April 6, 1997: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum
	March 5-9, 1997: A Trip to Fort Lauderdale
	Return to the Index for 1997

Lowery Evans is one of our closest friends; I have known him for almost ten years, having first met him when Grant was alive. Some years ago, Lowery partnered with Ron Drew, and they moved from their place in Garland to a house closer to both their workplaces in 1992- a house in Grand Prairie. Today, we'll be joining them and some of our other friends for Lowery's birthday.

It is about a half-hour trip from my house to Lowery's; there are a couple of ways to go. The most direct is to head south on Inwood, go under Stemmons Freeway and then across the Trinity River. Inwood turns into Hampton at that point, and Hampton continues south to intersect with I-30 west to Fort Worth.

We take I-30 west for about eight miles past Loop 12 and into the northern part of Grand Prairie.

Eventually, we find the exit for Carrier Parkway, and this road takes us off the expressway and northwest almost to the border between Grand Prairie and Irving.

On the map at right, I-30 is out of the view to the south, but you can see Carrier Parkway coming up from the southeast. One note about this map, though. When Lowery and Ron lived in Grand Prairie, the President George Bush Turnpike (Texas Highway 161) had not been built this far south. In fact, there was some ongoing controversy about what the route of this expressway would be. One possible route had it coming quite close to Lowery's house, and I think the uncertainty of that was one of the reasons they eventually decided to move up into Hackberry Creek in Irving.

Anyway, when we get to Westfield Road, we turn off Carrier Parkway and wind our way back into the neighborhood where Lowery lives, eventually turning north on Bishop Drive to get to their house.

You can also get to Lowery's house from the north; the decision on which way to come is usually determined by the time of day, for at rush hour, I-30 can be extremely congested.

Lowery and Ron have a very nice house on the east side of Bishop. There were, if I recall correctly, four bedrooms, a very nice living area and kitchen and a garage around back with a side entry. (In addition to not liking cheese on anything he ate, Lowery didn't like houses with front-facing garages- something quite common around here.)

This evening, the birthday party will be a relatively small one, with only about ten of us present. Lowery fixed a nice dinner, and Fred and I brought the cake. Lowery's actual birthday was on the 8th, but since we were in Florida then, we all agreed to postpone the party for a week.

As Fred usually does, he brought his tripod so we could take a group picture, and at left you can see all of us just before we cut Lowery's cake. From the left are Barry Skiba, Ron Drew, Prudence Lucas, myself, Fred, Lynne Richardson, Larry Marshall, Lowery and Sherman Carter (close friend of Barry).

You will see most of these people, Particularly Prudence and Ron Drew, on many other album pages in subsequent years. You won't see much of Barry and Sherman; they eventually moved up to a small town in Oklahoma. And you won't see a great deal of Larry Marshall; while Fred and I used to spend a great deal of time with him, something eventually cooled in our friendship. I really don’t know what it was, but some years hence we stopped seeing him much at all.

We had a really good time at Lowery's this evening; he and Ron fixed the supper, and with the traditional birthday activities, it was a very pleasant gathering. As far as photos are concerned, we just took a few other candid shots during and after dinner, and you can click on the thumbnail images below to have a look at them:

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	April 6, 1997: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum
	March 5-9, 1997: A Trip to Fort Lauderdale
	Return to the Index for 1997