Jack Dempsey’s Rolex
When I was a child, my parents always received a cheesecake from Jack Dempsey’s Broadway Restaurant at Christmas. I didn’t really understand who Jack Dempsey was or why he sent us a cheesecake every year, but the cheesecake was delicious. As I got older, I came to understand that my grandfather had at one point served as Dempsey’s attorney, and my grandparents had become friends with Dempsey and his fourth wife Deanna. Sadly, however, Dempsey’s restaurant closed in 1974, marking the end of an era for my family.
The Erisman Grocery Company
Growing up in Ft. Worth, Texas, I was vaguely aware that my great-great-grandfather, Richard Y. Erisman, had once run a grocery store in the city. As a child, I supposed it was like the grocery stores I knew, where you navigated aisles of food and other products with a grocery cart and took your purchases to the cashier for checkout.
Juneteenth
This isn’t a story about my ancestors, but it is one worth telling. Growing up in Texas, I was certainly aware of Juneteenth, which has only been a national holiday since 2021 but has been a Texas state holiday since 1980. To me, as a young person, the holiday wasn’t much different from Memorial Day or Independence Day, one of those summer holidays marked by parades and cook-outs and sometimes fireworks.
Brave Women
Late last year, the Austin Chronicle published a short Texas history trivia quiz. One of the questions was as follows:
Q: After statehood in 1845, the U.S. built a series of around three dozen frontier forts along a boundary that kept shifting westward. Native Americans only attacked one. Which one?