The Book Trotters, the Lakewood and M-Street Book club members, stayed close to home this month, reading Dallas’ author and actor, Stephen Tobolowsky’s “The Dangerous Animal Club.”  Selected by Kathy Harris for September, Harris hosted the October 7 meeting on the deck of her Vickery Place home.

Written for his sons, "The Dangerous Animal Club" is a composite of true-life stories-- funny, insightful and sometimes dangerous, but stories of which all of us can relate.  Each book club member was asked to share a passage from the book that was especially meaningful to her.

Harris thought Tobolowsky’s recount of the flowers that grew wild behind his childhood home in Oak Cliff was especially poignant.

As a child, Tobolowsky loved the field of wildflowers, but eventually the land was developed, the field plowed was over, new houses were built and the flowers were gone.  However, he never forgot them and they became a memory reminding him to protect what he loved.

Years later on a return visit to Dallas, Tobolowsky and his brother were riding bicycles at White Rock Lake.  He recalled, “I hadn’t ridden a bike in ages.  It was a beautiful day.  I felt like I was flying.  We crested a hill, and if by divine gift I saw something that took my breath away.  There, before my eyes were my wildflowers—the reds, yellows and oranges-- acres and acres and acres of them in every direction.  They were never gone.  I just thought they were. .I smiled for the first time in months, knowing they were probably here all along. I had just never ridden on the right path.”

Tobolowsky grew up in an era when young boys idolized Davy Crockett and he was no exception.  To honor the wild frontier hero, Harris served Fess Parker wine and had her husband, Wally Betts, wear his coon skin cap while cooking hot dogs to serve the book club members.  

To carry out the movie theme and pay tribute to Tobolowsky’s career as an actor as well as a story-teller, Harris served pop-corn and movie theater boxed candy to complete the menu.