Recently burned Dallas bar sparks excessive writing

A friend sent me a text message a bit ago wishing me a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I sent him a text message back returning the greeting. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to whoever sees this.

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world. Well, the holiday is big in a lot of the former British Empire but I don’t know if Romania or Brazil turn their rivers green like is done along the San Antonio River Walk. Those are two countries of the 15 I see have visited EFD during the past 24 hours.

I was searching for information about St. Patrick’s Day and the Wikipedia took me to Dallas where they have a pretty large St. Patrick’s Day parade on Lower Greenville Avenue. I went one year, not long after the celebration had first been organized in the early 1980s. Exploring the ‘net today I found that one of my favorite places to go when I lived in Dallas (University Park, surrounded by SMU and Dallas, actually) had burned along with three other businesses on Lower Greenville in a four-alarm fire on March 2.

The Lower Greenville Bar and Grill was a neat place to go have a few cool ones on a hot day. One could sit by one of the big windows inside the 75-year-old bar — supposedly the oldest bar in continual existence in Dallas — and people watch in what was fast becoming a trendy area for younger folks in Dallas. Of course, I was a younger folk in those days.

But an electrical short in the attic in one of the three adjacent bars to the GBG sparked the blaze that gutted the place just two weeks before the big St. Paddy’s Day Parade.

I have long since given up going to bars but it does seem that all my old favorite watering holes are gone. The Postman’s Lounge in Gulfport burned while I was overseas in the Navy. I don’t know what happened to Jim’s just up the street but it either was torn down, became something else or was wiped out by Katrina. The Crossroads in Nacogdoches, like the Joni Mitchell song says, was paved and “they put up a parking lot.”

Maybe they’re trying to tell you something. Well, I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t hang at bars and all kinds of businesses, especially bars, will eventually turn over to someone else, go out of business, become a pizza joint or a parking lot, destroyed by hurricanes or are burned down. Sometimes they burn down during a hurricane like some places in Galveston did when Ike hit two years ago. It is just a progression of time, the demise of these places. Some of the people I associate with these places, Waldo, Buddy, Buffalo Bob, Betti are all gone, way too early for me.

Certainly, though, I know from the five years I worked fighting fires that in a flash a structure is here and then it’s gone, and a memory is, who knows how long. I spent much more time at places I’ve named earlier than the GBG. But the place obviously affected me to the point that I have written some 533 words, no probably more now.

Before I forget it, if you do Facebook, there is a page for helping out those affected by the fire on Lower Greenville. If you are from Corn Cob, Iowa, or are in a barroom drinking gin with Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner in Mombasa, Kenya, and you happen to see this then maybe you can help out these good folks. I tended bar a little bit, a very little bit, too and worked for a couple of years cooking burgers so I know how those working at the GBG and the three other places must be hurting right now.

I’m up to 644 words now. Or  more. 649, 651, …