States Senate.

But his claim to fame is the book he wrote late at night, high on speed while in the politician’s employ. It’s the roman á clef that simultaneously exposed Johnson as a lecher and put Texas on the literary map: “The Gay Place.”

In honor of this new spotlight on our homegrown literary saint and the gift-giving spirit of December, we chose these Oak Cliff-related books that are better than a gift card.

“The Gay Place”

Billy Lee Brammer

The book is composed of three interwoven novellas about the shenanigans of Texas politicians.

Brammer, by then living in New York City’s East Village, was afraid to return to his home state for an Austin booksigning after it was published in 1962 because he feared his old friends would turn their backs on him.

All these years later, “The Gay Place” is considered one of the best American political novels of all time. And Brammer, a newspaper reporter who graduated from Sunset High School and the University of Texas at Austin, became an original beloved Austin weirdo before his death from drug addiction in 1978.

“Candy”

Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg

This is a naughty book. Screenwriter Terry Southern composed it, mostly via letters, with poet Mason Hoffenberg. Risqué French publisher Olympia Press paid them $500 each and released it under the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton in 1958.

Southern grew up in Oak Cliff and graduated from Sunset High School in 1941. He graduated from SMU and was a founder of New

screenplay. A New York Times book reviewer at the time chalked the book up to “Mr. Southern's artistas-young-dog days. If he had intended it to be more than that, he would have put his name to it in the first place.”

But “Candy,” which began as a Southern short story based on Voltaire’s “Candide,” holds up as a hilarious parody of American sexuality.

Journalism. He is encapsulated in pop culture of the Baby-Boom generation as the only person pictured on the cover of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” not wearing sunglasses.

“Candy” became an underground hit and was republished by Putnam under the authors’ real names in 1964. By then Southern already was respected for his novels "Flesh and Filigree" and "The Magic Christian" as well as his work on the "Dr. Strangelove"

In 2004, Southern’s son Nile Southern published “The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy,” to positive reviews.

Grove Atlantic published a 60th-anniversary edition of “Candy” earlier this year, featuring an intro from actor/writer B.J. Novak.

That publisher also offers editions of the previously mentioned novels, plus “Blue Movie,” his satire of the film industry, and “Now Dig This,” a collection of Southern’s journalism pieces and memoirs.

“Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood”

Horton Foote

He once lived in a boarding house in Oak Cliff.

That’s enough to put one of the greatest American playwrights on this list.

Horton Foote was born and raised outside of Houston in Wharton, Texas, in 1916.

“Dangerous Animals Club”

Stephen Tobolowsky

Stephen Tobolowsky lives in this generation’s pop-culture highlights as his character Ned Reyerson in “Groundhog Day.”

His stack of accolades include the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play “The Young Man from Atlanta” in Club,” is named after his childhood club that spent hot afternoons trapping spiders and snakes in the Kiest Park area. The name serves as a metaphor for the “dangerous animals” one encounters throughout life.

He’s less famous for his fabulous storytelling and delightful persona, but he may just go down in history for his books of true tales.

Tobolowsky grew up in Oak Park Estates on Watervaliet. As a kid, he thought, “Oh my goodness, that uses so many letters of the alphabet,” he told the Advocate in 2013.

The only Jewish kid at Kimball High School, he once recorded an album with classmate Stevie Ray Vaughan. His first book, “Dangerous Animals

1995, two Academy Awards — Best Original Screenplay for “Tender Mercies” in 1984 and Best Adapted Screenplay for “To Kill a Mockingbird” in 1963 — and the National Medal of Arts in 2000. Oh, and an Emmy in 1997 for his adaptation of William Faulkner’s “Old Man.”

If you love Foote’s screenplays, which

also include “The Trip to Bountiful” and Glen Campbell’s first movie, “Baby the Rain Must Fall,” then Foote’s 1999 memoir will sound as sweet as Robert Duvall singing “Wings of a Dove.”

A biography, “Horton Foote: American Storyteller” by Wilborn Hampton, published six months after Foote’s death, in September 2009.

“It’s a collection of short stories. They’re all true, and they all happened to me. It could fall into the category of a memoir, but the stories are not chronological,” Tobolowsky said in 2013. “Most of the book is a good laugh. As you read the stories, as you get about halfway through, you see the pieces connecting, and it creates a narrative.”

Tobolowsky’s second book, “My Adventures with God,” reveals that he’s not just a comic storyteller

but also a bit of a mystic. Another collection of real-life short stories, this one explores the idea that most people’s lives can fit into Old Testament narratives.

“The Hidden City”

Bill Minutaglio and Holly Williams

If this isn’t on your coffee table, do you even live in Oak Cliff?

Published in 1990, when Bill Minutaglio was a Dallas Morning News columnist, it remains the definitive book about early Oak Cliff history.

After it was out of print for a few years, Heritage Oak Cliff had it republished and now offers it for sale online and at events.

The narrative, composed with Minutaglio’s wife, Holly Williams, begins on the grassy hills of undeveloped 1800s Oak Cliff and moves into the real-estate drama of Thomas L. Marsalis, our neighborhood’s first developer. While the businessman managed to turn the old “Hord’s Ridge” into streets and parks and houses, it ruined him financially.

The book is full of pictures and anecdotes about Oak Cliff and cowritten by Minutaglio, one of Texas’ most accomplished journalists, who also is known for writing the original magazine story “The Dallas Buyers Club.”

Go local

CHECK OUT THESE BOOKS BY OAK CLIFFBASED AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS

The “Murder Becomes” series

Jeffrey Eaton

Kessler Park-based mystery writer Jeffrey Eaton released his latest, “Murder Becomes Mayfair,” in October. The books follow worldrenowned architect/ detective Dalton Lee as he chases clues all over the globe while offering insights into architectural wonders.

“Bizarro”

Dan Piraro

Those wacky comics from Dan Piraro, who lived in Kings Highway for many years, have been compiled in several anthologies that would make great stocking-stuffers.

“The Introvert’s Way”

Sophia Dembling

Here is a book for your favorite quiet type. Introverts “can come

across as bitchy or dickish sometimes,” when really, they’re just conserving energy. Oak Cliff-based author Sophia Dembling offers this funny and insightful book that will help you understand and accept the introverts in your life, even if that’s you. Don’t miss her followup, “Introverts in Love,” and several other titles that could be just right for someone on your list, including “The Yankee Chick’s Survival Guide to Texas.”

“The Rap Yearbook”

written by Shea Serrano and illustrated by Arturo Torres

The subtitle says it all: The most important rap song from every year since 1979. Oak Cliff-based artist Arturo Torres illustrated this beautiful and informative history of the art form.

“I Can See Just Fine” Eric Barclay

Oak Cliff-based author/ designer/illustrator Eric Barclay released this children’s book about a girl’s first trip to the optometrist in 2014. His other titles include “Hiding Phil,” about two siblings who try to keep their pet elephant a secret.

—RACHEL STONE

FREE VEGGIES

HELPING SOUTH OAK CLIFF RISE FROM THE FOOD SWAMP

A YOUNG WOMAN walked into the Veggie Store one Saturday, pointed to a big pile of green beans and asked Bettie Montgomery, “What is this?”

“I said ‘that’s green beans,’ ” Montgomery recalls. “She said, ‘Oh, I thought that only came in a can.’ ”

The encounter struck at the heart of what the Montgomery family and St. Luke Presbyterian Church are up against in South Oak Cliff.

The neighborhood is amid a food desert where residents lack nearby access to fresh food.

About five years ago, Montgomery says, she received a spiritual message to do something to improve her community.

“My faith drives me quite a bit,” she says.

A friend had introduced her to a food coop called Bountiful Baskets, and she started picking up produce shares, which cost $15 and

often included $30-$50 worth of groceries, to cook for her family.

That gave her the idea to bring produce to South Oak Cliff and make it available for free.

The message was clear: “Do this, and do it for the community.”

She brought the call to members of her church, St. Luke.

Montgomery and her family and church members started buying co-op shares and handing out produce to anyone who wanted it in front of their church on Singing Hills Drive. They called it the Veggie Store.

Now Montgomery and her son Ples Montgomery IV are working to gain nonprofit status for their charitable upstart, the Oak Cliff Veggie Project, which has grown to include initiatives toward nutrition and cooking education, gardening, composting and reducing food waste.

The Montgomery family and church

Story by RACHEL STONE Photo by DANNY FULGENCIO

members still offer the Veggie Store every third Saturday of the month starting at noon and ending when all the food is gone.

They receive donations from food distributors and from the Harvest Project, a food-rescue program that takes less attractive but perfectly edible produce that wholesalers otherwise throw out.

Americans waste about 30 percent of the food they purchase, according to endhunger.org.

That’s energy that could be turned into fertilizer to grow more food, Bettie Montgomery says.

“If we can close the loop on food waste, it brings costs down for producers and consumers,” she says.

Her son Ples is 36 and a farmer at Big Tex Farms, and he is the steward of St. Luke’s vast community garden.

He also helps neighbors who he’s met

at the Veggie Store to build their own community gardens.

Gardens at four other Oak Cliff churches already are planned.

They envision gardens and agriculture programs in neighborhood schools and “grannies” who can help with gardening and cooking to “bridge the generation gap and keep seniors active.”

“We already know that if kids grow stuff themselves, they will eat it,” Ples Montgomery says.

Gardening teaches the value of food when people see what it actually takes to get food out of the ground.

“Food gives us so many opportunities. Sitting down at the dinner table, sharing, passing down traditional food and stories,” Bettie Montgomery says. “Family gatherings are usually done over a meal. Business meetings are done over a meal.”

“We already know that if kids grow stuff themselves, they will eat it.”

Contact Oak Cliff Veggie Project on Facebook to volunteer at the Veggie Store or in community gardens.

Above: Ples Montgomery IV in the St. Luke Presbyterian Church community garden. Below: Bettie Montgomery, right, was called to do something for her community.

Education

Third-grade teacher Adan Gonzalez won the Good Works Under 40 Award from the Dallas Foundation in November. He won a $10,000 grant for the nonprofit he founded, Puede Network, which helps improve the lives of kids in our neighborhood. The son of Mexican immigrants, Gonzalez grew up in Oak Cliff, and when he was accepted to Georgetown University, he arrived as a freshman with his belongings in garbage bags. After that, he organized a luggage drive for other college-bound students. He later received a masters degree from Harvard University and now teaches at Bowie Elementary, the same school he attended. Puede Network provides comprehensive college access services, volunteer opportunities and mentorship to underprivileged students in inner city public schools.

The Best in Class Coalition and the College Football Playoff Foundation recognized two Oak Cliff teachers in October. Matthew Abernathy teaches algebra 2 and pre-calculus at Kimball High School. As a student at Texas A&M University, he mentored students and was able to see classroom inequality. “I found myself wanting to teach students who don’t believe in themselves or believe in their added value as a human being,” he says. “Now that I get to be in the classroom I ground myself in my belief that each and every student has the potential to achieve highly.” Dennis Sorto lives in Oak Cliff and teaches music in Mesquite ISD. His colleagues nominated him for the honor because of his passion for sharing music with students. The teachers were among 400 who were invited to a tailgate party at the Oct. 27 Southern Methodist University football game. They received tickets to the game and were recognized on the field at halftime.

Adan Gonzalez

People

Sen. Royce West won Methodist Health System Foundation’s Robert S. Folsom Award in October. The award recognizes demonstrated commitment and excellence in community leadership. West was first elected to the Texas Senate in 1993, and his district includes part of Oak Cliff. The gala at the Hilton Anatole, hosted by Nancy Ann and Ray Hunt, raised $1.6 million to build a new cancer unit at Charlton Methodist Medical Center.

Royce West

By BRENT MCDOUGAL

Eyes on the prize

Wealth and status mean nothing without love

My friend Scott and I sat down at a midway game during the Texas State Fair, the kind where the bell rings and you shoot water at a target as a balloon goes up. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I always have a sense that something important is on the line when I play a game like that. As the bell rang, I quickly established an optimal stream of water on the target and the balloon ascended. There was no way I could lose.

When the game was over, Scott had won. The prize was a small, candy-striped unicorn, which he quickly gave to his wife, Kristi.

Even my wife wondered aloud how I had lost. For a moment, I felt less-than. How could I not succeed at such a simple game? For that brief moment, I felt measured and had come up short.

Sometimes I think about what Jesus must have felt like when he came to earth. He left a place of intense communion with God, enjoying perfect love, unending emotional embrace, and the privileges of heaven. I imagine that when he arrived as a baby (what theologians call the incarnation, meaning “to take on flesh”) and started growing up and interacting with humans, even though he got thirsty and hungry and needed rest, his experience was very different from everyone else. He may have looked at the midway game and thought it was just fun, or he may have wondered, “Why do you do this?” He had no regard for the trivial pursuits and worthless prizes that momentarily bring us happiness, or cause us to feel shame when we don’t win them.

He believed in ideas that would have been considered ridiculous at the time, such as to turn the other cheek when someone hits you. Love your enemies. If someone wants to take your shirt, give him your coat as well. Do all you can to

be at peace with those around you. Love your neighbor as yourself.

He totally disregarded the comparative games of status and wealth, because the prizes that people pursued weren’t worth winning. In every way, he seemed to fail at the kind of life we think matters most.

I recently heard a man say that while he entered the world with nothing and would leave with nothing, he didn’t come into the world alone, and he wouldn’t leave alone. His mom was there at the beginning, along with many relatives. When he died, he anticipated being surrounded by family and friends. He was conveying the idea that life is relational, not consumerist.

The heart of Christmas is about relationship.

The incarnation, the heart of Christmas, is about relationship. It’s God’s move toward us with love.

I believe deep down that if I could learn to fully live in God’s love, allowing God to establish my worth and fill my emotional needs for acceptance and affirmation, I wouldn’t be anxious, chasing cheap prizes. I believe that if all of us knew that love, our world could be reborn.

Brent McDougal is pastor of Cliff Temple Baptist Church. The Worship section is a regular feature underwritten by Advocate Publishing and by the neighborhood business people and churches listed on these pages. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.

WORSHIP

BAPTIST

CLIFF TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH / 125 Sunset Ave. / 214.942.8601

Serving Oak Cliff since 1898 / CliffTemple.org / English and Spanish

9 am Contemporary Worship / 10 am Sunday School / 11 am Traditional

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

EAST DALLAS CHRISTIAN CHURCH / 629 N. Peak Street / 214.824.8185

Sunday School 9:30 am / Worship 8:30 am - Chapel

10:50 am - Sanctuary / Rev. Deborah Morgan-Stokes / edcc.org

EPISCOPAL

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH / ChristChurchDallas.org

Sunday School: 11:15am /Mass: 9am & 10am English, 12:30pm Español

Wednesday Mass: 6pm English, 8pm Español / 534 W. Tenth Street

METHODIST

GRACE UMC / Diverse, Inclusive, Missional Sunday School for all ages, 9:30 am / Worship, 10:50 am 4105 Junius St. / 214.824.2533 / graceumcdallas.org

NON-DENOMINATIONAL

KESSLER COMMUNITY CHURCH / 2100 Leander Dr. at Hampton Rd. “Your Hometown Church Near the Heart of the City.”

10:30 am Contemporary Service / kesslercommunitychurch.com

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By RACHEL STONE

Oak Cliff film archives

A University of North Texas history project goes heavy on our ’hood

Before there was Debbie, there was “Naughty Dallas.”

The 1964 film told the story of a small-town girl who moves to Dallas with a show-business dream and winds up becoming a stripper.

Self-described “schlockmeister” Larry Buchanan filmed the movie in Dallas. His 1967 film “Mars Needs Women” also was filmed in Dallas and stars Oak Cliff-raised actress Yvonne Craig. The Texas Theatre showed both films recently as part of Spotlight on North Texas, a project from University of North Texas moving-image preservation librarian Laura Treat.

The project digitized photos from the set of “Born on the Fourth of July,” which was filmed partly in Elmwood, and “JFK,” filmed in Oak Cliff and Downtown, as well as clips from Oak Cliff-raised filmmaker Blaine Dunlap.

Dunlap’s mother was a public librarian, and he began shooting movies on Super 8 in elementary school. One of his projects, an unfinished movie called “Sunset on Film,” was shot in 1970 and is a time capsule of daily life of students.

The same year, he filmed what is now titled “Oak Cliff Street Scenes.” The footage is part of an unfinished film that shows the vibrant life of 1970 Jefferson Boulevard.

Blaine went on to work for a PBS station in Tennessee and worked on many documentaries about folk and country music, including one about the late Texas fiddle player Johnny Gimble, “Gimble’s Swing.” That and several others are available online at Folkstreams.net.

But before that, as a film student at Southern Methodist University, Dunlap produced a documentary called “Some-

times I Run.” The movie follows a street cleaner through his overnight job washing the streets of Downtown in the 1970s. It’s a cute movie about an average person, and it too is a time capsule of Downtown Dallas at that time.

The UNT project also digitized submitted home movies as well as photos and memorabilia from movie theaters in North Texas.

Find these clips and photos online at texashistory.unt.edu.

Clockwise from above: Actors have their hair touched up during a break in filming the motorcade scene of “JFK.” Tom Cruise and Stanley Kubrick during filming of “Born on the Fourth of July.” Extras on the set of that 1988 movie in Elmwood. A still from “Sunset on Film.” Photos courtesy of Spotlight on North Texas.

TRUSTED CARE FOR BRAIN AND SPINE.

Carolyn Harris (right) is a miracle. The 57-year-old Arlington resident had an aneurysm and was taken to Methodist Dallas Medical Center where neurosurgeons with the Methodist Moody Brain and Spine Institute quickly performed lifesaving surgery. In a word, miraculous. Trust. Methodist.

“If you want to see a miracle, just look at me. I could never say thank you enough to the team of doctors who worked side by side to save my life.”

— Carolyn Harris