Fort Worth Allen Chapel of the AME Church
This church is the foundation of the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in the Fort Worth area and was founded in 1870. The chapel was constructed in 1912.
The Church is located on the edges of Fort Worth’s Uptown district which is experiencing some urban revival.
I’m in Fort Worth for an undetermined amount of time while I wait for instructions to travel overseas for my current job. In my spare time I thought I’d try pictures of trains, never having made them a subject of my photography in the past.
Union Pacific 9463 at Tower 55, Fort Worth, Texas
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, or Facebook, or even here since the successful integration of those two Social Networking Tools with this blog, then you’d know that I recently began taking dancing lessons with Arthur Murray of Fort Worth.
I’ve been working nightly, taking private lessons as finances would allow, and taking every group class I can possibly fit in to try and learn to dance.
You might ask, “Why?”
I don’t often talk about my personal life on the blog (which might explain the dearth of posts lately since I also don’t talk about work), and I’ve made a point not to make much mention of my wife and daughter because I want any anger in comments or negativity coming back at me, not at my family. But I digress.
The intention of the dancing lessons was to surprise my wife. I think I did well in that regard. I didn’t surprise her completely, but I did get most of the way down that path.
On April 12th I took an Introductory Dance Class with Arthur Murray. Following that class I immediately signed up for their Foundation Program and told my new instructor, Stephanie, that for the next three nights she and Arthur Murray Dance Studio “owned my soul.” I was scheduled to attend three personal lessons, and every group class that I could as a beginner in the space of three short days.
By Thursday night I would have seven hours of dance lessons, whether personal or group, under my feet.
I did a lot of building up on the phone with my wife during the week, but the one area in which I slipped up and almost spoiled the surprise was in answering her question about what to wear. When I told her to wear boots, she figured we were going dancing – Country Dancing.
The fateful night of her visit to Fort Worth, where I’m working for a few months, arrived and she was ready for a night on the town. I took her to a dive called The Goat in Dallas. My surprise for her for the night was three-fold. Her favorite local blues musician, Jackie Don Loe, was playing; her best friend whom I’ll call “Trouble” had agreed to be there; and I was planning to dance with her.
She was surprised as it was by her friend’s visit, and that might have been more than enough for my normally unromantic self to have scored points, but I wasn’t wasting seven hours of lessons to be a wallflower.
After an hour of live music the band finally played something slow enough for my newly minted dancing feet to handle. I took my unsuspecting wife by the hand and brought her to the dance floor. Pulling her to me I began dancing with her with a confidence and capability I never had before – at least not without an unhealthy dose of liquid inhibition remover.
She took immediate notice. Her comments to me throughout the dance were along the lines of, “Where did you learn to dance like this?” and “You’re going to have to tell me the steps because I’m not used to dancing like this.” Her smile told me everything I needed to know. My efforts to do something special for her were well received, and tremendously appreciated.
I can finally dance with my wife.
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