I have great memories of the Ft. worth convention. Deb, Lisa and I stayed at a hotel in the Stockyards area right next to the Cowboy Hall of Fame. There were many nice restaurants you could walk to including a great steakhouse. They do an old fashioned cattle drive right down the Main street every day. We'll look into staying there again.
I'll never forget one morning as we left the hotel for the showroom. We turned left out of the hotel to drive back to the Main street happily chatting about the showroom day ahead. A police car turned onto the street, slammed to a stop parking diagonally in front of us. A "sheriff" got out of the car and "moseyed" on over to us. We thought, oh-oh what have we done now, they always say don't mess with Texas!
The sheriff instructed us that the hotel was on a one way side street and that we were going the wrong way. He'd seen the Iowa license plates, so figured he'd have some fun with us. He told us to turn the van around while he blocked the street. We apologized profusely and his reply was..... "Well, I saw you a-coming and figured I'd head you off at the pass".
I arranged the HLRSC banquet that year at the Cowboy Hall of Fame. The museum closed at 6 p.m. so we had the whole place to ourselves and could tour it for free. It made for a more memorable banquet than at just another hotel banquet room.