Today in the Park Cities

Wednesday’s are slower now — school’s out, matinees are fuller, the pool line’s longer (a future Merritt column, I’m sure) and Mockingbird construction continues. But here’s some news nuggets to start your day at 10:20 a.m. (a bit late? Perhaps, but we did say it’s slower today):

1. There were two fire trucks (my favorite, the hook-and-ladder, was there) and three police cars on the southbound Central Expy. access road just south of Mockingbird this morning around 9 a.m. Couldn’t tell if it was a fire or a car accident they were addressing, as the road was closed and traffic was diverted back onto Abbott. Anyone got details?

2. Remember last year’s rainy June? According to official totals, Dallas got 11.1 inches of rain this month last year, far above our 100-year average of 3.23 inches in June. It had been 25 years since Dallas saw more rain in a single month, and 80 years since we saw a rainier June. Heck, the Trinity River was five feet above its flood stage on June 30, 2007. Isn’t the Trinity flooding over the levees one of the seven signs of Armageddon? Granted, its June 4, but for the record, Dallas has a rain-meter reading of 0.00 so far this month.

3. How about an update on the SMU men’s basketball team, which went on a safari yesterday in South Africa’s Pilanesburg National Park are part of their 15-day trip to Africa and the hometowns of three of its players — Papa Dia and Bamba Fall (both from St. Louis, Senegal), and Mouhammad Faye (Dakar, Senegal). Monday they visited Soweto, South Africa, the hometown of Nobel Prize Winners Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. The whole team took a 3-hour anthropology class called People of Africa in preparation for the trip. They return home from Johannesburg tomorrow. A chronicle of the trip and player diaries are here.

4. Five day after HPHS graduation and nothing has shown up on the local police reports about any house-party busts or underage drinking. After a busy May with multiple stories on underage drinking, it’s a welcome change. We have enough other things to report on.