Texas Stadium will soon be a memory after 37 years.
It won't be long before a local landmark here in Dallas–Fort Worth — Texas Stadium — is bulldozed to the ground.
We're moving in that direction. The statue of Tom Landry that has been greeting people as they arrive at the stadium for nearly 10 years was removed a couple of days ago. It will be put in storage until it is time to put it back up in front of the new stadium in Arlington.
Texas Stadium is perhaps one of the three most recognizable structures in this city, with the other two being the Texas School Book Depository (now the home of the Sixth Floor Museum) and the Southfork Ranch, which was the home of TV's Ewing family.
I did not grow up in Dallas, but my grandparents lived here and we came here for holidays and summer vacations. Texas Stadium opened in October 1971, when I was 11 years old, and I remember that my grandmother got tickets for my father, my brother and me to go to a Cowboys game in that inaugural season. I don't remember who the Cowboys played — it might have been the Cardinals.
Over the years, I went to several events in Texas Stadium.
Among them:
- In 1979, while my family was visiting my grandmother for the Christmas holidays, an old friend of the family called and told me that her husband's company had provided several seats for them in their private box for that afternoon's playoff game.
The friend had decided not to attend, but her son and daughter, who were about my age, would be going and they wanted to know if I would go with them. I agreed to go and had a blast that afternoon, eating roast beef sandwiches and drinking Bloody Marys.
The Cowboys lost that game to the Rams, and it turned out to be Roger Staubach's final professional football game. - Three years later, as a young reporter for a newspaper in Arkansas, I got press credentials that would permit me to observe a crucial college football game from the Texas Stadium press box.
The game was between SMU and Arkansas. It ended in a 17-17 tie, and SMU represented the Southwest Conference in the Cotton Bowl in January. - In the spring of 1988, my brother and I attended a Pink Floyd concert at Texas Stadium. I found that the acoustics weren't particularly good — it seemed like that hole in the roof sucked a lot of the sound out and it was hard to tell what the performers were singing.
Consequently, it wasn't the best performance I ever saw, but I will always remember walking in to the stadium and passing by cars and vans in the parking lot with their somewhat perplexing "Roger Who?" messages on the windows.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, "Roger Who?" was a reference to longtime band member Roger Waters and his legal squabbles with the rest of the band at the time. - In 1989, I went to Texas Stadium for what I believe was the last time. Anyway, I can't recall going back to Texas Stadium again.
On Christmas Eve, my father and I went to see the Cowboys (who were completing a miserable 1-15 season) play the Green Bay Packers in the season finale. The Packers still had a shot at the playoffs. It should be obvious from the record that the Cowboys did not.
I guess the thing that was noteworthy about that day was that a severe cold front had moved through the Metroplex and the pipes at the stadium froze. Some of them may have burst.
My father and I wore several layers of clothes and sat huddled in our seats, which seemed to be located in a section that drew every cold gust of wind that found its way into the stadium.
I didn't care, though. I've been a Packer fan since Vince Lombardi was roaming the sidelines, and it was the first (and so far, only) opportunity I've ever had to watch the Packers play in person.
But it did bother me that the concession stands ran out of hot chocolate long before the game was over!
And, about midway through the third quarter, my father and I decided it was simply too cold to stay for the rest of the game so we left.
I include that here to remind you of the stadium's memorable history — and to prepare you for this fall. Even though everyone knows the Cowboys will be calling a new stadium "home" this fall, it is still apt to be something of a shock when it comes to pass.
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