We recently received a gift of photographs, courtesy of the Dallas Police Department Museums' Board of Directors. They came in two large envelopes, one containing several shots of the "Great State Fair of Texas" during the late 1950s. It is amazing to see how things have changed in just fifty years. Do you remember the monorail? As I remember, we were told that one day monorails would criss-cross every city in America eliminating the need for buses and trains. We were also led to believe that by now we would have flying cars and would be vacationing on the Moon. Whatever the case, the monorail was a very popular attraction. The photographer was apparently interested in the monorail, but what we ended up with are a lot of great random shots of the park. There are photos of teenage boys with their DA haircuts and blue jeans rolled up half way to their knees, and of teenaged girls in poodle skirts and bobby socks. You also see many men strolling the fair wearing coats, ties and hats.

There are other curious photographs in the batch; one took me a minute to understand the subject.  It is a shot of people walking the Midway and enjoying a "ten cent" snow cone, but with a little closer examination, you see that almost everyone in the photo is African American. I had forgotten that Black people were segregated to only one day a year that they could come to the Fair.  That seems so obviously stupid today! Still everyone seems to be having a good time; and why not, with "Damn Yankees" playing at the State Fair Auditorium and Victor Borge in the Cotton Bowl.

There are photographs of an A&M/SMU football game, and one odd shot of the Hampton Station trolley pulling a car off a railroad bridge. Perhaps the most interesting are the photos of the April 2, 1957 tornado that hit west Dallas. I worked for "The Dallas Morning News" for many years and with my natural fascination for history, I took every opportunity to go over any old photographs I found in the archives, but these are police images and are different.  They have a more "immediate" look to them. These shots were taken very soon after the destruction. There had been no attempt to clear the roads. The people still look stunned, and even the air hangs heavy in these black and white stills. I found an address on one of the photos, 1600 Record Crossing --- there are several people standing on a corner looking at flatten houses. A quick Google search of that corner shows that the homes were never rebuilt.

Yes, these photographs show that much has changed in the last fifty years:
Vietnam, trips to the Moon, the collapse of the USSR, and the first African American President. Big Tex is still welcoming folks to the "Great State Fair of Texas"; and even through the monorail is gone, we now have the "Texas Sky Way". While over at the Music Hall this year, you will be able to enjoy "Legally Blonde" and "Mamma Mia!" Oh, yeah! Corndogs! Let us not forget the corndogs!
  
 
-Ed Owens