A Jazz Singer In Dallas

It’s been more than six years since we moved halfway across the country to our home in Dallas, TX.

In the thirty years we lived in California, a lot of things changed there — some for the better, and some not.

Texas is a far different place, and even more different from the locales of my childhood, New York City and Coastal Connecticut.

In all of these places, though, one can certainly become enveloped in a strong sense of community.

And never more so than here, today.

One night not long after we arrived in Texas, I went out with a friend for dinner.

Sitting at the bar, we were befriended by four people – two seated on either side of us.

From, of all places, California.

I mean, they were from exactly MY California — where I had lived and worked all those years.

They had just moved here.

When we “friended” each other on Facebook, we knew some people in common.

And not just ANY people, either.

I won’t name names, but they would be quite recognizable to almost anyone who watches TV, eats in restaurants or was a close friend of Frank Sinatra’s.

This sort of thing happens often to me in Texas. Before I changed my California vanity plates to Texas generic ones, people used to walk up to me all the time and tell me they recognized the plates — and me — from my Orange County Newschannel days. Someone even came over to me while I was shopping at a Sav-On in the burbs and asked if I was me.

She had recognized my voice.

Could California be moving to Texas?

Could the whole world be moving to Texas?

Maybe they’ve found out that there’s a heck of a lot of culture here.

In a community that’s as warm and sweet as a Malibu summer.

So, ok, there’s no ocean.

But we do have jazz.

Plenty of it.

Along with a delightful group of people who perform it and support each other.

And an audience for it.

And that, I like.