Dallas and I have history. It’s where I spent my last two years of high school and I still have family there—a younger brother, his wife and the first grandbaby of our clan. During my mother's visit over the summer, rumors of “first time parents syndrome” surfaced. Whisper mode was enforced anywhere in the two-story house if the baby was asleep or trying to sleep (which occurred throughout the majority of a 24-hour day). A hyper-vigilant germ mania was also in effect. But even before the birth of my nephew, history had proven that when any two members of my family gather under one roof, tension flares.
This Thanksgiving marked an historic first for me: rather than stay with my brother at his house in Dallas, I decided to get a hotel room while visiting the family. I thought this would come as an insult to the rest of the family and was preoccupied with how I might couch the news. Before I could come up with anything good, I was informed that only my mother would stay at my younger brother’s new home in a suburb of Dallas and that my older brother and I should find a hotel. I’d show them. I wouldn’t stay just anywhere, like the dull, homogenized extended stay motel my older brother would book. I’d stay in the finest the city had to offer: The Adolphus—a hotel that, like me, had history in Dallas.
Built in 1912, by beer baron Adolphus Busch who spared no expense in creating what would be touted, “the most beautiful building west of Venice,” the hotel was the tallest building in Dallas (at 21 stories) when it was erected. It was the first hotel in the world to have central air conditioning (if anywhere in the world you need air conditioning, it’s Texas in the summer). Busch poured $1.87 million into the place, which back then was a lot of beer money. An $80 million dollar renovation took place in 1981 and more recent renovations are currently occurring, room by room—all 428 of them, including 21 suites and 31 different floor plans.
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