It was a story I was a part of only later in college did I start putting the pieces together. A documentary on PBS family stories and childhood memories started revealing the story of documentary was a part of my story. The story of the migration up I-35 was not a distant story but rather it was a story I was a part of. My life could be defined by the journey and my eyeballs ears and heart witnessed it as I lived small lines of the greater narrative.

My mother made an incredible journey. That incredible journey well made me possible. That journey defined my life in addition to making it possible. She went northward of a brother. Denton would later become a part of DFW metro area. In the mid sixties it was not. Denton was a southern town perched north of Dallas and Ft Worth. DFW airport was a pipe dream of a Ft. Worth business man. Greater Southwest Airport was not living up to it. Denton was a sleepy southern small town lost on the great costal plains of Texas south of the red river. The drive of up highway 81 becoming I-35 north of San Antonio must have been a journey to another planet. The native tongue of Spanish was replaced with English of spoken with a southern accent. It was in that town a high school classmate of hers introduced her to an Army flight school classmate born in Germany to parents who had run for their lives.

My Uncle had to fight in court for his daughter to be on the dance team at Grand Prarie high school. Brown was being added to battle of black and white. The clash of ruling white class v those moving north from South Texas speaking a different tongue listening to a different music were playing out. A member of the family related to journey as a great adventure from Alice Texas which was buzzed by Navy trainers marked by oil wells and farms. I have vague memories of day at Six Flags where some of my cousins worked. A couple years later near where my cousins worked literally off a corner a sign of integration flashed. Ball park nachos.

The enclaves in the DFW metro area did emerge instantly. They were long time coming. They appeared first around the magnets….to the migrants Grand Prarie and Arlington were a couple of the locations. Building F-8s, A-7s working on the GM plant was not quite the most lucrative the arm pit of the metroplex was first developed. As ambition and other members of the family climbed higher then dad and mother Plano and Grapevine were in their transition to being swallowed by the metroplex also grown a bit browner in addition to white and African American. Dance halls playing the music that was birthed at bottom of corridor (New Braunfels/San Antonio and Mexican food places started growing in number. The hype of Ballpark Nachos late 70s birthed in Arlington stadium reflected the addition of another flavor to the metro area.

The Corridor grew from Lilly white to brown. El Chico, Conquistador, emerged Waco and Hillsboro, Little Joe and La Familia had their heritage in the Temple, Belton area. I remember from the late 70s through the 90s the steadily browning of the corridor. It happened slowly. In 1996 I remember a Tejano dance hall below Waco above Belton burning as I drove south to Schreiner. God knows how many times I passed it as my mother wove a second part of the story.

Summer of 1991 my mother became the first Hispanic assistant superintended schools of Denton. Unlike my cousins before me an American Airlines DC-10 covered the distance. It was an SAT to DFW flight. I can not imagine how my mother felt when she first set foot at Texas Woman’s University but partially like a norteno or white redneck lost in the big city I was shocked in Denton. The children of Tejanos and Tejanas who had been in New Braunfels for a generation or two were not there rather immigrants from the heart of Mexico. The Brown and white world of New Braunfels I grew up was replaced with a predominantly black and white world. The number of good Tex Mex places in Denton was far fewer getting good Tex Mex was a challenge on the northern side of DFW metro area.

It was a migration the population of South Texas decreased as highway 81 Interstate 35 became a part of the migration. The migration transformed DFW which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. The area of African American and white south had additional flavors added to it. Ballpark Nachos were invented and lines of dancers at football games became integrated in their own right. New Catholic Parishes grew and the music from south Texas got transformed not once but twice along the journey. A distant journey Little Joe and La Familia’s story is not to far removed from my late Tios or even ultimately my own. The legal battles of cousin and foundation laid for their younger siblings my late Uncle watching the Von Erichs

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