Mike Dougherty's Blog

Weekend at Patrick’s

I had a great weekend with my children and their friends in Fort Worth. (Actually, we were in Arlington when I saw my daughters, Molly and Megan. We met them for dinner Saturday night at a steakhouse there.)

Patrick picked me up at Love Field in Dallas and then we headed for Cowtown. We grabbed a late supper at the original Fuzzy’s Taco Shop near Texas Christian University.

He and I messed around Friday. talking, walking his dogs and eating good food, including fried chicken, waffles, shredded sweet potatoes and collard greens at Buttons for lunch. On Friday night, we were joined by his girlfriend, Sarah, as we tried the Flying Fish location near TCU — several photos on the wall of fishermen and -women from Arkansas showing off their prize catches.

Saturday afternoon,  the three of us sat in the bleachers at Lupton Stadium and watched the TCU Horned Frogs take on the Cal State-Fullerton Titans in a college baseball game featuring two nationally ranked teams. It was a great game, but the Titans turned a go-ahead-run on a close call at the plate in the top of the ninth inning into a full-blown five-run rally and then held on for an 8-4 win.

That seemed to start a trend because TCU, ranked No. 3 nationally entering that game, lost to CSU-F in the ninth again Sunday in the rubber game of the series. Then the Frogs repeated the trick Tuesday night against the visiting and much-more-lightly regarded Dallas Baptist University Patriots in a 4-3 loss. http://gofrogs.cstv.com/sports/m-basebl/recaps/030111aaa.html

At night, we stayed up late talking and watching movies. One was Robert Duvall’s latest, “Get Low,” also featuring Bill Murray, Lucas Black and Sissy Spacek. It’s based on a true story of a hermit in from Tennessee in the 1930s. Quite entertaining.

On Sunday morning, Patrick, Sarah and I met his longtime friend from high school, Andrew McKernon, for a great brunch at Taverna, an Italian restaurant in downtown Fort Worth.

I made some friends from Maumelle, Myron and Stephanie Putnam, waiting at Love for the flight back. Southwest had some trouble with a part in the windshield heater of our plane. After first trying to fix it, they moved us to a different gate and put us on a plane originally scheduled to go to Lubbock, Texas, and then Las Vegas, Nev.  Lubbock was experiencing high winds at the time, so us Little Rock travelers replaced the Lubbock passengers and we arrived at Little Rock national Airport about an hour late. Then the plane went on to Las Vegas for the other folks.