2019 March Oak Cliff

We Get North Oak Cliff.

COVER PHOTO BY DANNY FULGENCIO TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO BY DANNY FULGENCIO

SEE NEW STORIES EVERY WEEK ONLINE AT oakcliff.advocatemag.com

The best $7.50 lunch in Oak Cliff?

New restaurants come and go, but a few remain in our hearts and bellies for decades. Gonzalez Restaurant, which opened its Jefferson Tower location in 1988, is one of those. It’s just down the block from hip coffee shop Cultivar and the craft cocktails of Small Brewpub. A chic gallery next door, Mercado 369, sells high-priced art, jewelry and luxury goods from Mexico and points south.

Gonzalez is a relic of the before times, the slow Oak Cliff, the Oak Cliff “Oh!” days. It’s also one of the most satisfying lunch spots around.

The No. 6 special comes with a puffy taco and a cheese enchilada framing smooth, earthy tasting refried beans and rice so flavorful, so fluffy and light I have to close my eyes for the first bite. The enchilada comes with sauce and not the beef gravy that defines Dallas Tex Mex. The warm salsa for the chips is different from what’s expected anywhere else. But that tortilla.

Erect a monument to the majesty of the chewy flour tortillas of Gonzalez Restaurant. Yes, it’s literally just bread, but we’re not exaggerating here.

One intersection, two weeks, two fatal crashes

Drivers running a red light on Westmoreland at West Davis caused two fatal accidents in two weeks recently.

“When my husband and I moved here, we started referring to running a red light as ‘Oak Cliffing it.’ I’ve seen more people run lights in front of cops who didn’t care than I can count on two hands.” —Payton Stray

“This city is a hotbed of careless and dangerous drivers. It’s a lawless land we are living in when it comes to what you can and can’t do behind the wheel of a car.” —Philip Nirchi

“That’s a bad spot. I try to avoid that intersection as much as possible.”

Edward Rivas

“That’s always been a dangerous intersection.” —Ruben D. Silva

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ABOUT THE COVER

Detail of the mosaic mural at the old Sanger-Harris store at Red Bird Mall. At one time the now-defunct department store had eight stores with dramatic murals at their entrances, and the one at Red Bird is among the last.

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N OAK CLIFF BLVD PRICE UPON REQUEST

KESSLER PKWY SOLD

LAUSANNE AVE $749,000

Bath |

Kessler Park

MARCH 2

DASH FOR THE BEADS

Kick off Mardi Gras weekend with a run through the neighborhood. The annual race offers 10k and 5k distances, plus there’s a 1-mile fun run. Celebrate afterward at the beer garden, which will have food and live music. The race begins and ends at Kidd Springs Park and travels through Kessler Park with a challenging hike up Cedar Hill Avenue at the end. Kidd Springs Park dashforthebeads.org

5 things to do in Oak Cliff this March

MARCH 2

All Out Trinity

This day of events showcasing things to do around the Trinity River includes a gravel bike ride, a 5k race, free yoga and a market.

Where: Continental Bridge Park

More info: allouttrinity.com

MARCH 3

Mardi Gras parade

Join your neighbors to catch beads and watch the impressive floats and marching bands. It starts at 4 p.m.

Where: West Davis between Montclair and the Bishop Arts District More info: gooakcliff.org

MARCH 9

Paletas y bicicletas

This fifth-annual event from Bike Friendly Oak Cliff is a bike ride, a park cleanup and a party all in one. The more trash kids pick up from neighborhood parks, the more chances they receive in a raffle for new bikes with helmets. It starts at 1 p.m.

Where: Lake Cliff Park

More info: bikefriendlyoc.org

MARCH 23

Mujeres market

Lucha Dallas and Hecho con Amor celebrate women of color during the mujeres market. There will be food, vendors, poetry and artists.

Where: Maroches Bakery

More info: facebook.com/ marochesbakery

UP FRONT

EMPTY NEST, FULL HEARTS

Longtime Texas Rangers beat writer and his wife make West Dallas home 

Interview by RACHEL STONE / Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

No one thought Evan and Gina would wind up together, least of all the two of them.

Gina Costanza-Grant and Evan Grant met in seventh grade, at Bair Middle School in Sunrise, Florida. They lost touch for about 35 years, until Facebook.

“It’s the one positive contribution Facebook has made to society,” Grant says.

They became friends in 2011, when Gina was going through a divorce and becoming a working single mom with two kids. On top of that, her mother was sick with cancer.

“Evan became a good friend,” she says. “He would message me and ask how my mom was doing, because he knew I was taking her back and forth from chemo. And he was always helpful.”

They married in 2013, and Evan became the “best stepdad ever” to Nick, 23, and Natalie, 19. Grant, the Dallas Morning News’ Texas Rangers beat writer since 1997, sold his Midway Hollow home and moved into Gina’s house in Flower Mound so their kids wouldn’t have to change schools.

After becoming empty nesters last year, they bought a three-story townhouse with a roof deck in West Dallas. Gina is a city planner in Irving. They’re both 53, and they have two cocker spaniels, Austin and Cajun, and a cat named Domino.

Why did you move to this neighborhood?

Gina: I was just really over suburbia. I had been there 19 years raising kids, doing PTA and being the soccer mom and the dance mom. A lot of our friends were in Dallas, so it was hard to socialize with friends outside of our Flower Mound group. We loved the city vibe. When the kids moved out, we wanted to have our own place together. Evan moved in with us into my ex-husband’s house, which is very noble. He wanted the continuity and the stability for them.

Evan: We didn’t know we wanted to live in West Dallas. I thought maybe Oak Lawn or Uptown. We looked at one place in Oak Cliff and then [real estate agent Debbie Sherrington] took us over here, and it checked all the boxes. There’s just so much that was right about it.

It must be an easier commute to the ballpark.

Evan: It’s 18 minutes from here to my parking spot. It’s the closest I’ve ever been. Working for the city newspaper … I lived in the city limits the first 15 years, and I thought that was important. I moved to Flower Mound for familial reasons. But I want people to support what the Dallas Morning News stands for, and I feel I need to be a good citizen of Dallas.

I know you are both really into food and restaurants.

Evan: So much of our relationship took place in [Oak Cliff resident] Nick Badovinus’ restaurants. Neighborhood Services on Lovers Lane is where we got engaged. We had our rehearsal dinner there. Now we’re literally five minutes from Off Site Kitchen. Town Hearth is just down the road. Nancy Nichols [former D magazine dining critic] has been my best friend since 1998. She’s introduced me to so much and enriched my circle so much. I don’t know that when I moved here, or even when I was in my 40s, that I was prepared to be a good husband. I think friendships like that have helped me grow as a person. Also, I like to eat. I decided I like food. I like to be a bon vivant.

Have you been a baseball fan all your life?

Evan: My mom’s version is that when I was a kid I didn’t want her to read me storybooks at bedtime. I wanted her to read me the backs of baseball cards.

Gina: One thing I remember about him from middle school is that he had a trading-card business.

Evan: I always wanted to be a writer. I worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a clerk starting at age 16.

How did you end up in Dallas?

Evan: I had started covering the Marlins, and I did that for about three years. I was going to work for Scripps in Washington, D.C. I interviewed with them and was ready to accept that job, but when I got home, there was a message on my answering machine from the Dallas Morning News. I was still harboring dreams of doing other things in journalism. I had no idea that I was going to do baseball forever. I enjoy interacting with the fan base. It sounds corny, but I love the concept of being a trusted correspondent. I don’t want to make myself sound important, but I do think there’s a generation of fans who have read the news since they were younger, and if I’ve in any way enhanced their enjoyment of the game because they’ve had their own correspondent … it’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve done in journalism.

A lot of people would say you have a dream job. If you could do something else, what would your dream job be?

Evan: I know all the stress that goes along with it, but I just think restaurant owners are rock stars. I know how we all feel when we have a good meal … it brings people together. I would open a barbecue stand named Sheldon’s, because that was my dad’s name.

Gina: I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I thought about going back to law school after my divorce. But I love being a civil servant. It’s just in me. Most of my family were either teachers or civil servants. I just kind of nerd

“We didn’t know we wanted to live in West Dallas … There’s just so much that was right about it.”

– Evan Grant

out on the city planning stuff, and I get my legal fix by being involved with the laws we create or interpreting the laws we have.

What keeps you interested in baseball?

Evan: As I’ve gotten older and more introspective, the thing that drew me to baseball was the more geographic connection rather than the Xs and Os. The Braves always had “Atlanta” across their jerseys. For readers, I try to connect them to their team. Whenever possible, I still do try and look at it from the perspective of my first time going to a game with my dad. I still remember going to the game with him and walking with him hand in hand. That’s a feeling that will resonate with me for the rest of my days.

People think baseball is boring.

Evan: I think the game has got challenges right now. We tend to want more action, and the game has slowed down. The all-or-nothing perspective of some hitters, for some people, makes it less interesting. It still remains a thing you get attachment to because it starts out as a thing to do with your family. You still can take your kids to the ballpark and sit in the bleachers. You can’t take your kids to the Cowboys game. Tickets to a Mavericks game are exorbitantly expensive.

What is your favorite story you’ve written?

Evan: I wrote a story about my dad going to his last game in 2012, and we run it every Father’s Day. I can’t tell you the number of people that still come up to me and tell me it meant a lot to them, and it touches me to my core. I’ve traveled the world. I covered the Rangers in two World Series. Being able to take my dad to his last game and to know that we were going together… roles had changed. When I was 6, he was proudly showing me off, and when I was 46, I got to take him to his last game. We got him up to the press box, and I was introducing him around, and I couldn’t have been prouder.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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SHOP OAK CLIFF

RENT IS INCREASING, NEW SPACE IS OPENING, AND RETAILERS ARE HANGING IN THERE

Story

WHEN DENISE MANOY decided to leave the insurance business to chase a retail dream, the neighborhood’s community spirit drew her to the Bishop Arts District.

She opened Indigo 1745 in 2005, when the district comprised three blocks with a few restaurants and a couple of boutiques.

“It was not popular,” she says. “People were not coming.”

But the popularity of restaurants like Tillman’s Roadhouse and Hattie’s helped build clientele, and now the boutique enjoys a loyal customer base that includes people from Oak Cliff, northern Dallas, Red Oak and as far south as Midlothian.

“You definitely have to develop a customer base outside of Oak Cliff,” Manoy says. Those loyal customers keep Indigo 1745 and other Oak Cliff retailers in the black.

But increasing values from an onslaught of new construction in the area have caused property taxes to skyrocket, and storefront rents have escalated accordingly.

“Our property taxes have gone up 166 percent since 2015,” says Michael Amonett, who co-owns the building that houses Hunky’s. “Business has not increased 166 percent, and the construction that increased the taxes has yet to manifest into our alleged new assessed worth.”

After struggling for a couple of years, Green Pet had to move out of that building, where it first opened in 2008, to a more affordable space at Tyler Station.

Green Pet owner Leslie McKay calls it “an affect of gentrification on steroids.”

“It’s not sustainable for us,” McKay says. “We want to continue this business, and we’re not willing or able to go into debt.”

Besides increasing property values, the construction itself has hurt business, independent retailers say.

“We survive on tourists right now,” says Julie McCullough, who opened her first retail store in Bishop Arts in 2007 and now has the boutique Harkensback.

She’s talking about literal tourists — conventioneers and other out-of-town visitors who receive concierge recommendations or find the district online.

“They don’t know the construction is here, and they take Uber,” McCullough says.

McCullough thinks the hundreds of apartment dwellers starting to move into new complexes at Davis and Zang eventually will buoy the district again. But it hasn’t happened yet. She estimates that sales are down as much as 25 percent across the district.

It’s not like the changes and new construction are all bad. Several new restaurants already have opened in Exxir Capital’s development just south of Melba. And foot traffic from diners always has led to more retail sales.

“I didn’t want all the changes,

by RACHEL STONE / Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Tyler Station is attracting independent retailers who are priced out of spaces north of Jefferson Boulevard.

and I fought hard against a lot of it,” McCullough says. “But I don’t hate them all.”

Meanwhile at Tyler Station, new businesses are incubating all the time. And it’s become an alternative for independent retailers who are priced out of space north of Jefferson Boulevard.

Kelly Wiley recently moved her nonprofit store Rose Garden Remake to Tyler Station after 18 years on West Davis.

She still pays about the same in rent but has twice the square footage, plus free internet and utilities.

She says her former landlord, David Spence, was great.

“He was like, ‘whatever you need to keep your business going, I will help you,’ ” she says.

But she says she increasingly felt that her business didn’t fit in with the mix of the “TyPo” neighborhood, and she wanted more space.

While retailers remain optimistic that the major construction is nearing an end, and Oak Cliff is increasing in population, it’s a struggle.

“Being a lifetime store owner is just not a thing anymore,” McCullough says. “The rent situation is really hard. They grew before we did.”

TORCH OF THE ACROPOLIS

The Torch of Acropolis was the height of dining in Oak Cliff in the 1960s. Better known as The Torch, at 3620 W. Davis, it was owned and operated by the Semos family for decades.

Victor H. Semos, who was born in Greece, opened the Torch in 1948 after 30 years managing a restaurant, the Jefferson Hotel Coffee Shop in Downtown near Union Station. The Torch restaurant cost $150,000 to build and comprised more than 4,000 square feet. The restaurant,

which served Greek specialties as well as steaks, chops and chicken, was a neighborhood favorite until it closed in 1970 after a fire. Find video from Texas Archive of the Moving Image of firefighters working the blaze at oakcliff. advocatemag.com. The building now houses Fut 360 indoor soccer.

—RACHEL STONE

Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

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There are many unique aspects of Momentous School:

Research-based practices focusing on strong social emotional health and academics in all grades

Guaranteed smaller classrooms

All students and families participate in August home visits; Pre-K threeyear-olds and families participate in monthly home visits

Certified teachers in every classroom College scholarships available to former students

Applications for the 2019-2020 school year are now available.

Income eligibility to attend Momentous School is based on the National School Lunch Program guidelines for free and reduced priced meals as set by the USDA. Our school in Oak Cliff serves families whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch.

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MASK OFF

KIESTWOOD TAQUERÍA IS A LUCHA LIBRE MUSEUM

RODOLFO JIMENEZ collected thousands of Mexican wrestling masks and other memorabilia over 35 years.

When he and his wife, Zulma, decided to open a restaurant, they had a built-in concept around Jimenez’s extensive collection, which includes leather El Santo masks from the 1940s among dozens of wrestler-worn masks framed on the walls, many of them signed.

Choosing a location for their restaurant took research.

Jimenez, a former actor and TV host, was living in California. But the couple, who opened Maskaras after marrying in 2016, chose Dallas because they found it was the fourthbiggest economy in the country. They settled

Maskaras Mexican Grill 2423 W. Kiest Blvd.

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday and TuesdayThursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, closed Sunday Price range: $4-$12

in Plano but asked around: What is the biggest Mexican neighborhood in Dallas?

Again and again they heard Oak Cliff.

“They told us no one could last more than two or three months here, and we’ve been here two years and a half already,” Jimenez says of their Kiestwood location.

The Jimenezes are proud to serve the delicacies of their hometown, Guadalajara.

Tacos ahogados, “drowned tacos,” are pork carnitas inside red, green and yellow corn tortillas, deep fried, doused in red sauce and smothered with onions. Carne en su jugo, a Guadalajara specialty, is good for a hangover or a rainy day — soup with beef, bacon and beans. The menu includes street tacos and gourmet

Story by RACHEL STONE

Photography by KATHY TRAN

Opposite page: The whole tilapia special, with rice and avocado salad, costs $10.99.

Right: The taco platter comes with five street tacos of your choice plus one taco Maskaras, which comes with steak, cheese, pico de gallo and avocado.

Below: The decor at Maskaras is from owner Rodolfo Jimenez’s personal collection, 35 years in the making.

tacos, among them the popular “taco eclipse,” with steak, melted white cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream and avocado.

If that’s not Texan enough for you, Maskaras also brings Big Tex vibes with fried Oreos and fried Twinkies for dessert.

Maskaras serves beer and tequila drinks including palomas, made with Squirt soda, and cazuela de Guadalajara, tequila punch served in a clay cup. It’s a good place to hang out and watch a big soccer match, but it’s not a bar.

It’s kid friendly with wrestling masks that children — or just as likely, adults with Instagram accounts — can try on. The restaurant hosted a birthday party for a 3-year-old who is lucha-libre fanatical. Among the cute merchandise available are custom-made crocheted lucha dolls.

It all started with a Septiembre Negro mask that the late wrestler Vick Amezcua gave Jimenez as a child. His impressive collection is now on display for anyone to enjoy. The tacos are pretty good, too.

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Come enjoy delicious sandwiches, salads, smoothies and pastries, as well as a local selection of coffees and sodas. BYOB.

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“If that’s not Texan enough for you, Maskaras also brings Big Tex vibes with fried Oreos and fried Twinkies for dessert.”

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD MALL GETS ANOTHER CHANCE, 44 YEARS AFTER IT OPENED

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

t happened so fast.

In one generation, malls became the center of life and culture in America.

And then they died, one by one, as department stores lost significance and closed their doors starting in the early 2000s.

Once a glamorous place to browse Titche’s and Dillard’s, to have lunch with friends at El Chico or Wyatt’s Cafeteria, a mall became a cavernous haunt of T-shirt airbrush shops, disposable-fashion stores and empty spaces.

Now a developer has plans to return Red Bird Mall to its former glory as a community center and economic engine for Southwest Dallas.

Shot in the arm

The Red Bird Starbucks isn’t just a coffee shop.

It’s a workforce hotspot with a goal of training 100 customer-service reps each year, a meeting space equipped with a conference room and a shot of economic promise in a neighborhood that hasn’t seen much of that.

Starbucks opened near Red Bird Mall last year in a space across the street from one it closed in the late ’90s, after the Seattle-based company expanded too quickly and had to close hundreds of stores.

“This part of town has been other-ized in a lot of ways so that people hear ‘Red Bird,’ and they think ‘dead bird,’ and they think ‘black bird,’ and they think ‘Oh, nobody ever makes money in Southern Dallas.’ “

Peter Brodsky

Twenty years later, the new store marks one of the first major corporate investments in the neighborhood in years, thanks to a push from investors and civic leaders.

Small businesses scratching by on cheap rent kept the retail areas on life support for decades, but City Hall is aiming higher now.

City Councilman Casey Thomas’ Rebirth of Red Bird initiative aims to bring topnotch business back to Red Bird.

Thomas and Mayor Pro-Tem Tennell Atkins, whose City Council Districts abut in Red Bird, formed a private/public partnership to open the WellMed Charitable Foundation Senior Activity Center in December. WellMed spent $2.1 million on the 20,000-square-foot senior center, which has workout facilities, fitness classes and pool tables, and an adjacent for-profit medical office. The city’s Park and Recreation Department provides staff and programming at a cost of about $250,000 a year.

It is WellMed’s eighth senior center in Texas.

“This is an incredible model for economic development that also fulfills our needs for fitness and recreation” for seniors, Park and Recreation Director Willis Winters told the Dallas Business Journal when it opened.

Return of Red Bird Mall

Investor Peter Brodsky bought most of Red Bird Mall in 2015 with a plan to redevelop it.

Last year, City Council awarded $22 million in economic development funds for Brodksy’s vision, expected to total about $157 million.

After 14 years in Dallas, Brodsky realized this was home, so he enrolled in Leadership Dallas as a way to get more involved with the city.

“That was life-changing for me because it exposed me to a lot of other sides of the city that I just hadn’t had exposure to,” he says. “I found that I liked the city more after that experience because it was much more diverse, much more progressive, much more interesting.”

Like many of his neighbors in Preston Hollow, he previously spent

Peter Brodsky

all of his time at home, his North Dallas office and at his kids’ private schools.

Many people in northern Dallas hold over-simplified views of southern Dallas, he says.

“It’s kind of painted with a very broad brush of being poor and dangerous,” Brodsky says. “And that was not my experience.”

He noticed that the middle-class neighborhoods of South Oak Cliff and Red Bird had a severe lack of commercial amenities.

“The commercial offerings did not reflect what you saw in the residential areas,” he says.

Brodsky also revived the name Red Bird after its rebranding as Southwest Center Mall in the 1990s.

“This part of town has been other-ized in a lot of ways so that people hear ‘Red Bird,’ and they think ‘dead bird,’ and they think ‘black bird,’ and they think ‘Oh, nobody ever makes money in Southern Dallas,’ ” Brodsky says. “Why would you ever put something nice there? And that’s their first reaction. To get people to change their minds about that takes a long time.”

There have been a couple of previous efforts to revitalize the mall. What’s different this time is that Brodsky owns 78 acres, more of the mall than any previous owner.

The way malls were financed in the ’70s, a developer would build out the mall’s interior, but the anchor tenants

like J.C. Penney and Sears constructed and owned their buildings and adjacent parking lots.

So imagine trying to revitalize a mall whose front entrance you don’t own, for example.

It took 10 transactions to compile the acreage, including the entire mall except for Burlington Coat Factory, which is still open, and Sears, which is owned by a real estate investment trust that has plans to redevelop it. Brodsky also owns several adjacent retail pad sites.

“We’re trying to get people to recognize the potential of southern Dallas as it actually is and not what their perception is. You can’t do that with a 10,000-square-foot strip center,” Brodsky says. “It has to be done in a big way. This is a massive redevelopment on a massive property.”

Perceptions will change when it’s proven that a wide variety of amenities can thrive in the neighborhood, he says.

Red Bird renovations

Brodsky plans to turn the entire second floor of the mall, with its sweeping skylight, into office space. It will be firstclass office space at a lower rate than what a company might pay up north. And once the success of those tenants begins to show, Brodsky says, more will follow.

The ground floor would be for restaurants and shopping.

Already a Marriott Courtyard hotel has signed on to build on a Red Bird pad site.

Brodsky plans to knock down the existing food court and create a 1-acre green space that could be programmed with events such as outdoor movies, fitness classes and festivals.

He wants high-end apartments, local restaurants and streets and sidewalks, a walkable urban neighborhood.

“In North Dallas, there’s a Starbucks on every corner,” Brodsky says. “So if you’re looking for tenants in North Dallas, you want an Ascension. But people here are very happy to have a Starbucks. I think it will be a tremendous sign of success if in 10 years there’s a demand for a boutique coffee shop.”

Putting a Starbucks or other middle-class amenities in Red Bird is perceived as risky. Most real estate brokers wouldn’t do it because if it fails, then the blame falls on that idea. Few commercial real estate professionals want to take

a “risk” when they could just sell or lease something in the Design District, for example.

Brodsky’s approach essentially was to create a real estate company whose only project is Red Bird.

Starbucks was his first big fish.

And it’s just Starbucks, but it’s built of wood and steel. It has a cement parking lot rather than asphalt, and it’s surrounded with lush landscaping. It would fit into any of Dallas’ toniest neighborhoods.

It’s the first of what Brodsky calls “early adopters” who are buying into the neighborhood.

“It’s a high-end amenity. It’s going to do incredibly well. There’s such a demand for it,” Brodsky says. “And so people will see that people are willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee. That means maybe they’ll buy my product too.”

Artist’s renderings of the plans for Red Bird Mall, which include a plaza that could be programmed with events, akin to Klyde Warren Park.

ZEN AND THE ART OF BISHOP ARTS CONSTRUCTION

The Bishop Arts District is open for business.

That’s what independent retailers want their residential neighbors to know.

Construction, including intrusion from cranes and boom lifts and the temporary closure of the Eight Street overpass (now open again) has caused a decrease in sales, they say. (See “Shop Oak Cliff,” page 10.)

Neighbors could probably ride our bikes or walk to Bishop Arts. But let’s face it: If you’re stuck on driving and are avoiding the area because you think there’s no parking, please reconsider.

Exxir Capital, the developer that recently constructed thousands of square feet of retail, office and residential space around Bishop and Melba, with more in the works, temporarily donated a parking lot at the southeast corner of Bishop and Ninth. Now that there are streetlights and businesses in the 400 block of Bishop, the walk from that lot feels safer.

Julie McCullough of Harkensback boutique says the Bishop Arts Merchants

Association is considering creating a ride-share stand. Currently Uber drivers pick up and drop off in front of Lockhart Smokehouse, which backs up traffic.

The merchants also want signage pointing to the new parking lot.

“Valet should be the last option,” McCullough says. —Rachel Stone

Photography by Danny Fulgencio

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Lung Cancer?

Asbestos exposure in industrial, construction,

By BRENT MCDOUGAL

Saying ‘no’ and saying ‘yes’

As a child, I watched the Mardi Gras parades in Mobile, Alabama, from a balcony overlooking the street. I loved the energy, the confetti and the calling for beads and candy. It was a chaotic mess in a normally orderly city.

But I also remember being fascinated by how quickly the streets were cleaned. When the last float passed, immediately following were massive street-sweeping machines. Men and women cleared debris with a fury to match what had just happened.

T hat’s how Lent works after Mardi Gras. Following revelry and feasting, there’s a 40-day period of reflection and fasting leading to Easter Sunday. It’s a kind of spring cleaning. The word “Lent” means “lengthen,” referring to the spring bringing longer days.

This year Lent begins on March 6. Many people will give up something during this season — meat, sweets, a negative attitude. The idea is to deny yourself something in order to pray more and reflect on how Jesus suffered and sacrificed. Some say they find their lives “lengthened” by such a practice, expanding, becoming more full.

“Deny yourself” is surely one of the most countercultural teachings of Jesus. That sounds like a dead, controlling religion to most ears. Why should I deny myself good things, even for a season?

Lent reminds us that saying “no” to certain things allows you to say “yes” to better things.

The storyteller Fred Craddock once visited a former student. After dinner, the parents excused themselves to put the kids to bed, leaving Fred with the family pet — a large, sleek greyhound. Earlier in the evening the father had said, “That’s a full-blooded greyhound. He raced professionally in Florida. Then he retired. Great dog with the kids.”

Now Fred was alone with the dog. The dog turned to him and said, “You probably heard I came here from Miami.”

“You retired from racing, right?” Fred said.

“No, I didn’t retire. Is that what they told you?”

“Well, did you get injured?”

“No,” said the dog.

“Did you stop winning?”

“No,” said the dog. “I raced for 10 years. Ten years of running around that track day after day, seven days a week, with other dogs chasing that rabbit. One day I got close and got a good look at that rabbit. You know what? It was a fake! I spent my whole life chasing a fake rabbit! I didn’t retire. I quit!”

Why should I deny myself good things, even for a season?

It’s not easy to quit chasing fake rabbits. Some things are shiny but worthless. Other things are both enjoyable and worthy of our time and energy. It’s not easy to make room for something better.

Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When the person discovered the treasure, he sold everything to buy the field so that he could possess something greater.

Let go of something to remember what you truly possess. Give up something to take hold of something better. Deny yourself for a season. Why not give it a try?

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

GRACE TEMPLE BAPTIST Come to a Place of Grace!

Sunday Worship: English Service 9:30am / Spanish Service 11:00am

831 W. Tenth St. / 214.948.7587 / gracetempledallas.org

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

TRINITY CHURCH OAK CLIFF / Love God. Love Others. Make Disciples. Sundays 5:00 pm Worship & children’s Sunday School 1139 Turner Ave. / trinitychurchoakcliff.org

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The surprising way giving up something can add to your life

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Love where you live.

If you’re in your mid-40s and haven’t had your colon checked, it might be time. Screening guidelines have changed.

The American Cancer Society’s guidelines for colon cancer screening now recommend that adults at average risk get screened starting at age 45 instead of 50. Getting screened is the first step in prevention.

Talk to your doctor about which screening option is best for you. Methodist Dallas