Memory Lane

Since returning to Texas in 2006, I have lived in the Dallas suburb of Garland, an hour away from Fort Worth, the place where I was born and grew up.  Yet I seldom have an opportunity to go back to the city which haunts my memories.

Last week my grandson Richard spent his spring break from the University of Illinois at Chicago coming to visit Grandma in Texas, just as his brother Doug did last year.  I still can’t get used to my little grandchildren becoming big, tall men.  Richard is particularly imposing, over 6 foot 2 with a black beard.  His long legs barely fit under the dash board of my Hyundai. 

Richard plays the cello in the university orchestra.  He wanted to hear a chamber music concert at the Modern Museum in Fort Worth.  So off we went.

With my grandson driving, we went out the front gate and turned left at the signal light on the corner.  Three minutes later, as Richard speeded down the ramp onto the expressway, I said, “Just follow the signs for I-30 West until you see the exit for University Drive in Fort Worth.”

Richard is shy.  He did not make any comments on the wild Texas drivers who kept cutting lanes in front of us. He kept his eyes on the road as we threaded our way through the mixmaster south of the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas.   As we passed Arlington, where roller coasters of Six Flags Over Texas loom right beside the highway, I thought, “Most kids might prefer going to the amusement park rather than to a concert with an old lady.”  But not Richard. 

It took just a little over an hour from the time we left my apartment in Garland until Richard pulled into a parking space in front of the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. 

I started my “career”, such as it was, as a reporter at the Fort Worth Press.  I knew lots of people in the city.  Then I met Wallace Gaarsoe, a corporal stationed at Carswell Air Force Base.  We married, and I moved with him to Chicago.  That was more than 60 years ago. 

As Richard and I entered the auditorium at the museum, I looked down on a sea of gray heads and said, “I wonder if any of these old people remember me.” 

The program was delightful: Beethoven’s Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in D major, Prokofiev’s Sonata for Violin in F minor, and Brahms’ Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano in A minor.  Richard said he liked the Prokofiev; I much preferred the Brahms.  To each his own.

At intermission I introduced Richard to the lady sitting next to me as “my grandson from Chicago.”

The lady said, “My daughter lives in Chicago.  She and her family live in Arlington Heights.”

I said, “Richard’s grandfather and I built our first home in Arlington Heights on a little street, only one block long, called South Dryden Place.”

“I know that street,” said the lady sitting next to me, “My grandchildren went to Dryden School.” 

“That’s where my oldest son started to kindergarten,” I said.

Small world!  I went to Fort Worth hoping to encounter someone who knew me there when I was young.  Instead, I met a woman with whom I shared memories of a small elementary school in a distant suburb of Chicago.