Saginaw, not Michigan

Saginaw Chamber sign

Sometimes running errands leads you to unusual places. There’s a small town near us that had the only birdfeeder that was acceptable for Dave to install in the backyard, so off we went to Saginaw, Texas. This little town is an inner suburb of Fort Worth with a several businesses and no small number of fast food joints.








This area was settled before the Civil War as an agricultural community called Dido. Remnants of this town are immortalized in the names of some streets. In the 1880s three

Cornfield near the tracks

railroad lines converged on the area in the, the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, and the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway. Of course this caused a growth in the number of businesses and an increase in population. By 1882 Dido had been renamed Saginaw by Jarvis J. Green in honor of the street on which he lived and worked in Pontiac, Michigan. Saginaw means ‘to flow out’ in the Ojibwe language. The Ojibwe (also called the Ojibwa, or Chippewa) are a group of indigenous peoples in the northern US.

In the late 1880s a post office was opened, and about ten years later there were 30 students

Top L to R: Grain silo, Home of Light Crust Flour
Bottom L to R: Silo, tracks and silo

in the school. It took another ten years for the population to increase enough to have 43 students. The population continued to grow slowly until about 1936 when two large businesses came to the area. Burrus Mill and Elevator Company was the largest grain elevator in Texas and the second largest in the nation. It attracted workers from around the area as well as local farmers. The other corporation that brought workers to Saginaw was the Globe Aircraft Company. They made trainers during World War II, as well as other airplanes and airplane parts. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that Saginaw incorporated; its population was 561 at the time. My earliest memory of this area was the sight of the grain elevators that mark the skyline outside of Fort Worth. They still remind me of all the drives to the area to visit friends in the ‘big city’.

Perhaps Globe Aircraft Company

Although we looked for a lunch place the three we found hadn’t opened yet. We had, however, seen a small restaurant in Watauga; since it wasn’t far, we drove on over to check it out. For information about my rating system, see Reading the Reviews.

Three carrots

Ying’s Café (6651 Hightower Drive, Fort Worth, TX 76148, 817-427-8606) is actually in Watauga. It’s a small, family run restaurant that has table service as well as take-out and

Top L to R: Soups, Menu
Bottom L to R: Almond chicken, Sweet/sour chicken

delivery service. Since it was early in the day, we were some of the few patrons so our service was excellent. Lunch comes with an egg roll, soup, two sides and the entrée. Dave chose egg drop soup, and sweet and sour chicken. The soup was very good with lots of egg in a very thick broth. He said that the chicken was okay but the breading was a bit thick. The rice and noodles were well prepared. I really liked my hot and sour soup, as well as the almond chicken – although the almonds were few and far between. Since I really like rice noodles, I was delighted to find that these were nicely prepared and tasty. There was lots of food on the lunch plates, and the prices were very reasonable. We’ll probably return when we’re in the mood for Asian food.

L to R: Depot and train

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