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Home & Garden

The High Life

The High Life: Storms, birds, and an unrivaled view from the top.
By Rebecca Sherman |

When I was a girl in the 1960s, my best friend’s mom would sometimes drive us along Turtle Creek Boulevard in her bronze Riviera convertible. The top would be down, she’d have a scarf around her head, and we kids would be in the back, laughing in the wind. I felt glamorous.

Turtle Creek was curvaceous and broad, like the Beverly Hills boulevards I’d seen on TV, and dotted with newly constructed, modernist high-rises. I imagined stewardesses for Braniff all lived there, enjoying their balcony views and terrazzo floors. Even back then, I knew that a terrazzo floor was stylish, and that a high-rise was desirable. Green Acres was my favorite show at the time, and when gorgeous Eva Gabor flung open the windows to the balcony of her Park Avenue penthouse at the beginning of each show, well, that’s where I wanted to be. For the time, however, my life was in Hooterville, on a middle-class street with one-story houses and Bermuda grass. Also, there’s the fact that I am terrified of heights, so the idea that I might one day live higher than sea level seemed ridiculous.

So, it comes as a surprise to people who know me well, that I’ve recently moved into a high-rise building, and live on the 12th floor, just under the penthouse. I have a broad balcony, a sweeping view of Turtle Creek, and a lush, green horizon that reaches to NorthPark Center. My building is technically a mid-rise, one of those classic late ’60s, early ’70s modernist constructions that help give Turtle Creek its retro-chic appeal. I was here for a month before I was able to stand on the balcony and look over.

The best thing about my apartment is the view, and it’s the first thing people notice when they come in. It usually goes like this: “Wow! Is that your view?” As if I had just borrowed it for the occasion and planned to return it after they left. The weather is different up here. I can see the late afternoon storms roll over Highland Park and churn toward me from a terrifying vantage point. Rain doesn’t as much fall as swirl. Lightning feels way too close. If you have spent any time in the mountains and gotten trapped in a storm, you know how I feel. Exposed. I spent many hours hiding in the hallway during June, the tornado sirens blasting, torn between wanting to view the spectacle of nature out the window and survive.

I haven’t set an alarm clock since I’ve been here. My apartment faces east, so the sunrise nudges me awake each morning, until finally the sun blasts into my bedroom and I have no choice but to get up. Birds fly past my windows, almost at eye level. They have routines, and I like their consistency. Each dawn, flocks of egrets leave their roosts near the hospital district off Harry Hines Boulevard, elegantly flapping past my balcony, their white bodies gleaming against the maroon sky. I presume they are headed toward White Rock Lake, where they will spend the day fishing. They travel in small groups, always in an irregular line, with one or two stragglers. They are close enough for me to see their eyes, and I swear they are looking at me. It’s a little unnerving, like Hitchcock’s The Birds. The scenario is repeated at dusk, when they return to their roosts. Once I saw a falcon soaring and diving over Blackburn Street. I haven’t seen him since, but I know that falcons live atop the tall buildings in the area—a craggy cliff or The Warrington roof, it’s all the same to them.

Can bugs get all the way up here? I don’t know. A Swiss woman I met in the elevator recently told me she abandoned her pretty Highland Park house in favor of high-rise living just to get away from “the giant Texas roaches.” She shuddered when she said it. I don’t blame her. But the ones I know have wings and can fly, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see one making its way past my balcony one day, eyeballing me.

I wonder if I’ll ever take my view for granted. You know, come home after work at sunset, as the evening sky is blazing orange and pink and wish for a backyard with grass and an oak tree with squirrels. I doubt it. The view from the top is too good.

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