Casa View

Writer’s note: This is my tribute to a place that never existed before, shined brightly for 20-25 years, then, faded slowly over a decade, appeared dead, and, now, enjoys a vibrant renewal.

In Spring of 1967, my mom announced we were moving to an apartment. We had been in a sort of economic freefall in the years since my parent’s divorce, but we had never lived in an apartment.  My mom said we needed to move to the apartments to “save money”. It was hard to tell how bad our situation was because my mom did have her “Mother and Daddy” close-by.

“Giggy and Boop”, as my brother and I called them, never let on that they, occasionally, helped us get by but it was obvious enough that my mom struggled to make ends meet on her teacher’s salary alone.

We caught mom mixing whole milk with powdered milk, so that the large glass jug of milk stayed full for a couple of weeks, until she could buy another gallon and begin the dilution process again. For the longest time, I just thought that milk started to taste really bad if it sat in the jug a long time.  Sure, we cut a few corners but I never felt poor until I found out we were moving to an apartment.

Strangely though, I still managed to get a Daisy Winchester BB gun, a new bike, “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart’s Club Band” and Peter, Paul and Mary’s, “In the Wind” for Christmas, 1967. These presents were underwritten by my grandparents.

I would have preferred to live in a tent in my grandparent’s backyard in Casa View, rather than move again. Casa View, a Dallas neighborhood of smaller to medium sized brick homes, built in the late 40’s and 50’s, surrounds the sprawling Casa View Shopping Center.

My grandparents moved to Casa View in the mid- 50’s from Midwest City, Oklahoma. In Casa View, they bought a 1,160 sq. ft. home. It was a 2-1-1 with a den and living/dining room and a large backyard. The “Den” in that floor plan was used by many of the new residents of Casa View as the third bedroom. Those who didn’t have a bunch of kids growing up in those compact bungalows had the luxury of making eleven hundred square feet look like the Taj Mahal.

I always thought my grandparents were “rich”, with their comfortable house, new car every two years. The backyard with it’s bird bath , lush, high hedges inside the chain link fence,  plum trees, flowers, and the Mimosa tree, that grew as fast as the boys who were climbing it, had the feel of a place in the country.

My Dad and Mom, seeing the nice life my grandparents had in Casa View, moved us to Dallas in about 1958.  We lived in a rent house on Province Lane and, then, about a thousand feet away in a rent house on Larry Lane. My Dad insisted on the move to save $10 a month in rent, before my parents bought our home on San Lorenzo.  All three of those houses were in Casa View, all within two miles or so of my grandparent’s house.

I suspect my mom had doubts about the security of life with my dad and was, perhaps subconsciously, building an exit strategy, if one became necessary. When they divorced, the house was sold and mom, my brother and I lived in two duplexes between Casa View and Casa Linda, an older and, generally, more prosperous suburb, still not more than a couple of miles from my grandparents. But, we always considered ourselves more Casa View than Casa Linda.

The center of the Casa View neighborhood was the shopping center, which featured lots of convenient parking and the friendly, small town atmosphere, with big city conveniences.  Giggy and Boop’s home was one house from the corner of their street, Dunloe, and Dalehurst.  Dalehurst connected the neighborhood to the shopping center parking lot, between the A&P grocery store and the Goodyear Service Center.

That opening, now blocked by a newer Wal-Mart, was the convenient gateway into the Casa View Shopping Center for adults and adventure seeking kids. Despite warnings not to “roam off”, the allure of the shopping center was too great. We wandered the toy aisle of the five and dime, watched the mechanics at the Goodyear work, or, if we were lucky, the appliance store would have sold a refrigerator and left the big box in the alley.

A boy with a refrigerator box inspired hours of fun, including the time it took to drag the thing back to the house. Before people felt the need to rent bounce houses for birthday parties, it was considered perfectly acceptable to give a bunch of kids a refrigerator box and see how much fun they could invent with it.

Casa View Shopping Center, was a huge complex surrounding the major intersection of Ferguson and Gus Thomason Road. For the late 50’s and all of the 60’s the Center had three gas stations and three stable grocery stores. Wyatt’s Cafeteria, Irby’s Restaurant, Youngblood’s Fried Chicken, Fred’s BBQ, Orlie’s Hamburgers, a soda fountain at the pharmacy and Lone Star Donuts, provided delicious eating out choices.

There was a photographer, barber and beautician, dentists, doctors, and a realtor. I don’t believe there were any lawyers in the professional building area of the Center known, to most, as “the Arcade”, because people had no need for lawyers. Divorce was not yet common and there were few disputes that couldn’t be settled by simply walking over and having a conversation.

There was Casa Jewelers and Brad’s Jewelers, Red Goose Shoes, Dad’s and Lad’s clothing store, and C&S Hardware.  There was a post office, bank, laundromat, dry cleaner, paint store, a  M.E. Moses, Penny’s and  Sears. The bookmobile came every couple of weeks and, later, a library was built.When the library first opened, so many people were visiting that they put a limit on the number of books that could be checked out. Later, my brother used to walk more than two miles, every 10 days, with a stack of books to and from the library. He was not unusual. Casa View was the new American small town on the edge of Dallas, a suburb where people hungered for all of the promise of the American Dream, placed on a black-land prairie where cotton fields had once flourished.

Casa View had great schools and as the neighborhood grew, new wings were added. Teachers taught in the same schools for years and became part icon – part myth, as each class added to the lore.  In those days, everyone joined the PTA, and many attended the meetings. The schools provided sports outlets, especially football. When Life Magazine did a picture story on schoolboy football in Texas, they came to Casa View. There also was culture and the arts – school plays, talent shows, and recitals, even at the elementary level. There were piano and string lessons during school. Art class and field trips to the Dallas Symphony.  There was a film room where students could see what life in other countries was like, long before television showed us, courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica films.

In elementary school, we took Spanish on “Educational TV” and even had a ten minute period, once a week, on Friday, when we had “bank day”. We learned the value of saving money and put money into junior savings accounts. The schools were for far more than education. They socialized kids and taught citizenship and life skills. Together with the churches, Scouts, DeMolay, Rainbow girls, 4H, Boys State, Key Club, Junior Achievement, and others, all helped keep American values and personal responsibility firmly ingrained as cornerstones of a vibrant democracy, simply by being neighbors in a neighborhood.

The community wisdom held that those who were intellectually curious would be taught and pushed to excellence.  Those who were lazy, or less able, would catch what they could and be “socially promoted”. It was understood, even respected, that not everyone was going to college and there were work programs and car repair competitions and metal, wood, electrical, and plastic shop classes at the high school to help prepare a prosperous working class. The community wisdom, which has been proven true over and over, said that everyone was good at something. We didn’t all have to be good at the same things.

In Casa View, we were grateful for every new service and small business that opened that kept our lives convenient.

There, in Casa View, we enjoyed weekend hamburgers in my grandparent’s backyard, card games with the family and friends, and the sharing of old stories. We listened to the music of 101 Strings, Glen Miller, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, playing on Giggy and Boop’s new Magnavox console stereo cabinet with the “Spanish American” finish.

With Giggy and Boop, there were fishing trips to Lake O’ the Pines, beach trips to Padre Island, and day trips to Texins Rod and Gun Club, near McKinney, for target practice with our 22’s. We traveled to Kansas City by train from the little station just a couple of miles from Casa View on the edge of Garland.   We dressed up for church. We dressed nicer than normal, for our annual visits to the Sports and Vacation Show and the Boat Show. My grandparents provided that place that was normal and, at the same time, idyllic. Something good was always cooking. There was always love, laughter and community.

Giggy and Boop did not coddle me, though. There were always chores to be done and I did yard work for them when I was old enough.

David Grunden and Jimmy Dixon were generally my accomplices when I visited my grandparent’s house on Dunloe.  David once described to Jimmy and me, how he shot a blue jay with his BB gun from the range of about 80 feet and this seemed too fantastic to believe. I had no real knowledge but had shot friend’s BB guns and 22’s many times. I could always see the BB as it shot out the end of the barrel and sped toward and, usually, high or low, left or right of the intended target, even at fairly close range. At any rate, I believed, 80 feet was an impossible shot.

This conversation escalated to the point where I challenged David to shoot me in the rear-end, from his driveway, while I stood in the driveway of the house next door, a distance of maybe 60 feet. Not only was I sure that this would not hurt, I doubted David could hit me. Jimmy stood nearby, gleeful, not the least squeamish about what was about to happen. Once we had negotiated the distance, I bent over, presenting the target, hands on knees, looking down the street. David was a good kid and he offered to cancel the firing squad, “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

For the 49 years of my life, since this event, anytime, anyone has asked me, “Are you sure you want to do this?”, I have paused and reflected, making sure that there was absolutely zero chance that,   by answering “Yes!”,  I could possibly experience anything close to the intense, screaming-through-the-neighborhood, burning agony, of a BB to the butt at 65 feet.

They said I looked like a rabid dog, jumping and wailing and spasming, trying to get away from the white-hot, load of coal, dropped down the back of my pants by a tiny ball of steel. People ran out of their homes to see what had happened. Tears streamed from my eyes as I staggered and seized in anguish. I saw confused and sympathetic faces, yet, all I could do was try to get as quickly as possible to Giggy and Boop’s house. David was right behind me and I heard peels of disbelieving laughter from the neighbors as he babbled, “I shot him in the butt! Are you alright? Oh I told you…I’m sorry! Are you alright? I shot him in the butt…”

Having heard me coming, my grandmother emerged from the backyard and her stern look offered no hope of sympathy. Giggy was of Scot descent and she did not suffer fools lightly. “You shot him in the butt? Why, David?” my grandmother asked of David, sympathetically, as though she was sure this was a justifiable shooting on his part.  “Because he told me, too!” David offered. My grandmother recoiled as if stupidity had just popped out of a jack in the box. She grabbed me by the neck and dragged me into the house, where I had to suffer the humiliation of showing her the flesh wound.

When my grandfather got home, my grandmother fixed a “highball” for both of them.  I heard them in the den, with the door closed, howling with laughter, like the rest of the neighborhood did for years. I think it was the next Christmas that I got my own BB gun and Boop took a keen interest in making sure I knew how to use it safely, “And for god’s sake, son, don’t shoot anyone in the ass…” he mumbled at one point.

As soon, or even before, people started building homes in Casa View, they started building churches. My grandparents were charter members of St. Mark Presbyterian Church, which started out meeting in a military surplus quonset hut, and later built a sanctuary, a kitchen and classrooms. As the church grew there were additions. The St. Mark members were the most wonderful, kind and caring people you could imagine.

For several years, our pastor was John Danhoff, a man who had polio as a child and walked with crutches. He attended Yale and would throw batting practice to the church baseball team. Though he could only use one crutch to help balance, he had amazing strength and accuracy. He threw the ball faster than we were used to, but he grooved it right down the middle so we could relax and just swing at the ball.

He knew a lot about pop and folk music and quoted popular song lyrics in his sermons. Mr. Danhof was the kind of preacher that made you glad your parents made you go to church. He dropped in to our occasional, weekend, youth fellowship parties. He visited with the parent chaperones and then, told us all a funny story about Jesus, well, he made it funny, or about having polio or some experience he had in college or divinity school. As he exited the party, he would say something like, “Remember, if you were a Baptist, you wouldn’t be dancing right now!”

John Danhof was warm and funny and didn’t preach to the youth, so much as he led by example. Our fellowship groups taught us much about faith but also about service and took us outside the safe and comfort of Casa View. The first time I ever helped the homeless, the first time I visited a home at Christmas where there was barely enough to eat, but there was a family with a bible and a piano, Jon Danhof led me to those experiences.

Area churches started the White Rock Churches Athletic Association. Over the years, thousands of kids and adults enjoyed the fellowship of baseball, softball, and basketball.  The City’s baseball fields at Winfrey Point, Norbuck Park and Harry Stone and many other fields, were booked solid with games. Families enjoyed gathering after a game in the darkness of the parking lot in late spring and early summer, where one of the parents would open their trunk to reveal an ice chest full of cold drinks. This led to burp contests and laughter about some crazy play in the game where a kid hit an infield home run or got caught sitting down in the outfield. We would hit each other with our gloves and hats and chase each other with spear grass while the parents chatted. Fireflies danced in the woods and low places and, soon, we all drifted to our cars.

On the way home, with the windows rolled down, cicadas buzzing, and honeysuckle in the air, my mom would always stop and let me buy a hot link at the 7-11 on Peavy.  We loved the manager of that store, Mr. James “Jim” Baldwin, even though I had been in trouble with him once or twice before. A kid who got in trouble a little was no problem to Mr. Baldwin, as long as you didn’t steal from him.

Once, Billy Dollahite and I bought cigarettes “for our parents”. However, Mr. Baldwin noticed us heading toward Reinhardt Elementary, instead of toward our homes and dropped a dime on us. Imagine our surprise, as our mother’s drove up to the Reinhardt elementary playground and there we sat, 8 years old, in a Bois d’Arc tree, puffing on a Salem.

The first time I ever heard the expression, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I thought of Casa View, Mr. Danhof, Mr. Baldwin, Giggy and Boop, the teachers, Scout leaders and coaches, and most of all my Mom and Brother, who most likely steered me clear of prison.  Casa View, as a neighborhood, had everything anyone could need, including a few guardian angels, and embodied the stability and happiness, longed for by a post-depression, post-WWII folk who wanted nothing more than to live free of want and tyranny.  In Casa View, they did.