News that the Cotton Bowl in Dallas had undergone a $140 million renovation brought back a flood of memories. Anyone raised in the region understands the iconic nature of the stadium on the state fair grounds, which is approaching its centennial in five years.

Living only about 50 miles away, long before Dallas traffic was the nightmare it is today, trips down to games there were not so scary.

Dad took us to several early Dallas Cowboys games, to see the likes of legends Jim Brown and Bart Starr. A friend gifted us tickets to the 1964 Cotton Bowl game that pitted No. 1 Texas against No. 2 Navy and a young quarterback named Roger Staubach, who would return to the stadium years later to lead the Cowboys to Super Bowls.

I saw him play briefly again in 1970. I thought I had misunderstood Dad when he said we were going to a football game on Monday night.

While Monday night games would eventually become a big part of Cowboys lore, their first try was a disaster.

The St. Louis Cardinals manhandled Dallas at that first Monday night game, 38-0. Coach Tom Landry, trying to ease Staubach along, relented and brought him in for a struggling Craig Morton. It didn’t help.

It got so bad that the crowd, aware that Don Meredith was in the broadcast booth, started chanting his name, and ABC obliged by turning on the lights in the booth as he waved to the crowd. I’m sure Don was glad he was there and not on the field.

There were cheerleaders on the sidelines, but the group was not yet the iconic Cowboys cheerleaders.

A few years before, my aunt and future uncle took me to a Saints game in a pouring rain that we finally abandoned at the half. I’ve found some videos of that game. The field was a muddy mess, with players’ numbers and yardlines unreadable. Wearing my future uncle’s jeans while my clothes dried was comical, as I could get both my legs into one pant leg.

I made a couple SMU games during my freshman year, including seeing the vaunted Texas Longhorns overcome a 14-0 SMU halftime lead to roll up a 42-14 win as Roosevelt Leaks set the Southwest Conference single-game rushing record.

I made it to the stadium three more times, for concerts. The first, July 6, 1975, was an all-day affair with Trapeze, Montrose (with Sammy Hagar), the Eagles and the Rolling Stones. It was a precursor to the Texxas Jams held there from ’78-‘88.

We camped out all night on the Cotton Bowl steps to get a good seat, only to give it up when the crush of people near the stage got too great.

One of the renovations announced was wider concourses, and I’m happy about that. The crowd was so pressed together to get in to see The Who’s 25th anniversary concert in 1989 (with Stevie Ray Vaughan) that we wondered if we could make if through the mass of bodies alive.

The final visit was a few months later, again for the Stones. The couple with us was a bit put off that we paid someone to park in their front yard near the stadium, but we assured them that’s how it was done. It didn’t ease their minds driving out of that neighborhood late at night.

My lone connection with the storied Red River Rivalry football game between Texas and Oklahoma, played in the stadium, was gassing up cars from Oklahoma at Dad’s service station in Denton as they headed to Dallas. There was always friendly banter, and at least once, an Okie stopped back by on the way home after his Sooners had won, to get in the last word.