Touche Ross in Dallas;

              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.
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