DALLAS — Recently-approved plans to trench Interstate 345 below street level in hopes of connecting downtown Dallas to Deep Ellum had to feel like vindication for a bunch of boneheads.
More than 50 years earlier, the Bonehead Club of Dallas protested the construction of I-345 in their typically unique and humorous way. A 1972 WFAA story from the SMU Jones Film Library shows the group playing horseshoes and hopscotch on I-345 as it was still under construction. It was their way of making a point about a city park being destroyed to make space for the highway.
“There is a possibility you have a plan here but it doesn’t look like it at all,” said one Bonehead to the highway’s planners and developers. “It looks like you just have gone ahead and blunder busted this park.”
He made his opinion known all while wearing a woman’s hat, another trademark of a group that found a way to tackle community issues with humor, jokes and laughter.
“They created all these practical jokes and had fun all while at the same time raising awareness to things going on,” said historian Farris Rookstool, who is familiar with the group’s history on a personal level.
Rookstool's father was a member.
The Bonehead Club started in 1919 as group of businessmen who would meet downtown for breakfast.
Over time, their meetings took on stronger civic engagement, and they eventually decided to form an officially recognized group with a specific goal and motto.
“To know more and more about less and less until eventually we know everything about nothing,” Rookstool said.
They would limit the group to 57 members because, like Heinz 57, they wanted to create something unique and special, according to Rookstool.
Official members would wear black derby hats while visiting, and honorary members would wear women’s hats at group functions. Past members in the club include Lamar Hunt and Dallas Mayor R.L. Thornton.
“They did not do anything malicious or hurtful,” said Rookstool. “For some of these senior men, this was the only joy and happiness they had in the latter years of their life.”
Rookstool said the group did not recruit younger members, which might explain how they slowly faded away. A Facebook page last updated in 2012 seems to be the last visible remnant of the group.
However, several boxes archived at the Dallas Public Library hold newspaper clippings, hats, satirical awards and other pieces of memorabilia from the Bonehead Club. Some of the headlines include the group putting a giant padlock on the gates at Fair Park to commemorate the “Grand Closing” shortly before the grand opening of the State Fair of Texas.
Old 1960s black-and-white WFAA footage from the SMU Jones Film Library shows the men walking under ladders, breaking mirrors for a Friday the 13th Party and bringing a basket of stones to a glass house and pretending to cast them.
“They poked fun at things we take so seriously today,” said Rookstool about the group’s ability to stay active in community issues and politics but without the vitriol or angst that dominates social media today.
And if a new city park is built once the I-345 overpasses are taken down, Rookstool has the perfect name.
“Bonehead Plaza or Bonehead Park,” he said.
That's having the last laugh.
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