All posts in Brush With Local Greatness

So there we were, Kim and I, hav­ing a nice evening together, going to our favorite Tex-Mex haunt, Mattito’s, and it’s pretty crowded, but the weather out­side is nice, not too warm, not too cool, and so Kim asks if there is any imme­di­ate seat­ing out­side, and there was, so we were led out to our table, and who is sit­ting at a table for 6 across from us but WFAA weather man Pete Delkus.

I have a strange his­tory with mem­bers of the WFAA news team. Way back, when I was about 17 or so there was a guy on WFAA that did the news named Quin Math­ews. One day I saw him at a CD shop, so, being the curi­ous sort, I fol­lowed him around and would casu­ally try to see what he was going to buy. I think it was jazz. Then I would see him at Block­buster with a female. They both picked a video, his pick lost that night.

Then Gary Cogill and I exchanged some emails about film crit­i­cism and we even saw each other at a press screen­ing for a Kevin Kline film that was pretty ter­ri­ble. And I saw Troy Dun­gan in col­lege at a Parent’s Week­end func­tion at Bay­lor. But it had been a loooooooooong time since I’d seen any cur­rent WFAA team players…until Fri­day evening.

White shirt, pink tie. Hair look­ing per­fect, as usual. Looked like an iced tea in a beer mug. In fact, the whole fam­ily had drinks in mugs. Three kids, two other women. The strange thing? There wasn’t a lot of talk­ing at the table for so many peo­ple being there. Seemed kind of strange for a party of six.

The other thing that I noticed almost imme­di­ately is that the waiter that every­one else on the patio had was not attend­ing to Delkus, party of six. They had Mar­tin, who is one of the old timers there. He’s good. He paid atten­tion to the Delkus party while we were wait­ing for refills, Delkus, party of six had refills imme­di­ately, thanks to Martin.

I guess it pays to be weather roy­alty in this town. Now if only us lit­tle peo­ple could get our refills in a timely man­ner, too.

Kim and I met Charo at the Dal­las Museum of Art sev­eral years ago when she came there to hock some new salsa or some­thing for Pace. They had a car out­side dec­o­rated up by some artist or some­thing and she spoke and played her gui­tar for a few min­utes before a crowd of about one hun­dred peo­ple. After­wards she took ques­tions, of all things, doing that “Cuchi-cuchi” thing she says every once in awhile. It was goofy and sur­real at the same time, know­ing that this was that strange unin­tel­li­gi­ble Span­ish woman I’d seen on The Love Boat when I was a kid.

Kim, never one to shirk from mak­ing a com­ment, had the guts to pipe up when she said that she lived on the Hawai­ian island of Kauai.

“We had our hon­ey­moon there!”

It kind of threw Charo¹ off, but hen became excited. She was bond­ing with the audi­ence, you know. “Oh, did you love it? Where did you stay?”

“South side of the island at a B&B.”

“The B&B’s on Kauai are won­der­ful, aren’t they?”

“Yes!!!” Kim was so excited.

What was even cooler was she even took a pic­ture with us. She was wear­ing a red sequined minidress and was com­pletely falling out the thing. We were going to use the pic­ture for our Christ­mas card (“Merry Christ­mas from Kim, Glenn and Charo”) but Kim was laugh­ing when the pic­ture was taken and her smile was Joker-esque, so we didn’t use it, but, you know, it’s still a great story.

1. Yes, I know Charo does not live in Dal­las, but she was there, and we talked to her. So there. [↩]

It was Parent’s Week­end at Bay­lor, prob­a­bly around 1993. The big hul­la­baloo was going on over at Founders Mall — par­ents meet­ing teach­ers, kids intro­duc­ing their moms and dads to Pro­fes­sor So-And-So, and there I was just ambling through with­out my par­ents, who hadn’t come this time around. If you’d seen me then on that warm early Octo­ber day, you’d prob­a­bly have said, “Why is that dirty hip­pie walk­ing through here?” I was not the clean cut per­son I became later. That’s the trou­ble with peo­ple; they change.

And so that dirty hip­pie was lop­ing through the hordes, prob­a­bly going some­where in a slow and “keep on truckin’” kinda way, when I saw him. He was the weath­er­man that I’d grown up with, and I knew his daugh­ter was attend­ing his alma mater at the same time that I was. His trade­mark bow ties were leg­endary around Dal­las from the first time I remem­ber him and he wore them every news­cast, no mat­ter what. He’d always been short, you could tell that by com­par­ing him to the other news anchors on the chan­nel 8 sound stage, but I didn’t know he’d be that short. I’m talk­ing like Danny Devito height, no kid­ding, the man was SHORT. Like 5′ 2″ or something.

As I brushed by him (lit­er­ally) he seemed star­tled. I mum­bled, “Hi there.” He didn’t say any­thing, just sorta glared.

I thought, “Man, what a jerk.”

And that was my close encounter of the weather kind with Troy Dun­gan. He’d started work­ing for WFAA on July 19, 1976, and he’s retir­ing tomor­row, July 18, 2007. From what his col­legues say he’s a swell guy. I’m sure he is and was just prob­a­bly scared of that dirty hip­pie kid way back when. So long, Troy. Happy trails.

About a year ago me and the fam­ily were at a local cat­fish joint here in Dal­las when, lo and behold, in walked an honest-to-God liv­ing musi­cal leg­end — Don Hen­ley, drum­mer for The Eagles. He was with some other guy, no idea who, and looked really old. Don, not the other guy. Any­way, I imme­di­ately thought, “That’s what being famous in the 70’s will do to you.” He looked ter­ri­ble — craggy face, almost com­pletely bald. Noth­ing like the long flow­ing hair I remem­bered him hav­ing from pics in Rolling Stone.

He ordered his food and he and his com­pa­triot sat down at a booth, chat­ting and wait­ing for their food. When his buzzer/coaster went off he saun­tered up, not a care in the world and, upon receiv­ing his food, returned to his booth and ate. No one really paid much atten­tion to him since he really didn’t look like The Don Hen­ley that you see pic­tures of and remem­ber from The Eagles and his illus­tri­ous solo career.

But my his­tory with the Don­ster went back even fur­ther than that.

Don was born in Gilmer, Texas, which is about 20 miles north­west of Longview. From what I know about the man, he lives out at Caddo Lake along the Texas/Louisiana bor­der and is a big envi­ron­men­tal­ist out there. I guess I would be too, given the fact that Caddo Lake is one of the few nat­ural lakes our state has. Any­way, his Texan cre­den­tials are true and up to date.

I’d also heard, back in the time when the Inter­net was young, that he also has a house in Dal­las, somewhere…out in the hin­ter­lands. Which brings us to my first brush with Don Henley.

It was 1995 and I was work­ing at the Book­stop near the Inwood the­ater (Where, it seems, I meet almost every­one famous that I know) and in strolls Don Hen­ley. He wanted to know where Mary Karr’s best­selling mem­oir, The Liar’s Club, was shelved. Per our train­ing, I looked it up and walked to where the book was kept. Most of Ms. Karr’s other books were kept in the Poetry sec­tion, and since the Book­stop gods had not deigned for us to have a ded­i­cated Mem­oir sec­tion, her lat­est, and all other mem­oirs, were kept in Poetry. This trou­bled Don greatly.

“Why is this in Poetry?“
“We keep all mem­oirs in the Poetry sec­tion.“
“But this isn’t a poetry book.“
”…Right.“
He fumed a few moments, look­ing at the hard­back.
“Well that’s stu­pid.“
“Couldn’t agree more.“
He looked at me, taken aback a tad by my com­ment, then back to the book, then to me again. “Ok…thanks.”

And that was it. He was a pretty big jerk with me so I didn’t say “You’re wel­come,” or any­thing like that, I just walked away with­out check­ing to see if he needed more help.

Hey Don, I didn’t run the com­pany at the time, so I didn’t make the rules up, okay?