The Farmer's Market Remaking Itself

The Dallas Farmer's Market is remaking itself. Yesterday, was the first time that I had been down to the market in sometime. I love the Ruben sandwich at the Chicago Sausage Company. Since 2001 when I participated in a market study about downtown living, I got to know several of the "long term" vendors at the Farmer's Market and some of the other businesses. Lots has change in the time since.  There has been a lot of discussion about the Farmer's Market going private for management. When things like that begin to fill the air, there is usually something more going on in a QT kind of way. Change has never been a stumbling block for me. You learn to go with the flow over time. Patience also helps with change, too. Just as in the old days of my grandparents and parents, you run across people you once knew and lost contact with. There are others that still serve up friendship and a good sandwich or bottle of wine with a good cut of meat. Chicago Sausage Company and Jimmy's Italian Grocery not far from the Farmer's Market does that well. Dallas doesn't have the big import stores and shops like in Chicago, Detroit or New York but over time, by word of mouth or the stumble upon technique, you find that import and specialty store and meet old friends again and have good food.

Almost immediately it was easy to see that Shed 2 was under mass movements of concrete and dirt and that all the vendors were in the roadway of Shed 3 with the Shed 3 vendors still in place. The old fish market between Shed 1 and the old Casa Blanca Restaurant was gone and all that remained was the smooth dirt where it stood surrounded by concrete walkways.

Also missing are the Welcome signs in seven languages replaced by a square banner that simply says: Dallas Farmer's Market. The second of two garden vendors and the retail vendor shop in the Administrative Building where vendors could buy bags and tags and the like. I suppose that the city's new plastic bag law has something to do with it, although that could not be confirmed.

After talking to one of the vendors that I have know for more than 10 years, it soon came to the surface that the finished product would be Shed 1 standing, Shed 2 redone, Shed 3 and 4 demolished. In the space of Shed 3 and 4, there would be new construction of apartments and condos like the one that have been going up for the past several years with a noticeable increase in the past year. So, as always, the reconfiguration seems to be based in the Almighty Dollar. I know that the blackberries were at their highest price I have ever seen and the one I tasted was not sweet at all. By the time I got to Kroger's, the sweetness was back in the blackberries and the price was less than half what the Farmer's Market wanted for a full pint.

The old fish market is gone

Shed 2 is gutted and being redone

The flower market is now gone leaving only the one on Cadiz Street between Harwood and Cesar Chavez with hanging baskets, flats of flowers and potted displays.



edited for a flat finger flub: took out "dirty" and replaced with "dirt".

Mother's Day 2014

Mother's Day 2014 is fast approaching. It will be on May 11th this year. When I was growing up, I remember my paternal grandmother had two rose bushes in her yard. One was red and one was white. We would go out to the farm on Saturday before Mother's Day to get our  roses that we would wear to church.

I did a little search on the web to see if I could find a meaning for what was  remembered of those two colors  we wore on Mother's Day. There were many charts. All had their own variation as to meaning. Then, it hit me. Those old meaning were a cultural thing for  specific regions. There were traditions for weddings and  funerals, but  Easter, Mother's Day and  Father's Day held their own special meanings.

On Mother's Day, the kids my age would all look to see who wore a white rose or a red rose. It was like a game, but one of respectfulness at the same time. It was a learning experience for a 7 or 8 year old. Our parents were passing down a tradition: If your mother was living, you wore red. If your mother was deceased, you wore white. We don't do things like that today on the whole as a society. We have lost those wonderful meanings of the past.  I'm all for bringing them back.

We wore red if our mother was living.

We wore white if our mother was deceased.

 My mom entered the church triumphant ten years ago this year. White roses are worn now on Mother's Day. The only reference that came up for white roses worn on mother's day was the word, "heavenly".  There  must be an old illustrator somewhere that looked for a red rose or a white rose when he was 7 or 8 on Mother's Day and who had parents based in that tradition like my parents.

There's Big Money in Toilet Paper

Ask anyone at Walmart , Sam's Club or Costco's and they will tell you that their big money maker is paper goods (i.e., toilet paper and paper towels). Stacks and stacks of the stuff in the "big box" stores does not look like it takes up a lot of floor space. And, if you know anything about retail or wholesale, the ruling king inside four walls is square footage of space. Land is valuable but shelf space is even more valuable. In order to use that much space in a 75 to 125,000 sq. ft. building it must produce big sales dollars right down to every square inch.

Walmart has always promoted their price comparison scam. Bring in your receipt. They don't have to price check that way. You are doing it for them. And, you can bet that the info gets noted somewhere in the marketing department and/or General Manager's office for that daily conference call.

 What caught my eye the other day was the big comparison going on with Kroger's in the commercials aired. In that battle, Walmart has declared war on Kroger's. Why, because Walmart is loosing market shares in the grocery business. Walmart does not like to admit anything and will sometimes go to great lengths to try to turn the potentially damaging  situation in public relations into something less threatening or even try to make it a "golden goose" if it can.

Four years ago, I walked out of Walmart as a customer and began to really "shop" for bargains and savings. It took thirty days to break the Walmart habit. In the past two months, I have gone to Walmart twice. From my observations, I still made the best choice of not shopping at Walmart.

My brother and his wife had given me a gift card to Walmart as an e-gift. That is the reason why I ventured back into the store. I had purchased a pair of house shoes. The story behind that was that I had found the most wonderful and comfortable house shoes  at Kroger's three years ago. Every Christmas, I bought a new pair and tossed the old ones to the garbage. This past Christmas, I had missed out on getting a pair for a couple of reasons. One, the pair did not show the wear in one year as the other two pairs had done. Second, the supply didn't last as long as others had discovered that when they go one sale, you had better buy them right then. I failed to do that for reason one and I lost out. So, along came the gift card and to use it up, I went to  Walmart.  I bought a pair of slippers/house shoes at Walmart. Less than 90-days later, I took them back. They looked like they had come out of a dumpster. They had big clumps of fleece coming out and the plastic supports under the heal were cutting into my heal. When I took them back, the customer service person was so insulting and basically said that I could not have bought this pair in the last 90-days even with my receipt.

The customer service person then gave me a gift card for the amount of the receipt . I went to the paper isle and purchased toilet paper and paper towels. Now that opened up a whole new can of worms. When I was still shopping at Walmart. I regularly bought their 4-pack of tissue and a 3-pack of paper towels that were the cheapest price in the market. I don't put good money into paper goods. You flush one and you toss the other after use. Keeping the price down is a point of logic, not a point of personal comfort.

I started buying my paper products at Kroger's because Walmart ended stocking the sizes with the competitive price such as 4-rolls of tissue for 88-cents and a three pack of towels for $1.67 was the going price in the market before they packed it in a 6-pack.

So, when home, after putting the items into storage I continued to use my Kroger items until it was used up. But before tossing the wrappers, they got placed on a shelf. When the wrapper finally came off the Walmart tissue, it too, was placed on the shelf. Yesterday, I sat down to run the numbers as a comparison. There were several differences. Kroger was 1-ply at 198 sheets while the Walmart was 2-ply but only 150 sheets. The sheets sizes were Kroger's at 4.0 x 4.0 inches while the Walmart was 4.27 x 3.75 inches. The net was Kroger at 8.1 meters squared while the Walmart was  6.1 meters squared.

The bottom line is that Kroger was still the better price with 26.5748031 feet per roll while the Walmart tissue was 20.0131234 feet per roll. Some will argue that the Walmart was 2-ply. Come on!
with the Kroger difference of 6 feet extra per roll, use an extra sheet or two and fold it over.

Every thing that I have compared at Kroger's is still a better saving than Walmart. The paper towel thing is much the same as the toilet tissue issue. Kroger wins there, also.

I will take pictures of the wrappers later. I'm waiting for a sunny day. I want the sun to shine of this paper issue!


Edited for more detail.
Edited 04/28/14 to add pictures & edited to correct the price at per 4-pack.

Kroger wins with 6 feet more tissue per roll.

Walmart came in second
.Both products sell for $0.88 per 4-pack 

The Dallas High Five

Doing a little research on the High Five after-the-fact turned up some interesting facts.
1. There are 5-high interchange stacks in Houston
2. There are 5-high interchange stacks in Los Angeles

Dallas is the third major city in the US with 5-high stacks. What was discovered is that the Dallas High-5 is 10 feet taller than the 5-high stack in California. California's is 110 feet above grade and the Dallas High 5 is 120 feet above grade.

It was early on that I was sure that while on the 5th level, I was able to look eye level at the 10th floor  of one building. Well, I forgot to figure the angle difference into the equation and that accounts for two more floors.  That, is absolutely somewhat insane, but the more you drive it, the more you adjust and it doesn't seem that it is really that bad. Then, on the other hand, the Ambassador Bridge that carries traffic from the US at Detroit into Windsor, Ontario, Canada is a beautiful suspension bridge. The height from the crown of the bridge deck to the water line below on the Detroit River is---yep--120 feet. That ads a whole different perspective to the equation.

I do remember when the fist column was being poured at the old cloverleaf at 75 and 635. I drove it every day then. But that one column, that is the tallest of them all (200 plus columns) , was like looking at a towering red wood. I just could not wrap my brain around a roadway on top of that column.

It is easy to see unsuspecting travelers using either 635 or US 75 being in a stage of fear or fright. I'm just amazed that more have not  frozen up.

The Heart of the Dallas High 5 Interchange

 

Spring Blue Bonnets

Spring is here--maybe.  It's still nice to see the blue bonnets bloom.

The Texas State Flower

The  field grows each year.

Blue Bonnets are peaking already

Where Did The Water Go?

The local media has been all over the depressing levels of area lakes from a weather angle. They aren't even excited about the Zebra muscle threat by running stories a couple of times and then not being well educated in the problem at hand. Zebra muscles arrived in the ballast tanks of international ships that bring goods to this country, particularly in the Great Lakes. While ships are tied to the docks and  cargo is being unloaded, the ballast tanks are blown out into the fresh water of any of the five Great Lakes where they are docked. Zebra muscles are non-native species and thrive in  the conditions  of the lakes.

Spreading quickly, zebras soon were clogging Great Lakes water-intakes  and spread by boaters that do not wash off their boats completely before putting their boats back into another lake. Well, zebras have made their way to North Texas and just in a few years have spread from Lake Texoma  to neighboring lakes. While Zebras are no laughing matter, combined with the drought and dropping levels in the water supply, The concern should be more of a concern for the media than it has been the past couple of years.

 I've lived through the infestation of Zebras in a metropolis that got their drinking water from the Great Lakes. It isn't a pretty sight. Yesterday, I went in search of visible low lake levels and I found them. I didn't see a single boater washing down their boats after pulling them from the lake. Check out these pictures.


The Marinas have actually trapped boats  in their slips where the boats cannot get out.

The boat ramp is so low, the boats are being loaded and discharged a full truck-length farther down the ramp.

On the Rockwall side of Lake Ray Hubbard, the water marks on the wall measures a full 7-feet down to the current water levels.

I'm 35 cents East and 50 cents West

Humor is one of life's equalizers. It equalizes good. It equalizes bad. It smooths out the bumps in life. It comes from many places as the late night shows hosts will be the first to tell you. Look what Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford has done for Jimmy Kimmel. Listen to the guys that play the Comedy Central Circuit. They get their material from every day life.

It seems to me that when one laughs at yourself there is more good that comes from that than we know at the time. When the morning routine of checking email, balancing the checkbook and checking  on the website over morning coffee usually, I take the dawg out for a walk. For those of you that don't know, The Dawg is my cat.  Today, it was overcast and growing darker as a dry line and cold front lingered north and west of here. Knowing full well that I had better get to the grocery store and run my errands before the afternoon, I headed out into a pouring down rain.

New Express and Toll Lane Signs that change in amount as the traffic becomes heavier.

After getting an error corrected at one of the stores that I had shopped earlier in the week, I was coming down LBJ at Preston when I realized that I had a coupon for a free donut when you purchased a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts. So, I drove the extra three blocks, got a donut and coffee and returned back to LBJ.  It came to me as I passed the new EXPRESS Lane sign with the toll rates for East bound and West bound traffic. The next time someone ask me how I'm doing, I'm gonna say " I'm 35-cents East and 50-cents West. Thanks so much for asking!".