Good Neighbors

My father and I pulled into The Market at Bonton Farms in South Dallas to grab lunch before our trip to the old neighborhood a few miles away. This was at the beginning of the year, after a long stretch in quarantine. In the “before times”—before the pandemic, before Dad’s health declined—this was something we did regularly.

We would drive down to Bexar Street, to where it dead-ends into the Great Trinity Forest and a Trinity River levee—one of Dallas’ most beautiful natural treasures. There at The Market, we would have a bite for breakfast. Then we would head home, toward North Dallas, by retracing my father’s childhood steps along memory lanes called Park Row, South Boulevard, and the former Forest Avenue long ago renamed for Martin Luther King Jr.

For more than a year, we had spent precious few hours together in the same space, though my parents live only 5 miles from my house. But for our sanity, we had decided to mask up, gas up, and head to Dad’s South Dallas motherland, which some current residents call The Brotherland.

“Whoawhoawhoa,” my 77-year-old father, Herschel Wilonsky, moaned through his mask as we approached our destination. The farm and market reside atop the former Turner Courts housing project, which was once so violent even cops stayed away as soon as the sun threatened to set. Parked out front was a shiny, restored dark blue 1929 two-door Model A Ford with running boards and wheels painted daybreak yellow. It looked almost identical to the four-door Model A Dad rebuilt when he was a teenager and kept under a car cover until Mom convinced him to sell it last year.

Dad grabbed his wooden cane, which was once his father’s, and hustled for a