From July 2012 to December 2018, I’ve produced and hosted The Austin Writers Roulette every second Sunday of the month without fail. Starting in 2019, I scheduled the show bimonthly in order to have more time to pursue other creative outlets. And yet, my sister and her husband STILL managed to visit Dallas-Ft Worth on the same damn weekend!
I also had the bad luck to wear a two-piece suit as my hosting costume for the show during 110-degree weather. I felt like the Grim Reaper. I even told the audience that the Grim Reaper was in fact a Black woman in a fedora.
After the show, I hit the road for the 3-hour drive, reaching the hotel close to 10 PM at night still in costume. As amusing as my costume was during the show, people were NOT amused to cross paths with me in the parking garage and on the sidewalk, leading up to the hotel. They cleared a path for me as if I were truly the Grim Reaper.
Magically, once I hugged my sister and brother-in-law in the lobby, others were at ease.
To the point that one woman, who conveniently wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, asked to take a picture with me just to prove to her friends, who were in another state at a cosplay event, that she too was having fun with some cosplay as well.
As stylish as I looked wearing a fedora,
I left it in the hotel room the following morning when we toured the stadium where the Dallas Cowboys played their home games. Part of our journey there included cruising along Tom Landry Freeway, which was periodically decorated with his famous fedora.
This tour had been on my sister’s bucket list. She’s been a lifelong Cowboys fan although she and her husband are Redskin season ticket holders. When the Redskins play the Cowboys, her loyalties are with the Lone Star team.
This was the only part where I wished I had the fedora.
Yet, the entire guided tour was indoors, so being out of costume with a hat on would have been pointless.
My other sister wasn’t touring with us,
but she requested for me to send her pictures of Emmet Smith. This was the first one I came across.
To my surprise, a cement floor had replaced the grassy field.
I’d never known that all that lush grass rested on top of a layer soil, which covered cement.
Since everything’s bigger in Texas,
this was the biggest screen of its kind in the world–or something like that. Added bonus, if you zoom in and look to the lower right of the screen, you’ll see Emmet Smith’s name!
A football-inspired ceiling light illuminated one of the members only lounge areas.
Apparently Clinton became an honorary Cowboy when they won the Super Bowl during his term.
I’d seen from afar that Ford had sponsored a floor,
but I couldn’t see the vehicles until we were actually in the space.
I mused aloud that the vehicles must have been helicoptered in via the retractable roof.
When the tour guide overheard what I’d said, she corrected me. “They open the windows (which are the biggest of their kind in the world, of course) and lift them up with crane.” None of us envied the crane operator who does that once a year to switch out this year’s vehicles with last year’s.
Before my mind registered the significance of the cotton, I thought of slavery.
Considering how many view pro football players, I’m not too far off the mark. Yet this symbolized the Cotton Bowl.
Once again, Emmet Smith’s backside.
And when it wasn’t his backside, he looked worn out.
En route from one part of the stadium to the basement, we passed by a storage area where banners from past events hung.
Sometimes, I know too much to enjoy things.
Yet, another woman in my tour group actually voiced a question in line with my thinking: “How much do the cheerleaders get paid?” Although the tour guide tactfully answered that she didn’t know and had to refrain from further comment, I knew I didn’t have to.
As a matter of fact, several of us knew that for all their hard work, they received less that minimum wage and had a stricter code of ethics to abide by than the football players. Plus, as the tour guide informed us as part of her script, these women had to try out every year. Tryouts had hundreds of cheerleading hopefuls, but the returning cheerleaders auditioned during the third round as part of a group of about 50 women.
Unlike touring the cheerleaders’ locker room, we received a word of warning before touring the players’ locker room: Do not sit on the wooden lockers. The tour guide stated that the quality of wood was like one finds on the inside of a Bentley. No such warning was given for the cheerleaders’ locker room since their decor was the quality of IKEA furniture.
I must admit: those lockers looked like inviting places to sit! But even the players sit in chairs and not their lockers.
Toward the end of the tour, we saw where the players run out onto the field. Hundreds of people line both sides of the lounge to root them on as they hit the field.
We got a closeup of the “field.” A soccer match had been the last event, which was why all of it had to be taken up in preparation of the next event. When sporting events aren’t taking place, the stadium also hosts concerts.
By the time we finished our tour, we had walked a mile and a half. Then, after leaving the facility, I drove us to the market to eat, followed by driving back to the hotel to get my things and trek back to Austin. That was such a full and exhausting day. All thoughts of working or even working out once I landed in Austin again were driven out of me.