November 4, 2017. Lunch – Charleston’s, Fort Worth. TCU vs. Texas

What a different sort of day.

We ate whitefish, cream cheese, and sliced onion and capers on bagel for breakfast.

Then at around 11:30 Billy and I drove to Fort Worth to the Amon Carter Museum to see the Wild Spaces, Open Seasons Exhibit, paintings of hunting and fishing in American art.  The mostly 19th and 20th century paintings included many gems I had never seen before, such a 1931 large Rockwell Kent of an Alaskan fur trapper.   My favorite was a small 1913 painting by George Bellows of a group of fishermen cleaning fish on Mongehan Island, Maine. No surprise that both are by American modernists. Here are photos of the two paintings and several other paintings from the small brochure.

 

Here are a few more pictures from the museum and exhibit.

After having visited Maine several times in late summer, I believe I know why so many painters are
attracted to Maine, the brilliant clear light, just like New Mexico.

 The Amon Carter is a gem of a Museum.  It specializes in American art. Some important works
include life portraits of George and Martha Washington painted by Rembrandt Peale in 1796, Mary
Cassatt’s first painting displayed in the Paris Salon of 1879, Woman with a Fan, three or four nice
Georgia O’Keefes, several Texas Artists, including a George Grammer of New York and a wonderful
Jerry Bywater painting of a housing development office on prairie land that is now Lovers Lane in
Dallas.

Interestingly the only painting of any worth that our family collected is a George Grammer painting of New York.  Here is a photo of it.

We finished our visit to the Amon Carter at 3:00 and drove to Charleston’s at 3020 Helen Street in Tanglewood where we met Dee and Tim and his wife Carolyn (who attended Penn State) and George, old friends of his from the dorm at TCU in the early 70’s.  Tim, Carolyn and I ate Club Salads with chicken as we listened to Dee discourse on all things Fort Worth and TCU.

Then at 5:00 we drove in Dee’s truck to Amon Carter Stadium.  Oddly, in this day of memories, his preferred parking spot was the University Episcopal Church lot across at the corner of Stadium and Bellaire Drive South, which was where our Boy Scout and explorer troop and post where located.  Dee brought a portable wheel chair for us to take to the game because he had obtained tickets from friends who had tickets in the handicapped seating area.  The Amon Carter Stadium has been remodeled and is huge and even though we were sitting at the top of the second tier of seats behind the goal line, we could see everything, all be it from a bird’s eye view.

TCU and Texas both played well, but TCU’s defense showed up this game and shut down Texas’ offense, limiting it to 7 points.  TCU’s offense was not stellar, but managed to score 24 points.  The thing that drove us crazy were the TV timeouts.  Instead of a 2 ½ hour game, it turned into a four hour game with all the delays for ads.  The time was filled with lots of cute video on the huge monitor of folks in the stands.  My favorite was the Kissing video, which isolated a couple in the stands who then kissed on camera.

We left at the two minute warning and were in the parking lot by the end of the game and beat Dee and Tim back to his truck by several minutes.  There were tail gate parties everywhere and even groups of folks who did not attend the game and watched it from their tailgate area.  The enormity of the event can not be over emphasized enough.  Amon Carter Stadium is huge and it is surrounded by parking lots and there are tailgate parties on all the open dirt surrounding those parking lots and in those parking lots, where it does not interfere with the flow of cars.  The Stadium has seating for 50,000 and there must be parking for 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles, so there is an ocean of people and vehicles converging on this one spot.  Dee dropped us off at our car and Billy drove us back to Dallas.

Bon Appetit