Remembering Veterans And My Wonder Years On The Way To Arlington's Chinatown

No, that is not the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man you are looking at here. What you are looking at here is the Shadow of the Veterans Park Thin Man.

Today I needed to replenish my ginger supply. I acquire ginger at the Saigon Cho Market in Arlington's Chinatown.

Veterans Park is accessed via the same road, Arkansas Lane, as Saigon Cho Market is accessed, with Saigon Cho Market a few miles further east.

When I visited my Favorite Nephew Joey on Wednesday the subject of the Tandy Hills came up. Joey asked me if there are a lot of nice parks here. Joey opined that every where you look it looks flat, so where are the hills?

I think I mentioned before that I thought when I moved to Texas I would be giving up mountain biking, due to the short supply of mountains. Somehow I knew that Tyler State Park in East Texas had well regarded mountain bike trails. And so a couple months after arrival in Texas I drove myself about 100 miles east  to pedal those trails.

I was surprised by how challenging the Tyler State Park trails were. At one point I was stopped looking at a directional map. Another biker rolled up. We started talking. I said I'd just moved from Washington thinking I would be giving up mountain biking, and that I was surprised to find such good trails only 100 miles from my abode. The other biker asked where I was located.  Haslet, said I, north end of Fort Worth. The other biker then informed me that there were good mountain bike trails all over the Metroplex.

I was shocked. But it's so flat said I. The other biker told me to find my way to Cedar Hills State Park, southwest of Dallas and see if it changes my mind about it being so flat. Soon I was finding the D/FW Metro zone's mountain bike trails, including the trails in Cedar Hills State Park. Rockledge, Horsehoe Trails, Knob Hills, all at Lake Grapevine. L. B. Houston in Dallas and others I am not remembering right now.

Changing the subject back to Veterans Park. Since I last saw it a couple weeks ago a lot of progress has been made in the construction of the Vietnam War Memorial, as you can see below.

A crew was busy working on the new memorial today. There was a stack of shiny black granite looking slabs laying on the ground. I suspect those are to be attacked to the multiple walls which have risen from the ground, with names etched into the granite.

On Wednesday I told Joey that the parks in Arlington are very well done. I mentioned Veterans Park and how a large part of the park is basically wild wilderness. An example of that is below.

My feeble photographer skills do not do justice to how steep the hill you are looking at here is.

Years ago there was a half-hearted attempt to make a mountain bike trail in the backwoods part of Veterans Park. If I remember right heavy rain and a flash flood washed out that effort.

Changing the subject again.

Overnight some text messaging between Texas and Arizona and Washington caused a treasure trove of documents to arrive via email. This treasure trove of documents is documenting some of what I remember from long ago, you know, my wonder years....