Monday my BBL and I initiated what will hopefully become a
new tradition for us. She’s labeled it Monday Meanderings because she now has
most Mondays off from her gainful employment which consequently offers us some
additional freedom to “explore.”
We agreed our first venture would be to discover some of our
local public transportation options. Our
first choice: the Fort Worth stockyards,
which was do-able until we slept in and missed the 8:30am departure on the Green
Line to Big D where we would have connected to the Trinity Railway Express, then
transferred to a Fort Worth bus which would have deposited us at the Stockyards just past noon. [Note: My
BBL will fly to Chicago (AA willing) in significantly less time later this
week]
So instead we opted to take the 10:30am departure on our
tax-dollar sponsored (+$12 out-of-pocket) light rail innovation called the “A-Train”
to our county seat. By 11:00 we were in downtown Denton after an extremely
smooth ride. We were pleasantly
surprised at the number of riders on the train, all of whom were pleasant
toward us newbies. The terminus was right next to the old Moore Business Forms
plant where I first made sales calls in 1981.
It now houses several municipal departments--a transformation that sort
of pains me.
For the next four hours we circled Denton’s core business
district. We invested in a cup of Costa
Rica java at Jupiter House Coffee,
an enterprise that proudly boasts its reputation (voted best coffee house three straight years!) and its sleeveless
cups. We spent some time feeling and
smelling the dust in Recycled
Books, a sprawling place located in the Opera House, apparently another
example of infrastructure re-purposing in this city. Went in and out of several antique/junk shops
and made a purchase of an old glass doorknob that my BBL intends to re-purpose. And in the center of the
Square, we admired the iconic Courthouse, unfortunately closed in honor of
Presidents Day. After a hefty late lunch
on the patio at Hannah’s
Off The Square (we can definitely recommend the White Truffle Pomme Frites),
we ambled back to catch the 3:00pm return of the “A-Train” -- and I
am transported back to my other best memory of taking a train ride.
The year was 1955. My
mother and I had to walk about a mile from home to catch the Chicago, Aurora
& Elgin electric train. I remember
we had to raise a semaphore to signal the train to stop for us. Our destination was downtown Elgin to see the
matinee showing of perhaps the best animated film ever - Walt Disney’s Lady And The Tramp. It was
my birthday present. I was seven years
old.
. . . two great days connected by interurban train rides, two
wonderful ladies and this old tramp.
