2019 May Oak Cliff

OAK CLIFF

DIY ROCK N ROLL

MAY 2 0 1 9

CLASS OF 2019

I

A D V O C AT E M A G . C O M

OA X ACA STAYCAT I O N

YOUR PARTNER IN HEALTHCARE

Steven Klemow, MD, AAHIVS

With the Methodist Dallas Medical Center Partners Clinic, you now have a partner in all aspects of your health and wellness. The clinic team, led by Steven Klemow, MD, specializes in offering comprehensive primary care in a safe, supportive environment. Located in the heart of the community, the Methodist Dallas Medical Center Partners Clinic understands your needs, and partners with you in finding solutions — for everything from routine well visits, prevention measures such as PrEP, and the latest advances in HIV treatment.

As partners in your wellness, we are here for you beyond your visit — our dedicated team, including our on-site pharmacy specialist, is available to help you access essential resources, including programs to potentially reduce your out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Whether you are seeking a new healthcare resource for yourself or someone you care about, Dr. Klemow and the Methodist Dallas Medical Center Partners Clinic are with you. Trust. Methodist.

To schedule an appointment, call 214-947-6780, or learn more at PartnersClinic.com.

122 W. Colorado Blvd. • Third Floor Dallas, TX 75208 Monday and Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to noon Texas law prohibits hospitals from practicing medicine. The physicians on the Methodist Health System medical staff are independent practitioners who are not employees or agents of Methodist Health System. Methodist Health System complies with applicable federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, gender, or sexual orientation.

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CONTENTS MAY 2019 VOL.13 NO.5

UP FRONT 10 Work it This artist makes a statement on gun control 14 A thriving dive Tradewinds gives us underground vibes 16 Oaxaca forever While your friends are in actual Mexico, come here

FEATURES 18 Giving is winning Two high-school seniors on their way up 30 Peyote research This Oak Cliff doctor was first to study mescaline

TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANNY FULGENCIO

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may 2019

We Get North Oak Cliff.

In North Oak Cliff, you need a proven professional to help you find just what you’re looking for. And as Dallas’ experts on our city’s close-in neighborhoods, no one gets Oak Cliff quite like we do. Buying? Selling? Call The Professionals at 214.526.5626 or visit davidgriffin.com.

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3410 Burlingdell Ave. $249,900 Bart Thrasher 469.583.4819

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We get it

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214.292.0490 / rstone@advocatemag.com

Historic restaurant

Elissa Chudwin

The 109-year-old Mayor’s House on Zang Boulevard is becoming a restaurant. Chef Graham Dodds and two investors from California plan to open a concept there as early as this summer. The former home of 1936 Dallas Mayor George Sergeant, built in 1910, received a parking variance in 2017 that allowed property owner Jim Lake Cos. to renovate it for restaurant use. Dodds, the original chef of Bolsa who most recently worked at The Statler Downtown, says he expects to call it The Mayor’s House.

Smoke’s pancakes rise from the ashes

Smoke restaurant is gone. But the heavy-handed blueberry pancakes with vanilla poached apricots will live again. Chef Tim Byres, who sold Smoke to the owners of the Belmont Hotel last year, is joining Flora Street Cafe in an effort to make the Stephan Pyles restaurant more casual and approachable, reports Eater. The café, which launched Byres’ menu in April, serves those pancakes at brunch, as well as pulled-pork BBQ eggs benedict.

No eggs, no dairy, all flavor

Chicken fingers

Raising Cane’s recently leased a space at Wynnewood Village with plans to build a store there.

The Louisiana-based company has one other location in Oak Cliff, in Red Bird.

A new restaurant, Vegan Food House, is expected to open soon on West Seventh Street near Tyler Street. “The food concept is a little more French, a little New Orleansinspired,” says owner Elizabeth Anderson.

815.274.4340 / echudwin@advocatemag.com Jaime Dunaway

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214.635.2121 / danny@advocatemag.com contributing photographers: Kathy Tran, Nikola Olic president: Rick Wamre

214.560.4212 / rwamre@advocatemag.com Advocate, © 2019, is published monthly by East Dallas – Lakewood People Inc. Contents of this magazine may not be reproduced.

Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for the content of all advertisements printed, and therefore assume responsibility for any and all claims against the Advocate. The publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any editorial or advertising material.

Opinions set forth in the Advocate are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the publisher’s viewpoint. More than 200,000 people read Advocate publications each month. Advertising rates and guidelines are available upon request. Advocate publications are available free of charge throughout our neighborhoods, one copy per reader. Advocate was founded in 1991 by Jeff Siegel, Tom Zielinski and Rick Wamre.

ABOUT THE COVER Detail of a par tition between the the store and the restaurant at the new 7-Eleven store on Sylvan Avenue.

Photography by Danny Fulgencio.

FOLLOW US: Talk to us: editor@advocatemag.com Newsletter: advocatemag.com/newsletter

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7

EVENTS

MAY 2

THE VOICE

Hearing him on the radio is a sign of springtime.

The voice of the Texas Rangers, Eric Nadel, celebrates his birthday in our neighborhood again.

It’s a fundraiser for Focus on Teens, a nonprofit that provides services to homeless public-school students. Parker Millsap and Daphne Willis perform.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Nadel’s eighth-inning limerick book, “Lim-ERIC,” the sales of which benefit the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation.

The Kessler, 1230 W. Davis St. thekessler.org, $22-$55

Photography by Danny Fulgencio

5 things to do in Oak Cliff this May MAY 4

MAY 7

MAY 17-19

Only the dedicated hit up the first Taste of Oak Cliff last year, when it was freezing cold in April. The Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce wisely moved it to May this year, and tickets are only $5. Get to know locally owned restaurants and reward the chamber’s perseverance during this year’s event.

Live bands, a car show, DJs on every block and a beer garden make Dallas Cinco de Mayo the place to be, and it’s free. The parade starts at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center at 10 a.m. and ends in the 700 block around 11:30. The main performance stage is in the 600 block.

Get familiar with Pofirio Rubirosa, the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s immortal character, James Bond, who was Dominican, in “The Real James Bond was Dominican” by Christopher Rivas.

Taste of Oak Cliff

Fiesta Mexicana

Ay, Señor Bond

MAY 22

Sax legend

Catch prolific free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann in a Bishop Arts backyard for $20. The German musician performs with West Virginia-born pedal steel player Heather Leigh.

Where: Bishop Arts Theatre

Center, 215 S Tyler St.

Where: The Wild

More info: bishopartstheatre.org,

Detectives, 314 W. Eighth St.

$18-$25 Where: Tenth Street at South

Where: 223 W. Jefferson

More info:

Beckley Avenue More info: tasteofoakcliff.com

Blvd.

thewilddetectives.com

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9

UP FRONT

A L OA DE D S UB JE C T Scott Horn makes a statement on gun culture  Story by RACHEL STONE / Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

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When he was 19, Scott Horn bought an AR-15 from a gas station in Nebraska, where his parents lived at the time.

“I went through a phase of being very heavily into gun culture, from about ages 16 to 21,” he says. “I ate it up.”

Now 40, he’s an Oak Cliff-based artist with a hand-tooled leather goods and accessories line called Wild Beast. Recently he exhibited leather artwork that makes a statement on American gun culture.

A friend from college asked him to participate in the show, “Capability,” at the Kirkland Arts Center in Kirkland, Washington.

Graduate student Maggie DeFranco curated the show. She was a 17-yearold student at Newtown High School in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012, when a shooter killed 20 elementary-school students with a Remington Bushmaster AR-15. The group show “uses compassion and empathy to dissect the historical and contemporary contexts that address the questions: How did we get here? How do we move forward?”

Horn’s three pieces are heavily tooled, oversized gun holsters that read, “control,” “power” and “identity.”

Horn says he’s produced art about guns before, but he kept those pieces to himself because he didn’t want others to see them as glorifying guns.

“The question is, ‘Why can’t we have gun laws?’ ” he says. “Because we carry these oversized emotional connections to it, that gets in the way of having any meaningful conversation about it.”

Horn, an event designer for Shag Carpet props, has been making art for about 14 years. He picked up leatherworking after he inherited his grandfather’s tools.

His grandfather tooled wallets, purses, belts and the like to sell at

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This page: Leatherwork by Scott Horn.

(Left: Courtesy of Scott Horn) Opposite page: Leatherworking tools that Horn inherited from his grandfather.

flea markets after retiring from his job as a machinist.

He was also a gunsmith and could re-machine broken parts for guns. Sounds very Texan, but he lived in Pennsylvania.

It bothered Horn that leatherworking was this “fleamarket” art form, and he wanted to elevate it. So he made 14 abstract tooled leather pieces for an art show in Dallas in 2015.

He thought they were beautiful, and he wanted to make them into something to wear, which is how he came to create Wild Beast. He hand-tools cuffs, belts, harnesses, key chains and other goods that are sold online and at Harkensback boutique in the Bishop Arts District.

Horn had about four months to make something for the show in Washington, and it took him almost three

“When I picked up that AR-15 alone in my apartment, what did I really feel?”

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months just to come up with the concept, he says.

In the word “culture,” he took the “c” from the Colt logo.

In “power,” he borrowed from the Browning logo. And for “identity,” he played on the National Rifle Association seal.

“That’s exactly what I think the NRA is now. It’s an identity,” he says. “You’re either in or you’re out, and it’s very hard-line. And I think they’re manipulating people for their own monetary gain.”

He says he remembers what it felt like to fetishize a firearm.

He and his friends loved talking about their guns and “tough-guy stuff ” together.

“When I picked up that AR-15, alone in my apartment, what did I really feel?” he says.

“Power, ownership, a sense of control over things. Most of us don’t have very much control over our lives at all.”

“Capability” ended in April, but Horn says he is working to have his holsters shown in Dallas.

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13

UP FRONT

Above: sitatum saperes equam, nonserit, ipsanit inctotatia et

DUST, GRIME AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL THE BEST MUSIC IN OAK CLIFF IS AT THIS LOCAL DIVE BAR TRADEWINDS SOCIAL CLUB is easy to miss.

There’s no sign on the slate gray brick building.

The gravel parking lot is empty during the day.

Constructed in the mid-1920s, the building at 2843 W. Davis once was home to an auto store and pizza joint. Tradewinds Social Club replaced those businesses in 1968. “It used to be an old school honky-tonk bar,” former manager Melissa Miller told the Advocate in 2011. “It wasn’t very lively.”

Now the 51-year-old bar is the quintessential dive. In an era of craft cocktails and small bites, Tradewinds serves Shiner and features a rotating cast of food trucks. Christmas lights outline the edge of the ceiling, and a worndown railing in front of the bar has a hole Story by ELISSA CHUDWIN

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labeled “stabby” in black Sharpie.

And thanks to bar manager Justin DiBernardo, jazz musicians, hardcore bands and house DJs set up for shows behind the bar several times a week. The California transplant and his friends hosted shows at their Long Beach home, and he’s brought the same DIY mentality to Tradewinds.

“When I first started here, it was only neighborhood people and the occasional touring band,” he says. “It was really spread out.”

The weekly line-up is eclectic, DiBernardo says. In March he organized South by Oak Cliff, where bands traveling through from North Carolina to Arizona played alongside local

Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

Opposite page: The band Sutphin performs at Tradewinds.

Below: The Black Dotz take the stage. Bottom: Cool Jacket performs.

acts. Local jazz band Yells at Eels has graced Tradewind’s makeshift stage. Avant to Leave This Planet, an AvantGarde performance series, visits Tradewinds monthly to the crowd’s mixed reactions.

“It’s over-the-top art,” he says. “Some people can’t even handle it.”

DiBernardo says a bartender is just a glorified babysitter,

but he’s befriended many of the regulars, who range from lawyers to carpenters to former professional skateboarders.

He’s even attending one couple’s wedding in November, and he bought Malort for native Chicagoans who frequent the bar.

“The people I want to be friends with outside this bar go here,” he says.

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FOOD

AUTHENTIC MEXICO TAKE A STAYCATION IN THIS OAXACAN CAFÉ

Above, clockwise from left: Tlayuda with squash blossoms, handmade corn tortillas, molcajete oaxaqueño, guacamole and a taco with chapulines. Opposite page: Pan de yema with chocolate.

WHEN ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS are posting Instagram pics of their amazing vacays in Oaxaca — mescal served with grapefruit slices in a decorative clay bowl! Open-air markets! Colonial cityscapes!

Dramatic vistas and butterflies!

When that happens to you, come here and drown your in-town sorrows with a small loaf of bread that you dip into hot chocolate. The FOMO healing should start within seconds.

Next, order a tlayuda. These are flat breads — like pizza-sized tostadas — with refried black beans, cheese, meat or sautéed squash blossoms, soft onions, fresh tomato and avocado on top.

Mi Lindo Oaxaca 607 N. Willomet Ave. Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m.

Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-11 p.m. FridaySaturday Price range: $12-$18

Share with friends and then talk them into ordering the molcajete oaxaceño.

That’s like a parillada, except it’s a big stone bowl with white cheese melted in the bottom and a selection of cactus, marinated pork, steak and tablitas — thinly sliced short ribs — spilling off the sides. Roll some of that up with a dollop of guac in a handmade corn tortilla, and let the appreciation wash over you.

This is here, in your neighborhood. Maybe you even walked here. So what if you can’t afford a vacation?

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Your life is great.

Mi Lindo Oaxaca opened in February

Story by RACHEL STONE Photography by KATHY TRAN

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2015 on Fort Worth Avenue. It was a tiny cash-only cafe that did brisk business and received good reviews from local critics.

Chef/owner Honorio Garcia moved the café to West Davis at Willomet last year.

Everything is homemade. Garcia is from Oaxaca, and his grandmother and mom were wedding caterers, so he learned everything from them.

Mi Lindo Oaxaca does have crickets on the menu, chapulines, if you’re into that.

The restaurant has applied for a liquor license, so expect to see little clay bowls of sliced citrus with shots of mescal sometime this summer. For now, it’s BYOB. Enjoying a long meal with friends at Mi Lindo Oaxaca is not the same as a weeklong vacation in the city of eternal spring. But by God, this is Oak Cliff, and this place is special.

Fred Peña contributed translation to this story.

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NEXT GEN TWO HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOUND THEMSELVES WHEN GIVING TO OTHERS Stories by RACHEL STONE | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

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GRIT

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Araceli A

raceli Ramirez applied to Skyline High School, but she didn’t get in, probably because of low STAAR scores, she says.

So she enrolled in her neighborhood high school, Sunset. By the time she was accepted to Skyline, in her sophomore year, there was no way she was leaving Sunset.

This is her home, she says.

Ramirez enrolled in the finance academy at Sunset because she’d tested well for it in middle school.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know about business,’ ” she says.

“But I really found a love and a passion for business.”

Teachers say she’s become a leader in the academy, often helping other students grasp concepts.

That comes naturally to Ramirez, who was diagnosed in middle school with a learning disability that makes her slower in learning and on taking tests.

“You’d never know it with her 3.6 GPA,” academy of finance lead teacher Lena Marietti says.

She takes AP classes and will graduate with 12 hours of college credit.

In 10th grade, she joined a club called B3 Ambassadors,

THE SURVIVOR

where older students mentor incoming freshmen.

“You check in on them daily and ask about their grades, how are they making friends, how are their teachers,” she says. “It really helped me grow as a person because these kids go through so much. It’s really sad because you look at their grades and then you hear their stories, and you realize why they’re struggling.”

Ramirez had her own struggles. Her dad died of alcoholism when she was 7, and her mom had to raise two kids on her own.

She says she was sad for a long time after her dad’s death, and it took years before she could visit his grave.

“It was hard growing up without a dad, but I learned that life goes on, and I have to move on,” she says.

Ramirez became involved in theater as a freshman, and this year she is student director of the spring play, “Sara Crewe.”

She was accepted to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and they gave her a $16,000 scholarship. She plans to major in business administration with a minor in film.

She’s currently working on a documentary about a day in

the life of one of her friends, which she plans to enter into competitions. Once that’s finished, she has plans for a high-school lip dub.

She’s part of the volunteer green team that collects recycling from classrooms and takes it to the dumpster.

She has over 500 community service hours and is quick to help teachers after school.

She’ll be the first in her family to leave Texas for college.

Her mom, Virginia Ramirez, didn’t get to go to college. And neither did her brother, Ignacio, who graduated from Sunset in 2018.

But they’re very supportive of her and all of her plans.

“I wanted to adventure, and I wanted new things,” she says. “I love Texas, and I love Dallas, but I just wanted to be out of state and meet new people.”

Ramirez was getting ready to take her driving test in April. And she’ll be heading to New Mexico this summer.

She credits Sunset High School for some of her success.

“The teachers are so amazing, and the administration is the best,” she says. “They gave me a home here at Sunset, and I can’t thank them enough.”

may 2019 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

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Dung D

ung Nguyen spent two months watching cartoons on TV with his brother and cousin before enrolling in kindergarten.

“That’s mostly how we learned English,” he says of arriving in America at age 5.

It worked out all right, but there has been some confusion.

Because of “Dora the Explorer,” it took Nguyen until this year to realize that “hola” is not an English word.

The 18-year-old, who graduates next month from the health academy at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, received a rough welcome to American life. He was bullied in elementary school and had to navigate his way through Dallas ISD. But he found his path with the help of teachers and through lessons from serving his community.

Nguyen’s grandfather served in the South Vietnam military and was a refugee after the Vietnam War. He later sponsored Nguyen and other family members for residency in the United States.

Nguyen’s dad works two jobs, one in cable assembly and one at a wine shop. His mom is a nail technician. When they first arrived, 11 family members lived in a three-bedroom, two-bath house in West Dallas.

Now they all live in two similar houses across the street from one another.

Their neighborhood school, George Washington Carver Elementary, had lots of immigrants, Nguyen says. But he,

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THE NANO-ENGINEER

his brother and his cousin — all very close in age — were the only Asian students.

“Americans can be mean,” is about as much as Nguyen will say about it. “All the usual Asian stereotypes. And we didn’t even know what those stereotypes were.”

He tells that one day, after school, the three of them ambushed their bullies, and one lost his tooth when Nguyen’s cousin kicked him in the mouth. Things were better after that, he says.

An elementary counselor encouraged him to apply for a magnet middle school.

“I didn’t even know what a magnet school was,” he says.

All three attended Dallas Environmental Science Academy.

“That’s when I started meeting kids who were on my level,” he says. “That’s when I first started learning about college. I knew there was middle school and high school, and that’s all I knew. I didn’t know anything about college.”

DESA is where Nguyen had his first Asian teacher, Mr. Le, who could speak to his parents in Vietnamese.

An art teacher encouraged him to apply to Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, so he applied there and to the TAG academy at Townview.

In hindsight, he thinks he was a bit cocky about it. Both schools denied him, so he was going to attend his neighborhood high school, Pinkston.

At the last minute, he enrolled in the health academy, and it’s exactly the right place, he says.

“I thought I wanted to go into graphic design or some kind of professional art,” he says. “But when I took biology in freshman year, we talked about viruses and stuff, and I thought it was interesting.”

He found descriptions for biomedical engineering and nano-engineering in a big book of jobs that one of his teachers had and decided it fit his interests.

As a volunteer at Dallas Methodist Medical Center, he enjoys spending time with patients, like the time he played the card game “Speed” with a cancer patient. But he decided practicing medicine isn’t for him.

Too personal. Too stressful.

He wants to be the one trying to solve problems in a lab.

He enjoys conversation and debate, “playing devil’s advocate” and reading books about philosophy.

He and his cousin, Quong Tran, graduate from Townview in June. His brother, Tri Nguyen, is expected to graduate in 2020. All are going to college.

Nguyen recalls his childhood, sleeping on a pallet, having a monkey as a pet on his parents’ pig farm, walking to a one-room schoolhouse. He says he doesn’t feel American.

Would he move back to Vietnam permanently?

Maybe not.

“Over there,” he says.

“There’s no AC, and it’s hot.”

may 2019 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

23

UP FRONT

SEVENTH HEAVEN FORGET SLURPEES. HELLO KOMBUCHA, GROWLERS AND TACOS.

Story by RACHEL STONE Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

24 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

may 2019

THERE ARE NO ORGANIC SLURPEES in Preston Hollow.

Folks there buy their essential oils and gluten-free bread at one of the many high-end grocery stores nearby.

But here in Oak Cliff ? We have 7-Eleven, and this is not just any corner store. Organic Slurpees, vegan ice cream and Dom Perignon alongside Big Bites, chili-cheese nachos and 32-ounce Gatorades, not to mention the tacos with handmade tortillas.

7-Eleven opened its first test store on Sylvan Avenue at Interstate 30 in March.

“We’re proud to be back in the original home of 7-Eleven,” chief operating officer Chris Tanko says.

Oak Cliff is the birthplace of 7-Eleven. In 1927, Southland Ice Co. dock operator John Jefferson Green started selling milk, eggs, bread, cigarettes and canned goods from his dock on Edgefield and Twelfth streets.

Southland director Jodie Thompson, who grew up in Oak Cliff, took that idea and ran with it.

7-Eleven didn’t just build its test store in Oak Cliff for sentimental reasons.

“People are recognizing that West Dallas and Oak Cliff represent a place where the innovative and different are welcome,” says Randall White, founding president of the Fort Worth Avenue Development Group.

The company spent a year doing market research all over the country to find out what consumers wanted.

That’s how they chose the thousands of products to put in the store, including bulk candy, frozen yogurt with a toppings bar, a selection of soups made daily and a Franke coffee system, which grinds beans and brews coffee by the cup.

With its sit-down café, 7-Eleven also aims to compete with Starbucks, serving espresso drinks and smoothies priced under $5.

7-Eleven bought Laredo Taco Co. and most Stripes stores in

Above: The new 7-Eleven test store has beer and wine on tap and a café where customers can sip.

Below: A large selection of beer and wine even includes high-end wines like Veuve Clicquot.

may 2019 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

25

Above: The AI-enabled VICKI vending machine sells electronics, including everything from phone chargers and batteries to $300 bluetooth speakers.

Left: 7-Eleven offers Slurpees in many of the typical flavors, plus organic Slurpees in flavors like cucumber lime and hibiscus sangria.

Below: The café has Laredo Taco Co. and espresso coffee drinks that undercut Starbucks prices.

26 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

may 2019

2017. The taquería, found in Stripes stores all over South and West Texas, is the go-to taco spot throughout much of Texas. Because the Sylvan store has beer and wine on tap, it’s possible to have tacos and beer while hanging out in a 7-Eleven.

The store also has a VICKI vending machine robot — it uses AI technology — that sells electronics, from phone chargers and batteries to $300 blue-tooth speakers.

And this is one of about 100 Dallas-area stores where 7-Eleven is testing app-based self-checkout.

The products and concepts that do well at this store could be used in developing new 7-Eleven stores or revamping existing ones.

Emily Ruth Cannon of South Winnetka says the store carries her favorite brand of gluten-free products, Schär.

And she figured out that the cucumber Slurpee pairs well with St. Germain.

But even with all of its fancy stuff, this is still 7-Eleven and a taqueria. It’s for everyone.

“From my experience, and from what my neighbors are telling me, 7-Eleven is going out of its way to cater to all of the economic groups living nearby,” White says.

“That’s exactly what the Fort Worth Avenue Development Group said it wanted to see coming to the corridor, and it’s not something 7-Eleven’s predecessor was doing.”

The 7-Eleven test store is just a convenience store, but it’s so much more than that.

Keep in mind that if you’re going inside to get a healthy snack, stay focused.

“I went with all intentions of getting an organic-cucumberturmeric-celery Slurpee but left with super nachos loaded with chili,” says Kessler resident Kayli House. “It’s a trap.”

WORSHIP

by SCOTT SHIRLEY

Good news! It’s election season!

And we all need to feel loved, supported and free

E

lection season is upon us. I already know what you’re thinking. Why is the religion column bringing up elections? That is probably accurate regardless of which “side” you are on. In the divisive political climate of the day, people would like religion to speak to our souls and not our party, a respite from the gross rancor of our lives. I get that.

But if we don’t care for the material wellbeing of our siblings in the world, our souls are deeply impoverished. Politics is how we do that.

Politics is the way that we decide how we are going to treat one another, how we are going to organize ourselves, how we’re going to live together. In a representative democracy, politics is how we live out our values in the public square. It is inevitable that our religious views will inform how we vote.

Because our religious views differ so widely, even among Christians, this gives everyone a lot of anxiety. The secular left is worried about those who would enmesh church and state. And the Christian right is worried that their pride of place is being diminished. Those of us that count ourselves among the Christian left worry about both, wondering what will be left standing if anyone ever wins the culture war. We need ways to talk to each other.

Unfortunately, we no longer begin our conversations on common ground. Rather than communicating to understand one another, to be vulnerable to the possibilities that others present, our words seek to place us on one side of a dividing line.

Our belonging is determined by our beliefs, and our actions only defend our positions.

The Christian Gospel promises us that we are all loved, supported and free. It strikes me that this is language that could bridge the chasms that divide us. Who doesn’t want to be loved, supported and free? Who wouldn’t want others to be loved, supported and free? But there are two tricks to this.

The first is that we have to believe this for ourselves. We have to believe we deserve it – every bit of it. That seems simple, but it’s not because these things play off of one another. They can support one another or collide with one another. Feeling supported and guided can feel constraining and excluding, that we will no longer belong if we don’t adhere to our guides. Or it can feel freeing, an inner sense of confidence because we know that we will be loved and belong no matter what.

The second trick is that we have to listen to others, to take them seriously about what

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

E P I S C O PA L

“Politics is how we live out our values in the public square.”

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

N O N - D E N O M I N AT I O N A L 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

they need to know: They are loved, supported and free. It is too easy, particularly within a framework of Christian evangelism, to think that we know what is good news to others. But we don’t. Whenever we say that something is “good,” there is a silent “for” on the end of it – “good for” who? If we don’t listen, we don’t know.

So, as we move toward election season, whether local elections this May or the big show of the 2020 national elections, let’s ask ourselves not “what side we are on?” but “who can create a world that allows each of us to feel loved, supported and free?” Let’s believe it for ourselves and take it seriously for others. Let’s let the good news be good for all.

TRINITY CHURCH OAK CLIFF / Love God. Love Others. Make Disciples.

Sundays 10:00 am / Worship & children’s Sunday School 1139 Turner Ave. / trinitychurchoakcliff.org

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

SCOTT SHIRLEY is the pastor of Church in the Cliff. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and the neighborhood businesses and churches listed here. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.

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27

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BACK STORY

by RACHEL STONE

The Timothy Leary of Oak Cliff?

A neighborhood doctor experimented with mescaline

D

r. J.R. Briggs served several terms as an early Dallas City Council member, one as mayor pro tem, and he backed Dallas annexing Oak Cliff back in 1903.

One thing that’s not mentioned in his 1907 obituary is that he was the first medical doctor to experiment with peyote and publish an article about its psychedelic effects.

He opened the Briggs Sanitarium for the treatment of tuberculosis in the 200 block of South Tyler Street in 1889.

Briggs was born in Tennessee and received a medical degree from the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis at age 22. He came to Texas shortly thereafter and then pursued eye-ear-nose-andthroat training in New York City, London, Glasgow and Paris before settling in Oak Cliff with his wife.

Briggs studied the methods of Dr. Robert Koch of Berlin, whose research showed that bacteria caused tuberculosis, in a time when most thought it was an inherited disease. Briggs was known for using the “Koch serum,” and the sanitarium refused “hopeless” cases.

He was among the first American doctors to adopt Koch’s practices, which could cure people in the early stages of tuberculosis with vaccinations.

According to a publication called “A History of Greater Dallas and Vicinity, Vol. 2,” Briggs became widely known for his success in healing.

That history describes the sanitarium, by then under new ownership after Briggs’ death. “…a charming suburb four miles from Dallas whose site is an undulating prairie stretching over the highest pitch of land in the county, commanding both picturesque and astounding scenery and the purest of air.”

Wow. Sounds … picturesque. Right

30 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

may 2019

Images courtesy of the Dallas Morning News Historical Archives

there in the 200 block of South Tyler, before Dallas was built up, before the neon Pegasus even. How far out it must’ve seemed.

But that’s not all.

The building had a 520-foot façade with an 875-square-foot U-shaped veranda, making a “pleasant promenade for convalescents in all kinds of weather.”

The sanitarium had a laboratory with “incubators for making serums and cultures and guinea pigs for experiment purposes.”

Speaking of experiment purposes.

Medical publications credit Dr. John Raleigh Briggs as the first to draw scientific attention to peyote, a small spineless cactus that produces mescaline, a strong psychedelic.

He’s even on Wikipedia for this.

Briggs experimented with peyote on himself.

If only we could find his original paper on the effects of mescaline. Briggs founded the Texas Health Journal, where

he published his findings.

He reported in the journal in 1887 that E. A. Paffrath of Vernon, Texas, sold 3,500 peyote buttons to Kiowa for $15.

Briggs sent samples to Harvard University and the pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis & Co. That’s really all we know about it.

When Dallas wanted to annex Oak Cliff in 1903, Briggs was the chairman of the annexation committee. After a heated election that divided the town of Oak Cliff, Briggs gave a speech, saying that he didn’t harbor any ill will toward those on the other side.

“They are all good men and my neighbors and friends, and now we will all join hands. I feel confident in the building up of greater Dallas,” he said.

Briggs died at home of what was then called Bright’s disease, acute kidney disease, at age 56.

His funeral was at his home in the sanitarium, and there was a funeral procession to Oak Cliff Cemetery.

Love where you live.

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