When I drove into Dallas for the first time in 1960 and on my way to near-by Denton to enroll at North Texas State Un-iversity, I noticed a bravura, an aura that was entirely different than the other two big southern cities I was familiar with -- Houston and New Orleans.

It showed at its best to me among the close, but weaving streets of Downtown Dallas.  Architecture that was inconsistent with each other in period and style, but placed perfectly to cause a wholeness, a giant compliment to those who had caused it and those who embraced and perpetuated it.

As because Dallasites have diligently tried since then, the city remains a formal and cultured spot in the center of Texas that has taught many the art of being urbane themselves.  Almost as if they were from Paris or London or Rome but with just enough of a bit of Texas oil man in them to let them stand above the crowd.

Throughout it all -- at least for the past several generations, and no one is alive today who can remember before then -- the cornerstone, the base, the teachers, the remembrances of that culture have been reminders of what being a Dallasite requires of you.  And those cornerstones have been and remain the Adolpus Hotel and Neiman-Marcus.

This morning, as residents have for the past twenty years, dressed in the warm clothes, they lined the main streets of Downtown Dallas to watch, enjoy and participate in the annual Children's Parade that is a joint venture sponsorship of Neiman's, the Adolpus and the Children's Medical Center. 

The journalists reported that there were nearly one-half million people there to watch it.  Patty and I were there with Patty's son Randy, his wife Susan, two of their children, Alice and Emelia, two of the grandfathers, Ken and Norman.  And Susan's friend from their college days, Gina, was with us, too.  If I've listed everyone, it should total ten.  And it was also Emelia's first birthday.  December 6th.  We were sorry that grandsons Randy, Jr. and Reid weren't able to be with us.

The parade was wonderfully organized and had exceptional participation -- you know my love of high school bands -- and of all the parades I've attended over the years, there has never been one that had a more genteel audience. That's what most certainly marked it as a Dallas event.

There among those gerrymandered streets with the architectural street-scape that hit me as the signature of Dallas in 1960, 450,000 people acted like Dallasites, the way they had been raised to act by the influence of their forebears and most certainly the founders of the Adolpus Hotel and Neiman-Marcus.

And one final thought:  Although a Jew, no one on earth enjoyed the Christmas Spirit more than Stanley Marcus.  I'm positive that whole presentation and experience today especially honored him.  At least it did in my mind, and I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving for his many contributions.

All of it made me proud to live in Dallas, the birth home of my second family.  Merry Christmas to all!

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS

Our 44th Year Selling America

214 503-8563

Copyright 2008 - William S. Cherry