| James Ragland: Friendships develop over dinner 12/18/2000 By / The Dallas Morning News Some of us hardly see our neighbors, even the ones who live right next door. Maybe we don't know what we're missing.
I was reminded of what a real neighborhood is about when I had dinner one recent Sunday with the folks who live on Coral Gables Drive in northwest Dallas.
I would say it was a special dinner, except the residents have been getting together like this for more than four decades. Each summer, they come together for a cookout; each December, they have a Christmas dinner.
But it's not just the traditional meals that make Coral Gables a sterling example of how an urban neighborhood can recapture some semblance of small-town charm and civility. It's everything that happens in between.
The Coral Gables mayor
"The people here care about one another," said John Smith, who has lived on Coral Gables Drive since the late '50s, shortly after Fox & Jacobs began building houses there. "We get to know each other."
Some call Mr. Smith "the mayor" of Coral Gables, but most refer to him as the "Honey-do" man. "You know, when the ladies turn to their husbands and say, "Honey, do this or Honey, do that, and the work never gets done. Then they call me. I'm their Honey-do man."
Since he retired 18 years ago, the World War II ham radio operator has more time to make neighborhood repairs. He fixes appliances, cars, you name it. "His wife, Miss Frances, says he can fix anything except a broken heart," said one neighbor, Beverly Cuevas.
Mr. Smith, a former construction equipment salesman, had just moved to Dallas from Houston in 1958 when he was driving along Marsh Lane and saw a new development taking root. "Fox & Jacobs was building a few houses and I stopped to asked them what they were going to call it, and they said Park Forest. I looked around and there were no parks or forests or trees anywhere. There was nothing but cotton fields."
At that time, Forest Lane was the northern edge of Dallas. There was no Interstate 635 roaring nearby, and D/FW Airport hadn't been built. Mr. Smith decided to buy. "They were building 200 houses in Park Forest and I was Job No. 36," he said.
Those $25,000 brick houses are worth considerably more today, but you can find them in any city or suburb in America. What you won't find in many places are the people and the sense of community they have created. They laugh and cry together. They share tragedies and triumphs.
Wonderful neighbors
When Dorothy Golden's house burned to the ground two months ago, neighbors got there as fast as they could to help her dig through the soot and salvage what few precious valuables she could find. "I cannot tell you how wonderful the neighbors were," said Mrs. Golden, who moved to Coral Gables in 1958 and must decide whether to rebuild on the site where so many memories were born.
When one neighbor, a widow affectionately called "Miss Susie," was alone and sick, neighbors took turns cooking her daily meals – for 17 years! – before she died of lung cancer.
"Coral Gables is a throwback to the good old days when neighbors knew each other and took care of each other," Mrs. Cuevas said. She said a neighbor even stepped in to give her away when she got married to husband Randy because her father couldn't make it to the wedding.
Some of those who originally lived in the two dozen or so houses on Coral Gables Drive have died or moved away. The summer cookouts have changed from shrimp boils to barbecues. The Christmas dinners have gone from formal, no-kids-allowed affairs to casual potluck dinners for young and old.
And on that Sunday, for the first time, residents from adjoining streets were invited to the dinner. They had hors d'ouevres at one residence, dinner at the Smiths and dessert at another house. "This is what a neighborhood is all about," Mrs. Cuevas said.
In a city where fences are the norm, good dinners can make good neighbors.
James Ragland's column appears twice a week in Metropolitan and on Fridays in Texas Living. He can be reached at 214-977-8270 or at
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