Eleven-year-old Chris Ballew is trying to talk about Jesus. Blood and laughter keep getting in the way. Chris is giggling in the men’s restroom at God’s Place International alongside his 11-year-old cousin and fellow Dallasite David Riddle because he’s bleeding. Big bubbles of dark red blow out of one nostril,…
The summer daylight is just beginning to fade as Andy Emmons’ pickup rumbles down a quaint residential street toward downtown Waxahachie. There isn’t much traffic this evening, but what little there is gawks as Emmons goes by. Passing drivers do a double-take, and the eyes of Waxahachie’s porch dwellers follow…
The lawsuit was just one of hundreds pending before State District Judge John McClellan Marshall, a nasty but unremarkable business dispute over a fee from a real estate deal. Its title–Berins vs. TRT Holdings–betrayed little of the acrimony involved. Each side dug in, refusing to settle their differences, and it…
If the facts are on your side, trial lawyers say, argue the facts to the jury. If the law is on your side, argue the law to the judge. And if you don’t have either?XBaffle the insurer with your bullstuff. Victoria Phillips doesn’t know which approach won $1.1 million apiece…
It’s 5:30 on Monday morning, and Alvaro Vallecillos is preparing for work at the East Dallas apartment he shares with his brother. He throws on some jeans, grabs a quick breakfast, and heads for his place of employment: the street. Vallecillos is a laborer who has a different boss each…
Be like Ross Improbable though it may seem, Buzz is pondering the possibility that Ross Perot is–as he has long assured us–smarter than the rest of us. Sure, it’s been easy for the past few years to dismiss Perot as a ranting jug-eared lunatic. But new evidence of Perot’s latent…
Lynda McDow concedes that her proposal to convert an old church into a public school could cause some flak, but that doesn’t bother the Dallas Independent School District trustee. “Yeah, it’ll be controversial,” McDow says of her plan, scheduled to go before the DISD board in late August. “But that’s…
Long live Ann I personally want to thank journalist Ann Zimmerman and the Dallas Observer for the story “Dumped On” [August 7]. Our community is grateful for the story, which was well investigated and well written by Zimmerman. We love and thank her for speaking out in the defense of…
The Meadows is an old battleship of an apartment house afloat in a sea of sun-blasted pavement, weeds, and debris. Painted institutional gray, the building sits with nearly half its 51 units empty or loosely boarded up, their insides reeking of mildew and rotting carpet. Seen through a broken window…
There is every indication that Bill Simpson is inside his closet-like office on this steamy July afternoon, shortly before 3 o’clock. Simpson had just left a message with a reporter, indicating that he was back from an appointment and could be reached at his office, which is located in a…
Putting the kow in Kowtown The giant sucking sound you hear coming from the west is no cause for alarm. It’s just the Fort Worth Star-Telegram kneeling, once again, before that city’s power structure. As you know, Fort Worth Police Chief Thomas Windham is taking fire for allegedly abusing his…
Rahim Minkah is finally on a roll. Six months ago, the Southern Dallas Development Corporation sandbagged the former Black Panther’s plan to build a roller skating rink in a once drug-ravaged area of South Oak Cliff [“A Dream Deferred,” May 29]. But last week, the Dallas City Council voted to…
Not our man Your recent story about John Spano [“Meltdown man,” July 31] mentioned Sebring Corporation. You referred to a deposition in which Spano claimed to be a “partner” in Sebring. This is not the case. Spano is an investor in Sebring, but he owns less than 3 percent of…
Run away, run away Buzz hasn’t seen much of John Criswell lately. But then, who has? Nobody’s watched Channel 4 news since the station was bought by the Fox network and began its downward spiral into a black hole of broadcast journalism. Buzz always liked the silver-haired, silver-tongued news anchor…
When seven-year old Garrett Brown thinks of his dog Sammy, he gets sad. Sammy was Garrett’s first dog, plucked from the pound, and the two were best friends for nearly three years. A dusky tan-and-cream mixed breed with floppy ears and a black snout, Sammy would bound after Garrett whenever…
On a ferociously hot day in July, Harold Cox carefully affixes aluminum siding to his modest home on a hilly, tree-shrouded street in Pleasant Grove. His two young grandchildren look on as Cox, with rivulets of sweat running down his face, patiently explains to the boys how to post the…
Sucking up to Sam Purported writer Ann Zimmerman’s bitter attack on City Attorney Sam Lindsay weaves a few threads of fact into a tapestry of falsehood [“Jurist imprudence,” July 17]. Zimmerman’s characterization of Lindsay as “mediocre” is patently untrue and simply not supported by an objective look at Lindsay and…
Yvonne Gonzalez, whose short tenure as superintendent of Dallas schools has been a whirlwind of press conferences, spent much of last week insisting she had no idea that recent renovations to her office suite cost taxpayers $62,000. Gonzalez called a press conference, of course, to protest her ignorance after the…
If Mary Biermann believed in omens, she would have turned around and left on the spring day in 1994 when she reported for work and learned that her office at the Dallas Inter-tribal Center came with a waterfall. As the newly hired director of the center’s medical and dental clinic,…
Jim Lites was startled when he walked into the handsome University Park home of a new business associate two years ago. Lites, president of the Dallas Stars hockey team, was among a handful of sports and business executives invited to a small cocktail party at the $2.5 million home. He…
At the Dallas County Community Action Committee, charity really does begin at home. Cleo Sims, executive director of the government-supported anti-poverty agency, set up her daughter, a convicted cocaine dealer, with a $25,000-a-year contract to manage two agency apartments in drug-infested parts of South Dallas. She put her son to…
When Dallas schools superintendent Yvonne Gonzalez started remodeling her office suite at the district’s downtown headquarters this spring, she justified the expense by pointing to her predecessors. Chad Woolery, whom Gonzalez succeeded as superintendent, had added wallpaper. And his predecessor, Marvin Edwards, had turned a closet into a toilet. But…
