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The city of Dallas, Texas, will forever be associated in people's mind with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 as indeed with the t.v. series called "Dallas", which tracked the life and times of J.R.Ewing. Contrary to popular belief, there's no oil in glitzy, status-conscious Dallas. Since its foundation as a prairie trading post, by Tennessee lawyer John Neely Bryan and his Arkansan friend Joe Dallas in 1841, successive generations of entrepreneurs have amassed wealth here through trade and finance, using first cattle and later oil reserves as collateral. The power of money in Dallas was demonstrated in the late 1950s, when its financiers threw their weight behind integration. Potentially racist restaurant owners and bus drivers were pressured not to resist the new policies, and Dallas was spared major upheavals. Competitive with Houston, and smug about its cowtown neighbor Fort Worth, Dallas boasts of its "sophistication" and its "old" wealth. For all that, the stuffiness is tempered by a typically Texan delight in self-parody, and there's still fun to be had if you know where to look - especially in the alternative Deep Ellum district, with its superb restaurants and nightlife. |