comments

1. Sheila Ryan on September 9th, 2007 at 9:52 am

   Deron, I’m hard-pressed to say which is the more amazing: the photograph’s aesthetic qualities or its value as evidence that you were apparently down in the TRINITY RIVER BOTTOMS. From early childhood in Dallas I formed a notion of the river bottoms as a sinister hybrid of industrial wasteland and drought-stricken swamp, peopled intermittently only by gar-fishermen and corpse-dumpers. To this day I think I would rather walk down a K-Town alley in Chicago than descend to the Trinity floodplain.

   But I’m glad you made the descent. That is one great photo.

2. Deron Bauman on September 9th, 2007 at 10:43 am

   it’s this part of Dallas that you see constantly, but seems just out of reach.

   believe it or not, they have added a ‘boat ramp’ and soccer field on one section of the river.

   I was actually able to park and walk!

   thanks for your kind comments.

3. Durando on September 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

   I remember seeing that whole area under about six feet of water back in the late eighties. I don’t know why, but the Dallas (Clear? or Blue?) fork of the Trinity always seemed more sinister. For those of you not from North Texas, the river is (probably) up over on the other side of the levee on the right side of the photo.

4. Sheila Ryan on September 9th, 2007 at 2:01 pm

   Six feet of water! A sign of imminent Apocalypse! Folks must have been fixing to get raptured.

   Here’s another Trinity River Tidbit for Flockers and friends unfamiliar with its lore and reputation.

   [to go] across the river. 1950s-1960s. Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas. Code for a liquor-store run. Residents of Oak Cliff, a ‘dry’ section of Dallas, Texas, were obliged to cross one or other of the viaducts traversing the Trinity River floodplain in order to purchase liquor on the ‘wet’ side of the city, often from one of the many liquor stores along a strip of Industrial Boulevard (also home to numerous bail-bond offices).

   I’ve no idea whether “going across the river” was private Ryan familyspeak for my dad’s weekly booze run, but I do know that when it comes to buying and drinking Demon Alcohol, Oak Cliff remains a bizarre minefield of arcane restrictions and exemptions.

5. Cindy Scroggins on September 10th, 2007 at 10:10 am

   That’s just beautiful, Deron. Fills me with the “pure Texas” feeling that I can never explain to people from other parts of the world.

6. Deron Bauman on September 10th, 2007 at 10:49 am

   thank you, Cindy.

7. Cooper on September 10th, 2007 at 11:48 am

   All that Sheila said, ditto! This is really great. And as she has pointed out, the great boundary between sophisticated Dallas and the great unwashed hordes of Oak Cliff.

8. Daryl Scroggins on September 10th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

   Gene Harrogate gets an idea about lodging, in Suttree:

   Under the shadow of the bridge the bare red earth lay in a strip of sunless blight. Rusty baitcans, tangled strands of nylon fishline among the rocks. He came out of the weeds and up past the ragpicker’s firepit with its stale odor of smoked stones and stopped to study the darkness under the concrete arch. When that ragged troll appeared from behind his painted rock Harrogate nodded affably. Hidy, he said.

   The ragpicker scowled.

   I guess it’s done took in under here, aint it?

   The old hermit made no answer but Harrogate seemed not to mind. He came closer, looking things over. Boy, he said. You got it fixed up slick in under here, aint ye?

9. Sheila Ryan on September 10th, 2007 at 5:55 pm

   That’s it.

10. Deron Bauman on September 10th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    there were lodgings under the piling. I thought of Suttree while I was there.