It Took an 18-year-old DISD Student to Get Dallas to Care About Poor Old Bachman Lake

I have lived 3.8 miles from Bachman Lake for most of my 48 years, and drive over it every day when taking the boy to school. Yet I've never spent much time around the lake, except to eat at Al's Pizzeria or the late Dixie House, because when I was kid the north shore, along Northwest Highway, was good for two things: trash and trouble, both of which came from the across-the-street topless joints eventually chased off or burned up.You grow up here, even in northwest Dallas, and you think of Bachman as little more than White Rock Lake's bedraggled step-cousin — maybe because one's 1,000 acres and surrounded by historic estates, and the other's 205 acres and bordered by an airport and pawn and auto-repair shops. It's not fair; far from, as evidenced by the sunset joggers filling the exactly-5K-long trail ringing the lake. But until Tuesday evening the closest I'd ever been to getting in northwest Dallas' 115-year-old artificial lake was in junior high, when our school bus hit an icy patch on the Lemmon Avenue bridge and skidded to a stop just shy of taking out the guardrail. Our bus driver quit the next day.  Continue reading...