The Skies Above

[eggwards]

All around the northern reaches of Dallas and Fort Worth, there's a group of cities a couple of rings deep. The suburb communities take up a land mass that's almost larger than the Dallas and Fort Worth combined. They reach far up into the northern counties of Texas.

This is different than Houston, where Houston keeps growing by leaps and bounds, circling and pushing it's suburb communities out of the way. Dallas and Fort Worth are completely locked in. Still, in seeing other cities, Houston is the aberration, covering hundreds of square miles, where other cities were hemmed in long ago.

Still, with all of the cities, and many of them still finding the land to build more and more houses on the North Texas Prairie, these cities must advertise themselves. Since only some of these towns have a building taller than a few stories, often the tallest thing in town is the water tower - or as in some of these cities, several water towers.

Several of these plainly announce the name of the town, such as Irving, or Trophy Club, or Southlake, but the newer towers have full, multi-colored logos announcing the town. Grapevine has a couple with the Mustang logo for the high school, but also a couple feature a bunch of grapes as part of the agriculture that named the town.

All of the water towers in Carollton have the city's bird logo that makes the shape of the letter "C", while Plano's seventies created "P" logo is on theirs. Coppell features several logos, including the one above that features a logo that says they are just north of the DFW airport.

Besides Grapevine, the only other tower I've seen that mentions the high school's wind is in Louisville (edit: Lewisville) where the Fightin' Farmers rule. Once you get out to the smaller communities you'll often see that the town's boys have won a championship in AAA or AAAA football sometime back in the eighties or something.

So, as I drive home, I can see the towers of downtown Dallas, and the towers in Las Colinas, and the Galleria, but mainly I see the water towers, one of the things that make this area livable during the summer months where it rarely rains. I also see a couple of valleys that have filled with homes that create the need for more towers.

Of course the other thing I see are the airplanes, from the corporate jets at the Addison Airport near our house, to the Southwest planes flying to Love Field to DFW and then out to the Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth, the sky is filled with airplanes. there's rarely a few minutes that there isn't one going overhead.

Besides the logos for the airlines, and the towns, much of the rest of the sky seems rather clear of ads on my drive to work in back, but I know that will keep changing as long as more people move out to these areas - if oil and real estate prices don't kill all of the growth off.

Still, water is as much of a commodity as oil and land to these towns, so these large towers not only protect the city's supplies, but also the city's future.

At night you can see the red glow to keep all of those planes away.

Comments

[soonercubntx.livejournal.com]

I know it is an optical illusion, but that plane looks awfully close to that water tower.

In N. Oklahoma City there is a "farm" of large antennaes all in a group. At night they too light up the sky warning off the planes. One of those large towers blew over the night of the "big" tornado a few years back.

[eggwards.livejournal.com]

Well, it is only a few miles from one of the DFW runways, so it is kinda close.

Yes, Dallas has an antenna farm too, down in Cedar Hill, I think. It's the hig point on the south side of Dallas, since Dallas is sort of down low where the Trinity River runs. All of the northern suburbs are on higher ground. The distance between those sticks and the north Dallas suburbs means that we usually don't get good television reception.

Still, the sticks look like a sheet of little red lights. Houston has this too, down in Missouri City.

[soonercubntx.livejournal.com]

Thank God for Cable :)

[andrewhime.livejournal.com]

It's Lewisville.

[eggwards.livejournal.com]

Ahh. So it is.

[nomadvak.livejournal.com]

I've gotta say, I miss the Texas sunrises. I used to live in Dallas and would drive up the toll road to the Bush parkway, and then hit 75 to go to McKinney. Right about the time I hit the Bush parkway the sunrise would be coming up, and it was always very, very nice.

[eggwards.livejournal.com]

Yep, with few hills to get in the way, you do get a big, wide sky out there.