Waco to Dallas is roughly 100 miles, a drive of less than two hours. I considered staying a night, but it seemed too close. About all I knew of Dallas was that President Kennedy had been assassinated there and that it had a substantial Korean community. My knowledge was otherwise scant. Only on this trip did I learn that it was the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the country, with a population of about 1.34 million. A little homework beforehand would have turned up plenty to see. Instead, I passed straight through in my ignorance.
After returning from the trip, I heard in the news that the concentration of Korean businesses around Royal Lane in northwest Dallas had been officially designated a Koreatown. We stopped at a Korean market there to buy the staples and other groceries we would need on the way to our next destination, Atlanta, Georgia. In size and variety, the market was every bit as well stocked as those in Los Angeles. We thought about having lunch at a Korean restaurant, too, but the gimbap my nephew’s wife had packed for us when we left Waco was enough for both lunch and dinner.
From Dallas, taking Interstate 30 through Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee, would put Atlanta 912 miles and 13 hours away. The route along Interstate 20 through Mississippi was 780 miles, or 12 hours. Since the difference was only about an hour, I decided to go through Little Rock, where President Clinton had spent much of his career, and Nashville, the country-music city known as the Athens of the South. Even their names stirred my imagination.
But once I had followed Interstate 30 out of downtown Dallas, another temptation took hold. What would it be like to leave the comfortable freeway and drive through the rural heartland?
“Any road will do, as long as it gets us there,” I thought. Surely I could get back on the freeway somewhere along the way. Without much planning, I turned onto Route 80.
It turned out to be a thorny choice. I saw little of the countryside I had hoped for, and I had to slow down considerably. In the towns, the limit dropped to 25 mph. On the narrow road, passing large trucks was unnerving. “Ah, I’ve taken the wrong road.” Perhaps my growing impatience colored my view, but everything I saw began to look much the same.
Guide
In the account’s original context, the Korean population of Dallas was estimated at about 100,000. Royal Lane, where Koreatown took shape, had once been considered a high-crime area, but was described as having grown into a leading commercial district in northwest Dallas. Around 600 Korean businesses operated there, including markets, restaurants and hair salons. According to the Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, the Korean population of Texas, including people of mixed ancestry, was 134,313.