Have you ever seen Dallas from the wheel of an automobile in daylight?

When one goes off somewhere for a week of training related to a job or some other endeavor some folks will just roll their eyes or wink and say: “Sure you are going for training. “Nevertheless, I really did train this week and it was pretty extensive subject matter that took up full days and then some.

It was nice to see Dallas this morning, passing through, going home for Southeast Texas. A lot of folks I know who don’t live in Dallas say they don’t like Dallas. Maybe it is because I spent extended periods of time there, living there in a couple of different incarnations for as long as a year, that makes me feel Dallas is a pretty cool place as cities go. I am not the biggest fan of cities though. Like the song — I think Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote it but his Flatlanders cohort Joe Ely is most remembered for it — “Dallas (Have You Ever Seen Dallas From a DC-9 At Night)” (Sorry, I had trouble embedding a You Tube Video) Big D is distinctive both night and day. The song is dark as befitting a tune about the nighttime although the narrative evokes an individualistic posture of the city even when seen from above.

Dallas is much more distinctive during the daytime. Maybe the fact that I have seen the Dallas skyline from afar so many times that I have just noticed it more but it seems to me that the horizontal look at the Dallas vertical profile is probably as unique as any U.S. city with the possible exception of  New York. Most interesting of all Dallas skyscrapers, including even Reunion Tower which many of my friends jokingly refer to as “Mr. Microphone,” is what is now known as the J.P. Morgan Chase Building.

Formerly the Texas Commerce Tower, the 55-story building described as “post-modern” architecture is most notable for it’s curved roof and its breath-taking “sky window.” The hole, which is what it is, is six stories high, 27-feet wide and 80 feet deep. During the time I worked as a temp in downtown Dallas I would look at the tower from different angles and watch the Southwest Boeing 737s descending to Love Field fly by it and I would imagine what a sight it would be if the sky window could accommodate one of the aircraft for a fly-through. Keep in mind, this was almost 20 years before 9/11 and I was just daydreaming.

As interesting as Dallas is I passed on through it without stopping this morning.

I did stop in a small town just south of Dallas off I-45 called Ferris. I figured Ferris would have a little downtown area and it did. It’s kind of a quaint little place where I found a really good Philly Cheesesteak. The place is called Alfonso’s. If it was called St. Alfonso’s I would have expected a great pancake breakfast. Alfonso’s was in an old building on a corner in which a 7-day a week sno-cone business operates out of from a little door-window around the corner from Alfonso’s. The cheesesteak place was amazingly modern inside with flat screen TVs on either side of the dining area, one turned to a weather station and the other to the Fort Worth-Dallas NBC affiliate.

It was kind of early, after the place opened when I came in so I heard the cook say that “he might have to wait awhile for the fries.” So, they must’ve been really good although I had none. The tea had not finished brewing either but the ice water was great on a day surely on its way to be another in the triple digits. The cheesesteak was good and I wished I had ordered the large one instead of the small. Even so, for $5.11 cash I got the sandwich, some chips and the water.

Right now, I am cooling it in Huntsville for the night before I drive back to Beaumont and back to the old routine. Just how routine the routine will be, who knows?