Flashback : Dallas

by Paula Bosse

I’m ashamed to say I’ve only just learned of the death of Mike Nichols, the man behind the fantastic Fort Worth-history blog “Hometown by Handlebar.” Mike, a former columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, died on March 5, 2023. He was 73.

His last blog post was on March 4, 2023 — a version of the piece also appeared in the pages of the FWST on the following day, the day he died after a long battle with cancer.

I am so sad to hear this. I never met Mike, but we exchanged pithy fan letters over the years. I discovered his blog in 2014 — the first year I started blogging about my hometown — and when I first saw it, I was shocked. His “Hometown by Handlebar” was a Fort Worth version of “Flashback Dallas” (or, I should probably say that Flashback Dallas was a Dallas version of Hometown by Handlebar). They were really, really similar. I either commented on a post of his I had stumbled across or sent him a personal message via Facebook, and that began several years of a sporadic, not-so-long-distance mutual admiration society. He frequently referred to us as “twins.”

When I was celebrating my first Flashback Dallas anniversary on Facebook in February 2015, Mike wrote, “Happy historying to you, Sis, from upstream.”

I responded with a link to his blog so that my friends would understand what he was referring to and wrote, “People who find Dallas dullsville and Fort Worth where it’s AT need to check out Mike’s blog, Hometown by Handlebar. He and I were apparently separated at birth — our blogs are surprisingly similar. I mean … it’s WEIRD!”

And then he responded, “Thanks, Paula. The first time I saw Flashback Dallas, at first glance its content and appearance — text mixed with vintage images, old newspaper clips — were so similar to my blog that I got a bit dizzy. It was as though I was looking at my own blog, but when I looked closer I saw that everywhere the text should say ‘Fort Worth,’ it said “Dallas.” I briefly wondered if I had died and gone to Oak Cliff.”

I couldn’t have asked for a more flattering (or amusing) comparison.

*

I’ve wondered about what might happen to my own blog when I’m no longer around to renew domain names and URLs, pay for web hosting, and do all the mundane administrative things one needs to do just to keep a website alive on the internet. I hope someone will keep Mike’s unbelievably vast and wide-ranging blog online as long as possible. There’s too much entertaining and informative Fort Worth history there for it to just disappear.

*

I always hoped we would meet one day. We never did. We would have had a lot to talk about. He seems like a lovely man. Rest in peace, Mike. Cowtown — and your readers — will miss you.

***

Sources & Notes

Top image is the header from Mike Nichols’ blog, Hometown by Handlebar.

The color photo is from his obituary, which you can read here.

Read a profile of Mike in Fort Worth Magazine — “A Fond Farewell to Mike Nichols: Local writer, historian, and bicycle archaeologist Mike Nichols leaves an indelible legacy behind” — here.

*

Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.