June 2010 -- A Trip Back In Time

I feel like I'm losing my "umph" a bit with the adventure part of my new years' resolution. I had kept Zumba and Pilates in my back pocket for those months that I was super busy and couldn't get something more exciting done. And I had already used up Zumba in May. It was fun, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't overly adventurous.

I'm not sure where June went, the month zipped by me pretty quickly. And so, I found myself using up my Pilates card. But, it was something I had never done, and it was fun. Okay, not "fun" per se, but it was good to do. I was sore for three days. Maybe four. But still, not necessarily exciting. I would have to step it up in July.

For my trip in June, I had a business trip planned to Dallas. I actually went to college about 40 miles north of Dallas, at the University of North Texas in Denton. It was North Texas State Universrity when I started, but changed its name a couple of years before I graduated. I had been back to Dallas many times since I graduated, but I never made my way up to Denton. I hadn't been there since the year after I graduated. 20 years ago. So, I engaged two of my old college friends to take a nostalgic trip back in time.

We started out by eating lunch at the Black Eyed Pea. Love love LOVE it. We used to have them here in Phoenix but they closed. And, my friends and I had partaken in a bit too many libations the night before. So it was a perfect, greasy, comforting option. The same old Black Eyed Pea that I used to eat at in college. It was still there, exactly the same.













That's about where the similarity ended. Twenty years later, Denton had changed. And the University had certainly changed. There were new buildings everywhere. Many new streets. Less trees because they had given way for the new buildings. I'd say there were more new buildings than old. When I went to school there, Denton had a population of about 65,000, and the school had about 15,000 students. Now, the city has doubled in population, and the school is now 36,000 students strong. Crazy growth! And they had torn down the then-new hotel that had educated me in my last two years of hotel/restaurant management school, to make way for a new football field and sports complex. It was wild.
















We drove around to check out where we used to live. Hollyhill, the older of our apartments, looked better than when we lived there. Our duplex on Gardenview, however, was totally ghetto, it was hardly recognizable. We drove down Fry Street -- historic, artsy, home of the famed Fry Street Fair, which ceased many years ago. I had heard rumors that our old favorite pizza place, The Flying Tomato, had burned down several years ago. What's funny you can search Fry Street Burning on You Tube and get all sorts of videos!



I'd also heard that the whole Fry Street area, where we'd spent many of our college days, was bought by a development company and was going to be replaced with new strip centers and a bright, beautiful, drive-in CVS pharmacy. So sad. It was such a historic, artistic, party street. We'd spent many, many hours at the Library......every college town has one. We'd watch The New Bohemians, before Edie Brickell made it big, along with many other bands, at this dive. So I was not too excited at the prospect of seeing what had changed on Fry Street. I feared it was all gone. But I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, the Tomato was gone. And there was no sight of The Library that I could see. But the area was still full of character and grafitti. Ah, the good ol' days.

All in all, a great trip down memory lane!