White Rock Lake, Garland Road near San Rafael

as told to Keri Mitchell by Sally rodriguez, Dallas Park and recreation Department’s historian. Photos are courtesy of the Dallas Municipal archives and curated by rodriguez. She authored the book “White rock Lake,” available at area bookstores and through arcadiapublishing.com.

If you notice, Garland Road is just a two-lane road, not the sixlane road it is today. Because Garland Road is so small, there’s more parkland in that picture than there is today, and there was actually a park road that ran parallel to Garland down lower. We used to have a lot of little dirt roads that ran through. There’s now a guardrail at the edge of the trail, and that’s all the space there is. The parkland is very narrow now in most of the area.

This photo was something acquired at an estate sale, and so we have no background information on the picture. We have no clue what the group was gathered for. Behind them is the house, if I’m not mistaken, that used to have a line of rooms in the back, a separate building, and that was the hunting lodge.

(Because of the lack of photo information, city archivist John Slate, who oversees Dallas Municipal Archives, made an educated guess that the photo was taken in 1933-34.) “The cloche or clochestyle hats match the time period, as do the dress hemlines,” Slate says. “Hemlines were higher in the late ’20s, went back down to shin and lower in early ’30s. The one fellow in the white suit would not be out of place in the early ’30s. The fedoras on the men are also on line for about that time. The photos we have of hats on Clyde Barrow and his buddies are very, very similar and are 1933-34.”

Running buddy

A phone, an iPod, keys, money, identification, energy gels. This is the list of essentials runners carry with them when they run — give or take an item or two. Even if they leave one or two things behind, carrying the rest can be awkward and uncomfortable. After decades of long-distance recreational running and 12 marathons, Lakewood resident Julie Bradfield had enough of holding bulky items in her hand or strapping them around her waist. “I tried everything on the market. It just wasn’t comfortable,” she explains. It was time to get creative. Using materials she had around the house — a running shirt, an old computer bag — she made a lightweight, waterproof pouch that could fit her necessities. “The pouch was easy,” she says. “The hard part was figuring out how to attach it to myself.” Her mom suggested she use magnets to secure it to her clothing. And thus was born the first Running Buddy — a small pouch that folds over on itself like a wallet around the runner’s waistband. For a year, Bradfield ran with her homemade contraption. “When I put it on, I always thought, ‘There’s got to be other people who would like to have something like this.’” Turns out she was right. After a year of navigating the tricky process of getting the Running Buddy on store shelves, she finally launched her product online in October, then Run On! on Mockingbird Lane began carrying it in November. Soon people began giving her the ultimate compliment: “After a while, I forget I even have it on.” It’s big enough to hold a phone, lightweight and sweat proof. It’s “manly” enough that men feel comfortable snapping it on, yet trendy enough that women who aren’t even runners buy them to wear to the fair or when they travel. Think of it as the hip kid sister of yesteryear’s fanny pack.

—Brittany Nunn

Bookworms unite

“I love to read,” chirps 10-year-old Lakewood Elementary School student Hannah Wahl. “My friends say if I’m reading a book, I can’t hear anything going on around me.” Which is exactly why her grandmother’s birthday present — her very own Little Free

Library for her front yard — was such a perfect gift. During a family visit to Hannah’s grandmother’s house in Minnesota, Hannah noticed several small structures that look like dollhouses on posts in people’s yards. When she asked what they were,

FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING IN HANNAH’S LITTLE FREE LIBRARY, her house is located at the corner of Malcolm and Hillside.