Quist World Tour

Oh, the places you’ll go. If you can stand to drive there. We had an uneventful trip to Mansfield, where we’d picked up Jodi. Sunshine, bluebonnets in the fields, and cows. Halfway there, Jodi called to give “full disclosure”. Her 7 year old was up a good portion of the night with abdominal pain, and she had gotten very little sleep. Okay, oh well, we’ll probably just have to stop when we’re tired and find a hotel. We drove through some open country on smaller roads to pick up Jodi and kids. We met her sister and brother-in-law at their beautiful home, which is in a neighborhood on the edge of suburbia, just like the neighborhood I moved into in Plano in 1980. Open fields meet seas of fenced-in new houses. Everything is new and exciting, with lots of young families for the kids to get to know. When we moved into our version of that neighborhood, I was the only almost-teen for miles around, as far as we could see. Lots of transplants to Dallas were desperate for a babysitter....

We found a possible career option for the kids who go to GRCS's Circus Camp. Rachel?? Today we went to SeaWorld, which doesn’t require much description. If you haven’t been to one, you probably still know enough about it already. It’s part thrill ride, part aquarium, with a nice big touch of schmaltz, guaranteeing good sales of cute stuffed sea creatures. This one also has a waterpark with some cool slides as part of the deal, but unfortunately it is only open on weekends at this time. I did not know that until I saw the sign at the parking lot entrance. The thing that saved me from my children’s wrath was that Six Flags is only open on weekends right now, so we could not have gone there instead. This knowledge made the limited ride choices at SeaWorld more acceptable, and the great part was there were no lines. The only people there on a school day are people with small children, who don’t ride big rides, and people from crazy-cold places like Michigan where spring break ...

Goodbye Dallas. Who knows how long until I come around again. We packed up quickly to get an early start, at least early for us. We took a driving break in Waco, to stop in at the Dr. Pepper Museum. That’s right, the Dr. Pepper Museum. This is exactly the kind of thing that my dear husband would do anything to avoid stopping at, and he’d probably be right. My daughters’ natural fear of creepy animatronic people talking to them at museums has just been upped a notch. Charles Alderton, otherwise known as “Doc”, was a pharmacist who came up with the soda combination that is now arguably the state drink of Texas. His statuary likeness gives a speech at the beginning of the museum tour that is sure to both creep out AND bore a kid right off the bat. There were Dr. Pepper collectibles of every sort at the museum, though none of the screens show what I consider to be the hallmark of Dr. Pepper advertising: the commercial from the late 70s or early 80s where a group of people dances ar...

One more trip back in time. Today we met up with Jackie, a kind and welcoming former classmate, who gave us a tour of the new and improved Trinity Christian Academy. I had a serious feeling of déjà vu as I raced down Addison road, late to school, the same way I did for years. No matter that we had nothing planned until 12:45—still can’t make it on time! When I started there in 1980, the school had existed for exactly 10 years. The campus was 6 years old, and sort of in the middle of nowhere, North Dallas. My graduating class would have had 75 but for one kid who got expelled at the last minute.   Now the classes have about 120 each, and most have waiting lists as they did back in the 80s. They’ve added a new high school building, and then added on again to that. There’s a new elementary building. There’s an additional middle school building, an additional cafeteria, and an additional auditorium. The arts program is booming. It’s much more diverse than it was when I was ther...

So enough of the “when I was young” narrative. Today we went to see some things that didn’t exist, at least in their current form, 30 years ago. First off, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. This museum is named for H. Ross Perot, the Texas magnate who didn’t win the presidential election. His children donated 50 million dollars to the new museum, which opened in December of last year. Like its namesake, the museum is interesting, over-the-top, and demands attention. The building was designed by architect Thom Mayne, who won the Pritzker Prize for the San Francisco Federal Building in 2005. Depending on who you listen to, this is either a giant leap for Dallas architecture or the most ridiculous pomposity possible. Either way, it was entertaining to my teenage designer-in-the-making. The museum itself is a hands-on science museum that covers all kinds of topics from cells to minerals to energy to fossils. There is a nice section that shows the habitats of Texas, which was...