…and Industrial Blvd

Most weekday mornings, I sit tense and troubled, sucking fumes and humming tunes, staring at a million taillights, questioning my life choices, contemplating Time and Eternity, and marking progress by Industrial Boulevard.

Boomtown

Dad sold his auto repair business in Mineral Wells in 1979 and moved us to Arlington, Texas, the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. DFW population was 2.3 million in 1979. In 2023, the population was 8.1 million, making it the most populated metropolitan area in Texas and the Southern United States.

To put it in business terms, we 4Xed the crap out of the population in just 44 years.

Clogged Artery

In 1979, two Metroplex highways were renowned for their congestion, especially during morning and afternoon commutes. One was Highway 75 in Dallas. The other was Highway 183, linking Dallas and Fort Worth and serving as the East-West zipper of the area, with as much city life North of it as South. Today, eight- and ten-lane highways gridlock at breakfast and dinner, crammed with Texans, misplaced Yankees, and California transplants trying to get to work, trying to get home, trying to get to school, trying, trying, trying…

Highway 183 as it passes through North Richland Hills, Hurst, Euless, Bedford, and Irving to link Loop 820 in Fort Worth and Interstate 35E in Dallas remains the carotid (corroded, crowded) artery of Dallas/Fort Worth, or as they say in Cowtown, Fort Worth/Dallas. They put stents in the artery a few years ago, both ways, in the form of Express lanes, but they get clogged, too, and if there is an accident or a clunker gives up the ghost on the Expressway, untangling the mess can take hours. Besides, the sorry, lowdown, no-account North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA), aka Satan Incarnate, charges a King’s ransom to access the fast lanes. Most days, I sit in traffic with commuters who are too poor, stubborn, or smart to pay the NTTA blood money.

Pastime

I have used all the cuss words I know and made up some to supplement those. I have completed entire projects in my head. I have written articles like this one and planned whole books. I have consumed dozens of books and podcasts on Audible or Spotify. I have debated sports with the boys from KTCK, the Ticket. I have listened to hundreds of Country, Rock, Folk, Hillbilly, Classical, Gospel, Contemporary Christian, classic Christian, Blues, and Alt songs. I have written at least a half dozen songs. I have revisited arguments and won them with well-crafted zingers. I have prayed for mercy, peace, grace, family, friends, and for Jesus to step out on that cloud and tell Gabriel to hit his horn now, not later. I have called every favorite in my phone book at least one hundred times for some reason or no reason at all.

All of this and more I have done while navigating Highway 183, just East or West of Industrial Blvd.

Industrial

Industrial Blvd in Irving runs North and South and intersects Highway 183 a mile east of Highway 360. Follow it north a few miles and it peters out at Highway 121, which runs at a 45% angle Northwest from its convergence with 183. Southward on Industrial is a bit stark and depressing. Besides Home Depot, a Chase bank branch, a taco place, and a mechanic shop, there isn’t much as you drive down from Irving to Arlington. I mean, there’s plenty but it doesn’t amount to much. Even the longtime, iconic topless bar Baby Dolls is burned down now. A couple of other sleazy dives take its place. It all feels post-apocalyptic and hopeless to me.

Easing into North Arlington, the feel of the drive changes. I would like to say it improves but that massive, preplanned city-within-a-city development named Viridian, with its houses, townhouses, a man-made lake with a fake beach, and an elementary school feels too much like The Truman Show to me. Even the name Viridian gives it a futuristic human experimentation feel.

Want to support my work but just this once? How about a cup of coffee?

Jerry’s World

By the time you come to Viridian, you are no longer on Industrial Blvd and no longer in Irving. You are on North Collins in Arlington. Collins is one of the main streets there. Follow it a couple of miles south of Interstate 30 and you find yourself feeling small against the massive concrete and chrome home of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones’s AT&T Stadium, where football dreams go to die, sacrificed on the altar of Big Top Jerry’s insufferable pride and delusion. (Excuse me, I got carried away.)

Oh, Henry!

Industrial Boulevard, it turns out, is not very industrial and nothing like a boulevard. It doesn’t last long and delivers less. It does, in its name, capture much of the concrete and iron sprawl of the modern Metroplex, where industry reigns supreme, where native Texans are hard to find, and where saps like me sip carbon monoxide like Strawberry wine and eat our words, the ones we use to promise ourselves that soon we will leave all this behind for someplace like Henry David Thoreau’s Waldon Pond. Someplace peaceful, where the Bass are jumping, the birds are singing, and the Catfish are biting. The real Texas, where cows chew their cud devoid of contemplation, where Mustangs gallop across the horizon, their manes like ship masts in the wind, where Roadrunners run the road, and where the air is crisp and clean and carbon-free.

But my commute is over and my workday begun. Soon, I will be back on 183, looking for Industrial Blvd, cussing it when I see it, and glad when it is in my rearview mirror.