Dallas, episode 3. In which I confess a crush.

I was in the 6th grade when I had my first Dallas experience. In New York.  Like my previously-confessed Northern Exposure fantasy, Dallas was also a TV-inspired living arrangement. Unlike most tween boys at that time (a time when "tween" was still a future mashup), it was not the beautiful and newly married Pamela Barnes Ewing that was the object of my affection.  I am an early member of Team Sue Ellen and was justifiably overwhelmed (and rewarded) with renewed pangs of tween boy crush when Linda Gray reprised her complexly troubled Dallas role in the unfortunately short-lived reboot (2012-2014) of a favorite childhood television series.

Still seductive and sappily soapy, the new series featured cleverly contemporary story lines inspired by the original series' trashy trappings as well as inspired reprisals of their classic roles by the original series' actors.  After all, you can't reboot Dallas without the original television villain you love to hate, J. R. Ewing.

You also can't reboot J. R. without the formidable femme fatale who stood by him all those years (in various states of relationship status and sobriety).  Linda Gray's recent performance as a distraught and freshly off-the-wagon (again) Sue Ellen was appropriately heart wrenching at the time of Larry Hagman's death during filming of the final season.

It was around the time that rumors of a new Dallas series were making their rounds online that Mari and I made a side trip to Southfork during a summer family visit.  Both Dallas fans from way back (from separate childhood states), we were excited to visit the iconic ranch that served as home to the troubled but wildly entertaining TV family as well as revisit our shared memories of a TV favorite.

Here we are looking like we own the place (a favorite pose for us).

I highly recommend a visit to Southfork Ranch if you are ever in the DFW area.  It is located about 30 miles north of the Big D and is open daily for tours and is also available for special events and catered dining events.  

Visit the site to help plan or inspire your own guilty pleasure visit.

southforkranch.com

Mari and I enjoyed an afternoon wandering first around the interior of the house, every room of which was recognizable from the series' original heyday, then lounging on the patio by the pool in the hopes that one of the famous Ewing barbecues would get fired up, and finally moseying around the peaceful working ranch grounds.  There is a gift shop, of course, and yes, there is a EWING-1 Texas license plate hanging in our garage among my small license plate collection.

You knew there had to be a license plate collection somewhere, right?

During our most recent visit to Dallas, we were also finally inspired to explore a little bit of the FW in DFW, something we have never done before this year's holiday visit.  A fortuitously-timed exhibit of early Monet works at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth enticed me into stealing Mari away from her family for a day.

Visit the well-curated site where you can also link to past exhibits like Monet, The Early Years.

kimbellart.org

earlymonet.kimbellart.org

We were so thankful for the opportunity to view this extraordinary collection so close to home (500 miles by Texas standards is pretty dang close) and in such a beautiful setting. Thanks to another couple of art-loving-out-of-towners for snapping our souvenir photo!

An unusually mild Christmas holiday week (with apologies to my Midwest and Northeast friends) lent itself to another filming location visit that sunny Fort Worth day, but first we take a Texas lunch break.

Because our invitation to the Oil Baron's Ball seems to have been lost in the mail.