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TOUCHE ROSS in... by John Sise Dallas is a state of mind. Maybe that's a cliche, but that's the easiest way to describe it. It's neither large nor small, old nor new, beautiful nor ugly, eastern nor western. It's a state of mind; a spirit in the (rather soggy) air; something that says not so much "look at me now," as, "look at what I am becoming." Dallas is a city with its eye on the future, grudgingly, it seems, acknowledging its cowboy past, mostly for the benefit of expectant, booted and sombreroed tourists. Though grazing land can be glimpsed from the tops of the downtown office buildings, Dallas remains a most cosmopolitan, almost eastern city, perhaps the symbol of which is Neiman-Marcus (a Touche Ross client until bought out last year by Broadway-Hale), a store in which can be found the best of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, not to mention London, Paris and Rome. Contrasting with the modern sophistication and urbanity of Dallas are the elements from its past that refuse to die or even fade away: the nitely (sic) rodeos, re-enactments of various gun-fights and a museum where immortalized in wax are such luminaries as crosseyed Jack McCall, who shot Wild Bill Hickok, and the James brothers (Frank and Jesse) who between them shot just about everybody else. Keeping them company are their latter-day counterparts in infamy; Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Lee Harvey Oswald. From the Chamber of Commerce pamphlet that advertises these things, it seems that in Texas history it was not who you were but who (or how many) you shot that mattered. But those days are past, hopefully, and most Dallasites seem willing to let history have them, except of course, for a few hardened and hardy entrepreneurs. 26