In my last post, we were just getting our feet wet with the ads in Meadowbrook Junior High’s student newspaper, The Meadowlark. Let’s see how much farther we can get in this installment:
Hiett Cleaners, 5915 E. Lancaster, phone LO-3681. This location was just about a block or so east of Ferry’s Boot Shop on the same side of the road, which placed it between Canton Drive and the presentday Loop 820.
If I’m not mistaken, Ellis Hiett was the owner. During the 1960s, he was heavily involved in bowling leagues at Meadowbrook Bowl. That bowling alley sat on the south side of E. Lancaster at the intersection of Collard and E. Lancaster. Today it’s the soccer field for Texas Wesleyan University.
Conoco Service Station, 2001 E. Lancaster, phone ED-0417. The ad further states W.F. (Bill) Haynes, Wash and Grease, Service By Manuel. Analysis of all information provided in the ad suggests a number of things. Location was near the intersection of Windham and E. Lancaster, basically across the street and slightly east of the current location of the Humane Society of North Texas. The owner, obviously, was W.F. (Bill) Haynes and they apparently did enough car washes (by hand in those days), lube jobs and other mechanical work to justify bragging about it. Particularly interesting is the fact that Manuel did all the service work. He must have been one extraordinary mechanic to be mentioned prominently (in full capital letters, no less) in an ad.
White Lake Dairy. No address or phone given, but none was needed. Everyone knew where they were located, just north of what is now I-30 and Oakland. Remember, too, that these were the days of home milk delivery, which continued well into the late 60s.
Beyond their name, the ad stated the obvious but in a very cute way. Quality Products, Wholesale And Retail. YOU can WHIP our CREAM But YOU can’t BEAT Our MILK.
Unexcelled Cleaners, (Excelled by none), Sub Station No. 3, 2634 Meadowbrook Drive, Mrs. V.A. Tharp, Mgr.
If you recall in my last post there was an ad for Tharp’s Grocery & Market at 2636 Meadowbrook Drive. It’s obvious that the Tharps owned both businesses, probably both in the same building. You have to remember that in those days, washeterias were not that widespread. In fact, the concept was still relatively new. Most people used cleaners on a regular basis or washed at home using washboards and a tub, an old fashioned (to us) wringer washing machine, or by hand in the kitchen sink.
Incidentally, no one thought about damage to the environment back then. The normal way to empty dirty, soapy water out of a wringer washer was to attach a hose to the drain, stick the hose out the back door or hanging off the back porch and let the water run out into the back yard. No kidding, that’s the way it was frequently done.
Roquemore’s Quality Foods, 4402 E. Lancaster, phone LA-2166. This was another small neighborhood market whose address puts it just past the intersection of Rand and E. Lancaster and two blocks due north of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church.
That’s it for this page. I think I’ll stop here and start my next post with ads from page 3.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Real Meadowlark
Ask people on the East Side today what The Meadowlark is and, if they even know, they’ll tell you that it's the newsletter of the West Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association. That’s true as far as it goes, but it isn’t the original Meadowlark. The original Meadowlark took the form of the student newspaper at Meadowbrook Junior High School, 2001 Ederville Rd. S. This location was just north of the open field at the corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland that I mentioned in an earlier post. When the cattle left I can’t say, but that field today is part of the original Meadowbrook Junior High School, now known as Meadowbrook Middle School.
Where did that information come from? From a time capsule I didn’t know I had, in the form of the May 4, 1951 issue that focused on the graduating class of 1951. In the course of six pages, this version of The Meadowlark offers a fascinating window into what Junior High was like in those days and the activities they had. Even better are the advertisements that help rediscover the kinds of businesses that existed in the area back then.
So bear with me, folks. It’s gonna take more than a little time to wade thru all this history, probably forming a substantial number of posts in the process. To get us started, let’s look at some of the ads. They are:
Moseley Refrigeration Co., 1529 E. Lancaster. Their phone number was listed as FO-4118. The advertisement stated that they were Mechanical contractors – Heating – Cooling and they were located on that part of E. Lancaster that is now known as mission row.
Trailer Finance Company. No address given, but their phone number was NO-5696. Obviously a small loan company, but I know nothing else about them. Can any of you help?
Brandon’s, 1415 E. Lancaster. Their ad states Drugs – Groceries – Household Needs, so it’s apparent they were some kind of neighborhood market along the lines of what we now call a convenience store. No more than a block from Moseley Refrigeration, which indicates that part of E. Lancaster was thriving at that time.
University Supply & Equipment Co., 1204 Ayers St. Phone number was LA-0803. They described themselves as Printers – Publishers – Lithographers, Publishers of High School and College Yearbooks. Their address puts them right around the intersection of Ayers and E. Rosedale.
Ferry’s Boot Shop, 5807 E. Lancaster, phone number LA-9435. Location would have been pretty close to the intersection of E. Lancaster and Canton Dr.
Mott’s, 3008 E. Rosedale, phone LA-5629. The ad lists them as a 5c – 10c – 25c Store. Their address puts them just west of Vaughn Blvd. and almost directly across the street from Texas Wesleyan College in that block long strip of brick buildings that’s mostly boarded up these days.
Tharp’s Grocery & Market, 2636 Meadowbrook. Their ad states that they have Quality Merchandise. Location was around the intersection of Ward and Meadowbrook, not more that a block from where Meadowbrook joins E. Lancaster.
John Morris Floral Company, Flowers For All Occasions – Three Locations To Give Better Service. No idea where two locations were, but one was on the southeast corner of Boston St. and E. Lancaster, directly east of the Valero service station.
The Chicken Shack No. 2, Specializing In Leslie’s Fried Chicken, 4400 E. Lancaster, phone LA-2319. You know, they say there’s nothing new under the sun and this ad proves it. Fried chicken businesses have apparently been on E. Lancaster since the first fried chicken moved out of the family kitchen! Incidentally, their location was just the other side of the Rand/E. Lancaster intersection.
That’s about it for this post, but don’t go away. There’s another two pages of ads to go through. By the time we’ve turned the last page, we’re going to know a lot more about life in this area during 1951. Considering the way things have been going for us lately, meaning the economy, fuel prices, food prices, etc., we could wind up wishing we could go back to 1951!
Where did that information come from? From a time capsule I didn’t know I had, in the form of the May 4, 1951 issue that focused on the graduating class of 1951. In the course of six pages, this version of The Meadowlark offers a fascinating window into what Junior High was like in those days and the activities they had. Even better are the advertisements that help rediscover the kinds of businesses that existed in the area back then.
So bear with me, folks. It’s gonna take more than a little time to wade thru all this history, probably forming a substantial number of posts in the process. To get us started, let’s look at some of the ads. They are:
Moseley Refrigeration Co., 1529 E. Lancaster. Their phone number was listed as FO-4118. The advertisement stated that they were Mechanical contractors – Heating – Cooling and they were located on that part of E. Lancaster that is now known as mission row.
Trailer Finance Company. No address given, but their phone number was NO-5696. Obviously a small loan company, but I know nothing else about them. Can any of you help?
Brandon’s, 1415 E. Lancaster. Their ad states Drugs – Groceries – Household Needs, so it’s apparent they were some kind of neighborhood market along the lines of what we now call a convenience store. No more than a block from Moseley Refrigeration, which indicates that part of E. Lancaster was thriving at that time.
University Supply & Equipment Co., 1204 Ayers St. Phone number was LA-0803. They described themselves as Printers – Publishers – Lithographers, Publishers of High School and College Yearbooks. Their address puts them right around the intersection of Ayers and E. Rosedale.
Ferry’s Boot Shop, 5807 E. Lancaster, phone number LA-9435. Location would have been pretty close to the intersection of E. Lancaster and Canton Dr.
Mott’s, 3008 E. Rosedale, phone LA-5629. The ad lists them as a 5c – 10c – 25c Store. Their address puts them just west of Vaughn Blvd. and almost directly across the street from Texas Wesleyan College in that block long strip of brick buildings that’s mostly boarded up these days.
Tharp’s Grocery & Market, 2636 Meadowbrook. Their ad states that they have Quality Merchandise. Location was around the intersection of Ward and Meadowbrook, not more that a block from where Meadowbrook joins E. Lancaster.
John Morris Floral Company, Flowers For All Occasions – Three Locations To Give Better Service. No idea where two locations were, but one was on the southeast corner of Boston St. and E. Lancaster, directly east of the Valero service station.
The Chicken Shack No. 2, Specializing In Leslie’s Fried Chicken, 4400 E. Lancaster, phone LA-2319. You know, they say there’s nothing new under the sun and this ad proves it. Fried chicken businesses have apparently been on E. Lancaster since the first fried chicken moved out of the family kitchen! Incidentally, their location was just the other side of the Rand/E. Lancaster intersection.
That’s about it for this post, but don’t go away. There’s another two pages of ads to go through. By the time we’ve turned the last page, we’re going to know a lot more about life in this area during 1951. Considering the way things have been going for us lately, meaning the economy, fuel prices, food prices, etc., we could wind up wishing we could go back to 1951!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
The Times They Are A’Changin’
My parents and I returned from El Paso on May 3, 1961, running headlong into major changes to Ft. Worth in general and particularly to the East Side.
Downtown was still basically the same, though it had acquired a futuristic 30-story skyscraper in the interim…the aluminum-skinned Continental National Bank building at Houston and W. 7th. It was easily identifiable from any point in Ft. Worth that offered a view of downtown as a result of the giant rotating clock mounted on it's roof. Two opposing sides displayed the time, while the letters CNB adorned the other two sides. Ft. Worth National Bank was directly across Houston Street from Continental (Remember the TV commercial with the girl singing "Ft. Worth National, that's my bank!" ?). Also, the corner diagonally opposite from CNB was Texas Electric, complete with a time/temperature display jutting out from the building and an image of their mascot, Reddy Kilowatt (Anyone remember him?).
Seminary South shopping center had been built at the intersection of I-35W & W. Berry Street. They drained a small lake to do it, so the shopping center actually sat below street level on the lake bed. This was the first modern shopping mall in Ft. Worth and it was accompanied with all kinds of gloom and doom predictions that it would ruin downtown. Turned out the predictions were correct for a long time, though now the tide has turned.
On the East Side, things had changed in spades, though most of the changes were good and simply made the East Side a more desirable place to be. The Monnig’s East Shopping Center had been built and there were plenty of small businesses, antique shops, two bowling alleys and the like. You could walk the neighborhoods or up and down E. Lancaster with no concern for your safety. Believe it or not, it even extended to women. Yep, things were good....but they would be changing in ways that no one suspected. If we had only known!
One harbinger of what was to come (though very few people would have believed it at the time) was the fact that when my father came on ahead to a job at Ranch Style Beans (he made the sauce for the beans) and look for a house, his boss told him to not look at anything south of E. Lancaster. What'd my father do? Looked at houses that were south of E. Lancaster. We eventually wound up at 416 Chicago (seven houses south of E. Lancaster), which is where I've been for the last 46 years and I suppose is where I'll be for the rest of my life.
In the intervening eight years, the toll road (I-30) had been built to speed access to Dallas, as well as to bypass all the lights and traffic on the old Dallas Pike. Oh, you never heard of the Dallas Pike? Believe it or not, you drive on it every day. It's nothing more than E. Lancaster…or Highway 80….or I-80…or I-180….or Division Street…or the Dallas Turnpike…or the Dallas Pike…or….you get the idea. Depending on the time period or where you live in relation to it, every one of those names describes the same road. Is it any wonder we get confused when someone mentions a certain street name?
In any event, the construction of I-30 has been considered by many to be the primary reason that the East Side has changed (or deteriorated) the way that it has, with a singular inability to attract and keep major destination businesses. When you could hit I-30 near downtown and be on a straight shot to Dallas with very few interchanges or exits to deal with, you're simply not going to have any reason to divert to a local highway. What's the result? Businesses begin to die. Of course, they don’t die right away. In fact, the East Side was still quite vibrant well into the 70s. Matter of fact, let's take a look at what the area was like in 1961.
Starting at Henderson and E. Lancaster, the Main Post Office was exactly that, the Main post office where all mail was sorted. It was a busy place with mail arriving and departing by both truck and train. If you wanted a letter to get someplace in a hurry, you sent it via air mail, with those letters and packages being delivered to the airport for that special treatment. UPS and FedEx were still nearly 20 years in the future.
Moving east, you had the T&P Depot that was still in full operation with passenger trains coming and going on a regular schedule. The downtown overhead was in full bloom, the result of an extremely short-sighted city council that voted against building I-30 below grade…and y'all know what kind of battle resulted from that decision before the overhead was torn down and I-30 moved south of the railroad tracks.
Oh, by the way, remember a couple of posts back when I said I'd tell you about the cold storage plant? During the 1940s, Swift & Co. had an ice cream manufacturing operation in the long freight building that sits just across Henderson Street west of the main post office. If you still don't know what building I'm talking about, it's easy to identify. It has about 30 or so loading docks with rust-red roll-up doors facing the south side of Lancaster. That's the building that had an artesian well inside, which is why my parents, grandmother and I didn't need to boil water during the '49 flood.
Anyway, continueing east on E. Lancaster, the area between I-35 and the T is now pretty much known as Mission Row (Union Gospel Mission and so on) was small businesses and gas stations. What we now call The T was the Ft. Worth Transit Company and just to the west of their main office on the south side of E. Lancaster was an electronics company (similar to a Radio Shack outlet) where I bought my first component stereo. Nobody bothered to lock their cars when they went into a business place and it was a generally safe location. And speaking of Radio Shack, they built a two-story headquarters building in the early 60s on W. 7th Street, just a little ways down from Montgomery Ward and across the street. Only it wasn't called Radio Shack. Instead, it was Tandycrafts and it contained everything from Leathercraft to Radio Shack. When they had their grand opening, my father and I rode the bus over there to explore the place. The atmosphere was very much like a bazaar and Radio Shack even had a radio controlled robot running around the building to give you a taste of what the near future would be like for all of us. Somehow, I don't think what we've wound up with is quite what they envisioned.
Downtown was still basically the same, though it had acquired a futuristic 30-story skyscraper in the interim…the aluminum-skinned Continental National Bank building at Houston and W. 7th. It was easily identifiable from any point in Ft. Worth that offered a view of downtown as a result of the giant rotating clock mounted on it's roof. Two opposing sides displayed the time, while the letters CNB adorned the other two sides. Ft. Worth National Bank was directly across Houston Street from Continental (Remember the TV commercial with the girl singing "Ft. Worth National, that's my bank!" ?). Also, the corner diagonally opposite from CNB was Texas Electric, complete with a time/temperature display jutting out from the building and an image of their mascot, Reddy Kilowatt (Anyone remember him?).
Seminary South shopping center had been built at the intersection of I-35W & W. Berry Street. They drained a small lake to do it, so the shopping center actually sat below street level on the lake bed. This was the first modern shopping mall in Ft. Worth and it was accompanied with all kinds of gloom and doom predictions that it would ruin downtown. Turned out the predictions were correct for a long time, though now the tide has turned.
On the East Side, things had changed in spades, though most of the changes were good and simply made the East Side a more desirable place to be. The Monnig’s East Shopping Center had been built and there were plenty of small businesses, antique shops, two bowling alleys and the like. You could walk the neighborhoods or up and down E. Lancaster with no concern for your safety. Believe it or not, it even extended to women. Yep, things were good....but they would be changing in ways that no one suspected. If we had only known!
One harbinger of what was to come (though very few people would have believed it at the time) was the fact that when my father came on ahead to a job at Ranch Style Beans (he made the sauce for the beans) and look for a house, his boss told him to not look at anything south of E. Lancaster. What'd my father do? Looked at houses that were south of E. Lancaster. We eventually wound up at 416 Chicago (seven houses south of E. Lancaster), which is where I've been for the last 46 years and I suppose is where I'll be for the rest of my life.
In the intervening eight years, the toll road (I-30) had been built to speed access to Dallas, as well as to bypass all the lights and traffic on the old Dallas Pike. Oh, you never heard of the Dallas Pike? Believe it or not, you drive on it every day. It's nothing more than E. Lancaster…or Highway 80….or I-80…or I-180….or Division Street…or the Dallas Turnpike…or the Dallas Pike…or….you get the idea. Depending on the time period or where you live in relation to it, every one of those names describes the same road. Is it any wonder we get confused when someone mentions a certain street name?
In any event, the construction of I-30 has been considered by many to be the primary reason that the East Side has changed (or deteriorated) the way that it has, with a singular inability to attract and keep major destination businesses. When you could hit I-30 near downtown and be on a straight shot to Dallas with very few interchanges or exits to deal with, you're simply not going to have any reason to divert to a local highway. What's the result? Businesses begin to die. Of course, they don’t die right away. In fact, the East Side was still quite vibrant well into the 70s. Matter of fact, let's take a look at what the area was like in 1961.
Starting at Henderson and E. Lancaster, the Main Post Office was exactly that, the Main post office where all mail was sorted. It was a busy place with mail arriving and departing by both truck and train. If you wanted a letter to get someplace in a hurry, you sent it via air mail, with those letters and packages being delivered to the airport for that special treatment. UPS and FedEx were still nearly 20 years in the future.
Moving east, you had the T&P Depot that was still in full operation with passenger trains coming and going on a regular schedule. The downtown overhead was in full bloom, the result of an extremely short-sighted city council that voted against building I-30 below grade…and y'all know what kind of battle resulted from that decision before the overhead was torn down and I-30 moved south of the railroad tracks.
Oh, by the way, remember a couple of posts back when I said I'd tell you about the cold storage plant? During the 1940s, Swift & Co. had an ice cream manufacturing operation in the long freight building that sits just across Henderson Street west of the main post office. If you still don't know what building I'm talking about, it's easy to identify. It has about 30 or so loading docks with rust-red roll-up doors facing the south side of Lancaster. That's the building that had an artesian well inside, which is why my parents, grandmother and I didn't need to boil water during the '49 flood.
Anyway, continueing east on E. Lancaster, the area between I-35 and the T is now pretty much known as Mission Row (Union Gospel Mission and so on) was small businesses and gas stations. What we now call The T was the Ft. Worth Transit Company and just to the west of their main office on the south side of E. Lancaster was an electronics company (similar to a Radio Shack outlet) where I bought my first component stereo. Nobody bothered to lock their cars when they went into a business place and it was a generally safe location. And speaking of Radio Shack, they built a two-story headquarters building in the early 60s on W. 7th Street, just a little ways down from Montgomery Ward and across the street. Only it wasn't called Radio Shack. Instead, it was Tandycrafts and it contained everything from Leathercraft to Radio Shack. When they had their grand opening, my father and I rode the bus over there to explore the place. The atmosphere was very much like a bazaar and Radio Shack even had a radio controlled robot running around the building to give you a taste of what the near future would be like for all of us. Somehow, I don't think what we've wound up with is quite what they envisioned.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Good Times, Things Change & A City In A Pyramid.
After Ft. Worth recovered from the ’49 flood, the next couple of years on the East Side were really pretty quiet, even mundane. It was simply a good time to live.
People were friendly, neighbors looked out for each other and downtown Ft. Worth was the place you went when you needed to make a major purchase. Leonard's dominated downtown, but you also had Everybody's Department Store (I think that was the name) that was actually owned by Leonard's. Sporting goods stores and all of the other major department stores that we were familiar with (Cox's, Striplings, Monnigs) were there, along with jewelry stores, western shops, shoe stores (How many of you remember Red Goose Shoes?) and on and on. Hotels such as the Worth and Westbrook and movie theatres, including the Hollywood, Worth and Palace Theatres on Seventh Street. In other words, whatever you find today in the huge shopping malls was available in downtown Ft. Worth in the early 50s. By many standards, it was better.
And there was no dearth of activity in downtown Ft. Worth, either. It was quite common to drive downtown (or take the bus) for a family outing (Remember when families did things as a family?) to do nothing more than stroll up and down the sidewalks, window shopping. Along the way you might encounter a photographer who would take photos of people on the street, then hand them a card as they passed. If you were interested in a copy of the photo, you contacted the company, gave them the number on the card and ordered a print. No one thought anything of it. Try taking photos of strangers at random today and you'll be lucky if the only thing that gets smashed is your camera.
One year, in the late '40s or early '50s, they had a movie premiere of a film called, appropriately enough, Ft. Worth, that starred Randolph Scott. In order to promote the film, a horse race was staged on the streets of downtown Ft. Worth, on W. 7th Street with the start/finish line being in front of the theatre where the film was showing (The Worth Theatre, I believe.). The horses were fitted with rubber horseshoes to prevent falling and the crowd that gathered to watch was very well behaved. Kids were controlled by their parents (Shock! Gasp!!) and you didn't need 40 cops to handle the mob of unruly adults.
What does this little dissertation about downtown Ft. Worth have to do with the East Side? Well, consider that in that time period, the neighborhoods (East Side, West Side, Poly, etc.) were where you lived and downtown was where you worked, shopped and did business. There was no branch banking or check cashing operations where you could also pay utility bills. The telephone company was the telephone company and if you didn't want to mail your bill (with a three cent stamp), you went down to the phone company and paid your bill inside the building. So, downtown and the neighborhoods worked together in a symbiotic relationship that functioned like well-oiled gears.
I believe I stated a few installments back that the East Side (and also Poly, though they actually qualify as South-East due to being south of the T&P tracks) was a highly desirable place to live. All in all, it was a good time. Your major source of news was… surprise, surprise… the newspaper and the radio. Remember, WBAP (now KXAS-TV) didn't even exist before 1948 and television ownership wasn't an ordinary thing. To steal a phrase from a song, "…the livin' was easy..".
But things were about to change….and a way of life with it. My parents, grandmother and I moved to El Paso in November 1952 on my doctor's orders (my lungs couldn't stand the humidity at that time). We stayed there eight and a half years and when my parents and I returned in April 1961 (my grandmother died in El Paso nine months after we moved), Ft. Worth and the East Side had changed radically. Even though the East Side was still a good place to live, seeds had been sown that would lead to what we're dealing with today.
By the way, while in El Paso, two things made the news that had Ft. Worth's name attached to them in one way or the other. One was the Geren Plan (I believe I have the name right.) that was touted as a way to revitialize downtown Ft. Worth. I may have some clippings buried somewhere. If I can find them, I'll share them with you in a later post. You can still find elements of that plan incorporated into various redevelopment ideas for different parts of Ft. Worth.
Secondly, Frank Lloyd Wright actually came up with a concept for a mile-high, pyramid-shaped skyscraper (with a foundation sinking a third of a mile into the ground). He envisioned consolidating an entire city into a single skyscraper, leaving all the reclaimed ground area to be developed in a spacious, park-like setting for those relatively few people who still insisted in living in single-family houses. I believe Ft. Worth was one city mentioned whose size would fit perfectly into a single skyscraper.
As with all things, some of the changes have been good, others bad and still others…. well, probably the less said the better.
People were friendly, neighbors looked out for each other and downtown Ft. Worth was the place you went when you needed to make a major purchase. Leonard's dominated downtown, but you also had Everybody's Department Store (I think that was the name) that was actually owned by Leonard's. Sporting goods stores and all of the other major department stores that we were familiar with (Cox's, Striplings, Monnigs) were there, along with jewelry stores, western shops, shoe stores (How many of you remember Red Goose Shoes?) and on and on. Hotels such as the Worth and Westbrook and movie theatres, including the Hollywood, Worth and Palace Theatres on Seventh Street. In other words, whatever you find today in the huge shopping malls was available in downtown Ft. Worth in the early 50s. By many standards, it was better.
And there was no dearth of activity in downtown Ft. Worth, either. It was quite common to drive downtown (or take the bus) for a family outing (Remember when families did things as a family?) to do nothing more than stroll up and down the sidewalks, window shopping. Along the way you might encounter a photographer who would take photos of people on the street, then hand them a card as they passed. If you were interested in a copy of the photo, you contacted the company, gave them the number on the card and ordered a print. No one thought anything of it. Try taking photos of strangers at random today and you'll be lucky if the only thing that gets smashed is your camera.
One year, in the late '40s or early '50s, they had a movie premiere of a film called, appropriately enough, Ft. Worth, that starred Randolph Scott. In order to promote the film, a horse race was staged on the streets of downtown Ft. Worth, on W. 7th Street with the start/finish line being in front of the theatre where the film was showing (The Worth Theatre, I believe.). The horses were fitted with rubber horseshoes to prevent falling and the crowd that gathered to watch was very well behaved. Kids were controlled by their parents (Shock! Gasp!!) and you didn't need 40 cops to handle the mob of unruly adults.
What does this little dissertation about downtown Ft. Worth have to do with the East Side? Well, consider that in that time period, the neighborhoods (East Side, West Side, Poly, etc.) were where you lived and downtown was where you worked, shopped and did business. There was no branch banking or check cashing operations where you could also pay utility bills. The telephone company was the telephone company and if you didn't want to mail your bill (with a three cent stamp), you went down to the phone company and paid your bill inside the building. So, downtown and the neighborhoods worked together in a symbiotic relationship that functioned like well-oiled gears.
I believe I stated a few installments back that the East Side (and also Poly, though they actually qualify as South-East due to being south of the T&P tracks) was a highly desirable place to live. All in all, it was a good time. Your major source of news was… surprise, surprise… the newspaper and the radio. Remember, WBAP (now KXAS-TV) didn't even exist before 1948 and television ownership wasn't an ordinary thing. To steal a phrase from a song, "…the livin' was easy..".
But things were about to change….and a way of life with it. My parents, grandmother and I moved to El Paso in November 1952 on my doctor's orders (my lungs couldn't stand the humidity at that time). We stayed there eight and a half years and when my parents and I returned in April 1961 (my grandmother died in El Paso nine months after we moved), Ft. Worth and the East Side had changed radically. Even though the East Side was still a good place to live, seeds had been sown that would lead to what we're dealing with today.
By the way, while in El Paso, two things made the news that had Ft. Worth's name attached to them in one way or the other. One was the Geren Plan (I believe I have the name right.) that was touted as a way to revitialize downtown Ft. Worth. I may have some clippings buried somewhere. If I can find them, I'll share them with you in a later post. You can still find elements of that plan incorporated into various redevelopment ideas for different parts of Ft. Worth.
Secondly, Frank Lloyd Wright actually came up with a concept for a mile-high, pyramid-shaped skyscraper (with a foundation sinking a third of a mile into the ground). He envisioned consolidating an entire city into a single skyscraper, leaving all the reclaimed ground area to be developed in a spacious, park-like setting for those relatively few people who still insisted in living in single-family houses. I believe Ft. Worth was one city mentioned whose size would fit perfectly into a single skyscraper.
As with all things, some of the changes have been good, others bad and still others…. well, probably the less said the better.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Ruby Wenzel, Report Cards, Tony Weddel & Fountain Pens
In my last post, I mentioned that my First Grade teacher at Meadowbrook Elementary was Belle Pearson. In 1950, I was promoted to the Second Grade and my teacher turned out to be Mrs. Ruby Wenzel. An excellent teacher, friendly and very concerned about the welfare and health of her students, she was also a believer in health food supplements and, I believe she sold wheat germ in her off time. I’m not sure of that, but I seem to remember my mother picking some up from her house. She lived over on Morris Court, which is a deadend section the runs east from Oakland and winds up just behind the school playground.
I suppose I got more than my fair share of attention from my teachers because I was just a year past my major chest surgery and was puny, delicate or fragile, depending on which term you cared to use. In other words, I was the kid who…when it came time to choose up sides for any kind of games…was always the last one chosen. And in some cases, was the one that the team captains got into arguments about who was going to be forced to take on their team. Yep, kids can be very cruel. Of course, that kind of thing happened to a lot of us – still does - and somehow we survived it, becoming stronger in the process.
Of course, all kinds of things went on at Meadowbrook, as at all schools. And we drug a wide range of things home…some wanted (like class photos) and some not (like report cards). Since I still have some of each, I'm including a few photos of both so you can remember what it was like back then. Hint: Schools were not glorified prisons with police stationed at every campus and metal detectors at every door. Practically every boy (me included) carried a jacknife to play with at recess and…believe it or not…you never heard of anyone being stabbed with one. Oh, yeah, instead of crossing guards being comprised of volunteer or part-time paid adults, the kids themselves took on crossing guard duties as members of the school safety patrol. Now, on to the photos.
This Second Grade Class photo was taken on the steps of Meadowbrook Elementary School by Bill R. Cathey Photographer, 3625 Crenshaw, Ft. Worth, Texas. Photo #5-8182. Teacher of the class was, of course, Mrs. Ruby Wenzel. There are only two kids in the class that I can identify, one being yours truly, and the second one leads to an interesting story of it's own. If you’re interested, scope out the boy on the back row, fourth from the right end. That's me.
The only other kid I can identify is Walter Thomas (Tony) Weddel. He’s on the far left end of the back row. I never had anything to do with him in the Second Grade, nor he me. He was healthy and physical while I was sick, a bookworm and absent half the time. The strange thing is that we met as adults back in the late '60s and became friends (he is a superlative aviation artist, with original paintings and prints all over the world). He always had the feeling that he'd known me before but didn't know where from. I finally sent him a copy of this photo and he discovered that we were both in it. Turns out we've known each other since 1950 and didn't know it!
Quite a difference in appearances if you compare this 1950 photo to a Second Grade class photo taken today. And it's not only the appearance of the kids that'd be different. The report cards don't look anything alike either. For example, I'm including a couple of photos depicting both sides of my own report card from the First Grade (1949/1950).
I know you’ve seen these report card images in a previous post, but bear with me. I think you’ll find it interesting.
Note that this is both the front and back. The card actually opens up. And if you think the signatures of the teacher, principal and my parents look a little strange, there's a reason for it. Ballpoint pens didn't exist then. Anyone remember fountain pens that were filled with real ink and would occasionally squirt blobs of ink just where you didn't want them? Students took bottles of ink to school and refilled the internal bladder by sticking the pen nib into the ink and then working a little metal lever on the side of the pen to suck the ink into the bladder. If you've never used a real fountain pen, you don't know what you've missed, including ink stains in the bottom of your shirt pocket because the pen sprung a leak.
You've only seen the outside of the report card. Now let's look inside.
Take a look at what they graded you on. Handwriting…Art…Health. And one entire half of the card devoted to Citizenship! This section covered everything from Courtesy (!) to Self-Reliance (?). You also see why I was the reject in the class. Take a look at my attendance. Out of 205 days, I was only in class for 85 (and I left early due to illness one of those) and out sick for 120. Today, between missing that much class time and the fact that I was skinny as a rail and couldn't gain weight if you handed me an anvil, the Child Protective Services would be investigating my parents for suspected child abuse! As I've said before, some of the changes we've experienced of late have been anything but good.
I suppose I got more than my fair share of attention from my teachers because I was just a year past my major chest surgery and was puny, delicate or fragile, depending on which term you cared to use. In other words, I was the kid who…when it came time to choose up sides for any kind of games…was always the last one chosen. And in some cases, was the one that the team captains got into arguments about who was going to be forced to take on their team. Yep, kids can be very cruel. Of course, that kind of thing happened to a lot of us – still does - and somehow we survived it, becoming stronger in the process.
Of course, all kinds of things went on at Meadowbrook, as at all schools. And we drug a wide range of things home…some wanted (like class photos) and some not (like report cards). Since I still have some of each, I'm including a few photos of both so you can remember what it was like back then. Hint: Schools were not glorified prisons with police stationed at every campus and metal detectors at every door. Practically every boy (me included) carried a jacknife to play with at recess and…believe it or not…you never heard of anyone being stabbed with one. Oh, yeah, instead of crossing guards being comprised of volunteer or part-time paid adults, the kids themselves took on crossing guard duties as members of the school safety patrol. Now, on to the photos.
This Second Grade Class photo was taken on the steps of Meadowbrook Elementary School by Bill R. Cathey Photographer, 3625 Crenshaw, Ft. Worth, Texas. Photo #5-8182. Teacher of the class was, of course, Mrs. Ruby Wenzel. There are only two kids in the class that I can identify, one being yours truly, and the second one leads to an interesting story of it's own. If you’re interested, scope out the boy on the back row, fourth from the right end. That's me.
The only other kid I can identify is Walter Thomas (Tony) Weddel. He’s on the far left end of the back row. I never had anything to do with him in the Second Grade, nor he me. He was healthy and physical while I was sick, a bookworm and absent half the time. The strange thing is that we met as adults back in the late '60s and became friends (he is a superlative aviation artist, with original paintings and prints all over the world). He always had the feeling that he'd known me before but didn't know where from. I finally sent him a copy of this photo and he discovered that we were both in it. Turns out we've known each other since 1950 and didn't know it!
Quite a difference in appearances if you compare this 1950 photo to a Second Grade class photo taken today. And it's not only the appearance of the kids that'd be different. The report cards don't look anything alike either. For example, I'm including a couple of photos depicting both sides of my own report card from the First Grade (1949/1950).
I know you’ve seen these report card images in a previous post, but bear with me. I think you’ll find it interesting.
Note that this is both the front and back. The card actually opens up. And if you think the signatures of the teacher, principal and my parents look a little strange, there's a reason for it. Ballpoint pens didn't exist then. Anyone remember fountain pens that were filled with real ink and would occasionally squirt blobs of ink just where you didn't want them? Students took bottles of ink to school and refilled the internal bladder by sticking the pen nib into the ink and then working a little metal lever on the side of the pen to suck the ink into the bladder. If you've never used a real fountain pen, you don't know what you've missed, including ink stains in the bottom of your shirt pocket because the pen sprung a leak.You've only seen the outside of the report card. Now let's look inside.
Take a look at what they graded you on. Handwriting…Art…Health. And one entire half of the card devoted to Citizenship! This section covered everything from Courtesy (!) to Self-Reliance (?). You also see why I was the reject in the class. Take a look at my attendance. Out of 205 days, I was only in class for 85 (and I left early due to illness one of those) and out sick for 120. Today, between missing that much class time and the fact that I was skinny as a rail and couldn't gain weight if you handed me an anvil, the Child Protective Services would be investigating my parents for suspected child abuse! As I've said before, some of the changes we've experienced of late have been anything but good.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Flood, Keeping Your Feet Dry, Alligators & Milk Cans.
When 1949 arrived, rain came with it...lots of rain. All that rain led, in turn, to the infamous '49 flood. If you've been watching the films of all the flooding that occurred at the end of July 2004, especially the area south and southeast of Dallas, visualize that scene in Ft. Worth proper. You have to remember that there were no levees containing the Trinity River on the west side of town, the water treatment plant sat down on the Trinity flood plain (just like Don Carter's bowling alley and the subsequent Hope Community Church on the East Side) and there was little if any protection for any of the other low-lying areas. Result? When it started raining…and raining…and raining (NOAH! WHERE'S THAT ARK WHEN WE NEED IT?), the water followed the path of least resistance.
Once the water rose high enough to overflow it's banks, what came next was predictable. What wasn't predictable was just how bad it would get. The near west side of town, essentially meaning from the bluffs on the east side of the Trinity onward, went underwater. Montgomery Ward was a going concern at that time and their building was flooded all the way up to the second floor. Of course, that much water also contaminated the water treatment plant, meaning you had to boil all of your water (bottled water in every convenience and grocery store wasn't an option then) unless you had access to a deep well that hadn't been flooded. And one more thing. Typhoid shots.
How did the East Side fare? For the most part, pretty well. Keep in mind that the East Side is, in general, one of the highest parts of Tarrant County. In fact, the hill that National Farm Life (On the north side of I-30 and about a mile or so east of Oakland.) sits on has actually been identified as the highest point in the entire county. Put another way, if the East Side ever floods to the point of being submerged, you'll be using a boat to travel over Ft. Worth.
Despite that advantage, there were still problems. Sycamore Creek, which runs under E. Lancaster just west of Marshal Grain, was also out of it's banks and over the highway. My father was working for Swift's at the cold storage plant (the T&P warehouse just west of the post office on E. Lancaster) and rode the bus home every day during the flood. According to his stories, the water was so deep over the road that all passengers had to stand up in their seats in order to keep their feet dry as the bus made it's way slowly thru the water. Strange, isn't it, that buses in the 1940s could successfully navigate water so deep that the water would be up inside the bus so far that it was nearly to the top of the seat cushions, yet today you're warned not to drive into water that barely reaches your car's bumper?
And, of course, floods bring out all kinds of strange critters living in close proximity to humans that you normally never see. Cottonmouth snakes for one, though those were pretty well expected. What wasn't expected was a little beastie that followed my father down Morris Street when he was walking home from the bus stop. An alligator about three or four feet long that apparently had crawled out of the Trinity. As he told it, the little fella was just simply following him down the street. They ignored each other and the 'gator finally ambled on somewhere else. My father came on home and didn't tell anyone about it…until a photo showed up in the paper showing a man who had caught this alligator. My mother couldn't believe he missed an opportunity to get his picture in the paper!
Finally, does anyone remember those big aluminum milk cans with handles on the side to make it easier to lift? And the big, screw-off lids? The things probably held twenty or twenty-five gallons of milk. It so happened that Swift's had a deep artesian water well inside the cold storage building (presubably it's still there) that was not contiminated by the flood waters and my father would bring artesian water home in those milk cans. As a result, my parents, grandmother and I had clean, fresh water that didn't have to be boiled before drinking.
Once the water rose high enough to overflow it's banks, what came next was predictable. What wasn't predictable was just how bad it would get. The near west side of town, essentially meaning from the bluffs on the east side of the Trinity onward, went underwater. Montgomery Ward was a going concern at that time and their building was flooded all the way up to the second floor. Of course, that much water also contaminated the water treatment plant, meaning you had to boil all of your water (bottled water in every convenience and grocery store wasn't an option then) unless you had access to a deep well that hadn't been flooded. And one more thing. Typhoid shots.
How did the East Side fare? For the most part, pretty well. Keep in mind that the East Side is, in general, one of the highest parts of Tarrant County. In fact, the hill that National Farm Life (On the north side of I-30 and about a mile or so east of Oakland.) sits on has actually been identified as the highest point in the entire county. Put another way, if the East Side ever floods to the point of being submerged, you'll be using a boat to travel over Ft. Worth.
Despite that advantage, there were still problems. Sycamore Creek, which runs under E. Lancaster just west of Marshal Grain, was also out of it's banks and over the highway. My father was working for Swift's at the cold storage plant (the T&P warehouse just west of the post office on E. Lancaster) and rode the bus home every day during the flood. According to his stories, the water was so deep over the road that all passengers had to stand up in their seats in order to keep their feet dry as the bus made it's way slowly thru the water. Strange, isn't it, that buses in the 1940s could successfully navigate water so deep that the water would be up inside the bus so far that it was nearly to the top of the seat cushions, yet today you're warned not to drive into water that barely reaches your car's bumper?
And, of course, floods bring out all kinds of strange critters living in close proximity to humans that you normally never see. Cottonmouth snakes for one, though those were pretty well expected. What wasn't expected was a little beastie that followed my father down Morris Street when he was walking home from the bus stop. An alligator about three or four feet long that apparently had crawled out of the Trinity. As he told it, the little fella was just simply following him down the street. They ignored each other and the 'gator finally ambled on somewhere else. My father came on home and didn't tell anyone about it…until a photo showed up in the paper showing a man who had caught this alligator. My mother couldn't believe he missed an opportunity to get his picture in the paper!
Finally, does anyone remember those big aluminum milk cans with handles on the side to make it easier to lift? And the big, screw-off lids? The things probably held twenty or twenty-five gallons of milk. It so happened that Swift's had a deep artesian water well inside the cold storage building (presubably it's still there) that was not contiminated by the flood waters and my father would bring artesian water home in those milk cans. As a result, my parents, grandmother and I had clean, fresh water that didn't have to be boiled before drinking.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Meadowbrook Elementary, Belle Pearson and The Surrounding Area.
In 1949, I started the first grade at Meadow-brook Element-
ary. At least on the outside it looked then as it does now, even extending to the same temporary classroom buildings sitting behind the main brick school. The principal was Charles Berry and my First Grade teacher was a woman named Belle Pearson. This would be the last year she would teach before retiring. From my point of view, she was a kind, sweet, caring lady, an excellent teacher and I got along quite well with her. Strangely, she had a reputation that had a lot of parents and children virtually in hysterics. Why? The only reason I can think of is that she was exactly what a good teacher should be. Someone who didn't let the pupils run rough shod over her. In other words, she taught…and we learned as a
result.By the way, if you will look to the left, you will find photos of my first grade report card. Take a good look at it and compare it to the report cards of today...assuming they’re even sending report cards home anymore. If some ‘experts’ have their way, kids won’t be graded on their work at all for fear of damaging their self-esteem.
However, the perception that so many (meaning mainly the parents) had of her made registration an experience. The way the system worked was that you registered for school first, then you were assigned to the specific class. As you would expect, there were several different classes for each grade, meaning you had no idea who your teacher would be.
All too frequently, when a child was assigned to Belle Pearson’s room, the parent (usually the mother) would hug the child to her and start wailing something along the lines of “Oh, you got Belle Pearson...you got Belle Pearson! Oh, no! That’s horrible! I’m so sorry!”, etc., etc. It wasn’t long before the child was crying and screaming at the top of their lungs!
Incidentally, Meadowbrook Elementary uses the Buffalo as it's mascot (unless it's been changed as a result of political correctness). Matter of fact, I still have an original yellow and green Meadowbrook Buffalos hat from 1949 which I will eventually post a photo of.
As for what the area looked like in that time period, Meadowbrook Drive itself had been fully developed and the fire station on the northwest corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland was the main protection for this area. Today the station has been relocated further west on Meadowbrook, not too far from Meadowbrook and Beach, and the old fire station has become the Firehouse Gallery.
Oakland, Martel and the area around scenery hill from Meadowbrook up to what would eventually be I-30 was developing rapidly, driven in large part by the presence of Channel 5. Once you got north of the future location of I-30, Randol Mill Road (which was narrow and 2 lanes wide) snaked it's way thru heavy woods eastward towards Arlington. The entire area that is now White Lake Hills, Riverbend and Woodhaven was virgin ranchland (except for the White Lake Dairy, which is where White Lake Hills got it's name). The last vestige of the dairy can still be seen today on the west side of Oakland and north of I-30, just beyond the present day location of Waffle House. It’s a silo that looks like it was built from individual stones. In actual fact, it’s solid cast concrete that was textured to look that way.
The northeast corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland, where Meadowbrook Middle School is today, was a wide open field where cattle grazed. Yep, things were more than a little different in the late 40s and, in some ways, a lot better.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
From An Estate To A Supermarket
One of the more interesting residences on E. Lancaster during the 1940s was the W.K. Gordon, Jr. estate at the northwest corner of E. Lancaster and Edgewood Terrace. Believe me, it deserved the name because it encompassed the entire area now occupied by the Pep Boys and Carnival buildings. William K. Gordon, Jr. was an oil man whose childhood stomping grounds was out around Strawn, Texas. When he bought the E. Lancaster property I can't say, but it existed until sometime after November 1952 when my parents and I moved to El Paso. By the time we returned in 1961, the estate had been sold and the property converted to commercial use.
What did the estate look like? Well, there are no photos that I'm aware of, but try to envision this description: The entire property was heavily wooded….and I mean from the edge of the sidewalk back and the foliage was thick enough to make it difficult to see the house, which was set back toward the back of the property. And the entire property, if I remember correctly, was protected by a wrought iron fence. There was also a full-size tennis court in an open area between the house and E. Lancaster. Can't remember what the house looked like, but it was impressive.
As you would expect, the Gordons employed servants…mainly a cook and a chauffeur. I know this because they had two children, a boy and a girl. I can't remember the girl's age or name, but the son was William K. Gordon, III, who was within a few months of my own age. Had an opportunity to visit their estate one time to play with Bill and Mrs. Gordon insisted on sending their chauffeured Limousine for me, even though I could've walked since it was only three or four blocks. That was an interesting experience in oxymora because the Limo looked like it was bigger…and might've actually been…than the house I lived in. Beyond that, I was a very small and delicate looking child. My mother said that she could hardly see me sitting in that back seat!
By the time we returned from El Paso, the estate had been sold to Safeway. Needing to expand their original E. Lancaster location and having no way to do it, they had bought the Gordon estate, bulldozed the entire wooded property level and built the second Safeway on E. Lancaster, which is the vacant building most recently occupied by Pep Boys. The rest of the property was used for parking. When Safeway found a need to expand (in the late 60s I believe), they didn't have to move very far. They simply put up a new building due west of the current one on the same property. That building is currently a Carnival.
But what about the original (actually second) Safeway building? It wound up being used as a TruValue Hardware location until they eventually moved over to a location just down the road in Monnigs East Shopping Center. Cloth World then took over the space. After they moved out, Pep Boys moved in. Now they're gone and who knows what comes next.
And where was the original Safeway store? On the corner of Chicago and E. Lancaster. That building has had more occupants than you can count, including at least two tire stores and two pawn shops, but is currently the home of Cash America Pawn Shop.
So, just in case I've lost you somewhere along the way, this summary may help you. There have actually been three Safeway store locations on E. Lancaster. Each succeeding free-standing store was larger than the preceeding one. First came the southwest corner of E. Lancaster/Chicago location. Don't know when that store was built, but considering it's design, it could've been the early 1940s or even earlier. Keep in mind that the Beacon Hill Addition/Turner Sub-division area (which is the legal description for the part of Chicago Street south of E. Lancaster) was developed in the early 1920s. From there, Safeway moved to what we know as the Pep Boys location for their second store, then twenty feet west for their third store that eventually became Carnival when Safeway abandoned Texas.
What did the estate look like? Well, there are no photos that I'm aware of, but try to envision this description: The entire property was heavily wooded….and I mean from the edge of the sidewalk back and the foliage was thick enough to make it difficult to see the house, which was set back toward the back of the property. And the entire property, if I remember correctly, was protected by a wrought iron fence. There was also a full-size tennis court in an open area between the house and E. Lancaster. Can't remember what the house looked like, but it was impressive.
As you would expect, the Gordons employed servants…mainly a cook and a chauffeur. I know this because they had two children, a boy and a girl. I can't remember the girl's age or name, but the son was William K. Gordon, III, who was within a few months of my own age. Had an opportunity to visit their estate one time to play with Bill and Mrs. Gordon insisted on sending their chauffeured Limousine for me, even though I could've walked since it was only three or four blocks. That was an interesting experience in oxymora because the Limo looked like it was bigger…and might've actually been…than the house I lived in. Beyond that, I was a very small and delicate looking child. My mother said that she could hardly see me sitting in that back seat!
By the time we returned from El Paso, the estate had been sold to Safeway. Needing to expand their original E. Lancaster location and having no way to do it, they had bought the Gordon estate, bulldozed the entire wooded property level and built the second Safeway on E. Lancaster, which is the vacant building most recently occupied by Pep Boys. The rest of the property was used for parking. When Safeway found a need to expand (in the late 60s I believe), they didn't have to move very far. They simply put up a new building due west of the current one on the same property. That building is currently a Carnival.
But what about the original (actually second) Safeway building? It wound up being used as a TruValue Hardware location until they eventually moved over to a location just down the road in Monnigs East Shopping Center. Cloth World then took over the space. After they moved out, Pep Boys moved in. Now they're gone and who knows what comes next.
And where was the original Safeway store? On the corner of Chicago and E. Lancaster. That building has had more occupants than you can count, including at least two tire stores and two pawn shops, but is currently the home of Cash America Pawn Shop.
So, just in case I've lost you somewhere along the way, this summary may help you. There have actually been three Safeway store locations on E. Lancaster. Each succeeding free-standing store was larger than the preceeding one. First came the southwest corner of E. Lancaster/Chicago location. Don't know when that store was built, but considering it's design, it could've been the early 1940s or even earlier. Keep in mind that the Beacon Hill Addition/Turner Sub-division area (which is the legal description for the part of Chicago Street south of E. Lancaster) was developed in the early 1920s. From there, Safeway moved to what we know as the Pep Boys location for their second store, then twenty feet west for their third store that eventually became Carnival when Safeway abandoned Texas.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Cars, Taxis, Buses and (Gasp!) Walking
If you're curious about how people got around back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was just like it is today, only better. At least I think it was better.
Private cars, of course, but for those who couldn't afford to own a car there were plenty of other options. Taxi fares were very reasonable (dirt cheap by today's standards) and the same went for buses. If I remember correctly, bus fare was something like ten or fifteen cents on the city bus. Incidentally, instead of being called the T, as it is today, it was the Fort Worth Transit Company.
Walking wasn't done for exercise but was, instead, a perfectly normal…and safe… means of getting around. No one thought it unusual to walk half a mile or a mile to one of the few neighborhood groceries (a slightly larger version of what we now call convenience stores) and then walk back home carrying two or three large sacks (paper, not plastic) of groceries. When you needed to buy a large supply of groceries, or items that the neighborhood groceries never carried (such as candied fruit in bulk, not pre-packaged, for holiday fruitcakes) you took the bus downtown to Leonards Department Store (they had a huge grocery section on the ground floor, comparable to today's smaller supermarkets). After buying a full shopping basket of groceries (which might have cost you all of ten or twelve dollars, if that) you splurged and took a taxi home for the phenomenal sum of $1.50 or $2.00. For that price, two passengers rode and the taxi driver even helped unload the groceries from the taxi.
If you're wondering just how safe it really was in those days, consider the following. Many's the time my mother was waiting on a bus (which ran every fifteen minutes during peak periods) when a rank stranger driving down the street would stop and offer her a ride to work. That's it…just a ride to work. The person, either man or woman, was simply headed toward town and didn't see the point of leaving another person standing on the curb waiting for a bus. It was nothing more than simple consideration for a fellow human being. Once they got downtown, my mother would get out near the phone company to go to work, thank the person for the ride and go on, knowing she'd never see that person again.
Even more shocking by today's standards is the fact that when I seven and eight years old, it was commonplace for me to walk two blocks to the bus stop…by myself…ride the bus downtown and meet my mother for lunch at the phone company, maybe spend time in some of the shops downtown (particularly bookstores or newsstands), then ride the bus back home…alone. I was never bothered, assaulted, abducted or otherwise threatened by anyone. And believe me, I talked to any stranger that I happened to be near!
Oh, yeah, one other thing. Waiting for the bus out in the neighborhood was always fun because you could entertain yourself by catching and playing with Horned Toads. When the bus came, you put'em back on the ground or in the grass where you found them. And at night in the summer, fireflys were virtually epidemic. Try finding either one today!
Private cars, of course, but for those who couldn't afford to own a car there were plenty of other options. Taxi fares were very reasonable (dirt cheap by today's standards) and the same went for buses. If I remember correctly, bus fare was something like ten or fifteen cents on the city bus. Incidentally, instead of being called the T, as it is today, it was the Fort Worth Transit Company.
Walking wasn't done for exercise but was, instead, a perfectly normal…and safe… means of getting around. No one thought it unusual to walk half a mile or a mile to one of the few neighborhood groceries (a slightly larger version of what we now call convenience stores) and then walk back home carrying two or three large sacks (paper, not plastic) of groceries. When you needed to buy a large supply of groceries, or items that the neighborhood groceries never carried (such as candied fruit in bulk, not pre-packaged, for holiday fruitcakes) you took the bus downtown to Leonards Department Store (they had a huge grocery section on the ground floor, comparable to today's smaller supermarkets). After buying a full shopping basket of groceries (which might have cost you all of ten or twelve dollars, if that) you splurged and took a taxi home for the phenomenal sum of $1.50 or $2.00. For that price, two passengers rode and the taxi driver even helped unload the groceries from the taxi.
If you're wondering just how safe it really was in those days, consider the following. Many's the time my mother was waiting on a bus (which ran every fifteen minutes during peak periods) when a rank stranger driving down the street would stop and offer her a ride to work. That's it…just a ride to work. The person, either man or woman, was simply headed toward town and didn't see the point of leaving another person standing on the curb waiting for a bus. It was nothing more than simple consideration for a fellow human being. Once they got downtown, my mother would get out near the phone company to go to work, thank the person for the ride and go on, knowing she'd never see that person again.
Even more shocking by today's standards is the fact that when I seven and eight years old, it was commonplace for me to walk two blocks to the bus stop…by myself…ride the bus downtown and meet my mother for lunch at the phone company, maybe spend time in some of the shops downtown (particularly bookstores or newsstands), then ride the bus back home…alone. I was never bothered, assaulted, abducted or otherwise threatened by anyone. And believe me, I talked to any stranger that I happened to be near!
Oh, yeah, one other thing. Waiting for the bus out in the neighborhood was always fun because you could entertain yourself by catching and playing with Horned Toads. When the bus came, you put'em back on the ground or in the grass where you found them. And at night in the summer, fireflys were virtually epidemic. Try finding either one today!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Homes, Entertainment & Gas Stations
As I said in a previous post, around 1947 we had bought a house at 4928 Morris Street, purchased from a woman by the name of Mrs. Godwin. She lived in a large two-story brick home on Oakland Blvd., just north of and on the same side as the present Oakland Corners strip shopping center. If you drive north on Oakland from E. Lancaster and look to the left (to the west if you prefer compass directions), you'll see a vacant lot right next to another large two-story brick home. That lot is where Mrs. Godwin's house was. By the 1960s, she had turned it into a boarding house. After she passed away a few years later, the house was torn down.
During the late 40s and early 50s, the East Side was almost entirely residential, including most of E. Lancaster, though interspersed with a few small businesses. For example, a washateria was located on the west side of Rand Street, about a block south of East Lancaster on property that is now a parking lot for Sagamore Hill Baptist Church. Incidentally, Sagamore Hill Baptist Church has sold their property to Charity Church and begun building a new sanctuary on Green Oaks in far east Ft. Worth.
At least one church was located directly on E. Lancaster and gas stations were beginning to occupy more than a few corners. Incidentally, the building on the northwest corner of Rand and Virginia Lane (which housed the Choice Pregnancy Center) was originally the Texas Department of Public Safety building. That's where I went in 1964 to take my driving test.
There was, I believe, a gas station on the corner of E. Lancaster and Rand, occupying a small portion of the area now taken by Auto Zone. Just behind the station was a large two story house, complete with tall front columns in the antebellum style
The Gateway Theatre (the neighborhood source of entertainment) sat where McDonald's is now on the northeast corner of Sargeant and E. Lancaster and a brick structure across the street on the northwest corner of Sargeant and E. Lancaster (what we would now describe as a small strip center) was home to numerous small businesses. Although I can’t document it yet, I’ve heard that the building held a doctor’s office and possibly a drugstore. Oh, yeah, in those days doctors still made house calls. The practice wasn't unusual either and if you had an emergency in the middle of the night, you called the doctor and he came out (carrying the familiar little black bag). There was none of this calling the funeral home ambulance or finding your own way to the emergency room. Your home was the emergency room and the doctor came to you.
During the late 40s and early 50s, the East Side was almost entirely residential, including most of E. Lancaster, though interspersed with a few small businesses. For example, a washateria was located on the west side of Rand Street, about a block south of East Lancaster on property that is now a parking lot for Sagamore Hill Baptist Church. Incidentally, Sagamore Hill Baptist Church has sold their property to Charity Church and begun building a new sanctuary on Green Oaks in far east Ft. Worth.
At least one church was located directly on E. Lancaster and gas stations were beginning to occupy more than a few corners. Incidentally, the building on the northwest corner of Rand and Virginia Lane (which housed the Choice Pregnancy Center) was originally the Texas Department of Public Safety building. That's where I went in 1964 to take my driving test.
There was, I believe, a gas station on the corner of E. Lancaster and Rand, occupying a small portion of the area now taken by Auto Zone. Just behind the station was a large two story house, complete with tall front columns in the antebellum style
The Gateway Theatre (the neighborhood source of entertainment) sat where McDonald's is now on the northeast corner of Sargeant and E. Lancaster and a brick structure across the street on the northwest corner of Sargeant and E. Lancaster (what we would now describe as a small strip center) was home to numerous small businesses. Although I can’t document it yet, I’ve heard that the building held a doctor’s office and possibly a drugstore. Oh, yeah, in those days doctors still made house calls. The practice wasn't unusual either and if you had an emergency in the middle of the night, you called the doctor and he came out (carrying the familiar little black bag). There was none of this calling the funeral home ambulance or finding your own way to the emergency room. Your home was the emergency room and the doctor came to you.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tarantulas & a dead pilot.
According to my mother, along with photos I have to support the fact, we first lived on Ash Crescent, literally at the top of the hill about a block and a half south of an elementary school on Vickery Blvd and a block east of Riverside Drive. Despite my mother's intentions that we were going to stay there so I could attend that school when I got old enough, it didn't work out that way.
Though we didn't remain on Ash Cresent that long , there were a couple of interesting events told by my mother that I'll relate for you. While living there (probably during 1946), a light plane crashed into a gulley that was maybe a block away, I believe, killing the pilot. Essentially, the location was a couple of hundred feet from the southeast corner of Riverside and Vickery. Remember, there was no TV news or instant media coverage in that time period, so it made for a little bit of excitement for those living in the immediate vicinity.
As for the other event, we've all gotten used today to the idea of hardly ever seeing any critters in or under our houses. Today people get upset if they see a roach in the house or a harmless spider in the garden. It wasn't always that way and a case in point was the Ash Crescent house.
My mother was a consummate animal lover, willing to do just about anything to help an injured, starving or trapped animal. Cats, especially. Anyway, she kept hearing kittens crying under the house (pier and beam foundation). No way she could ignore them and they wouldn't come to her when she called. What'd she do? You guessed it…crawled under the house to find the kittens and bring them out. Consider that there was precious little light under the house, so she couldn't see what else was under there with her. What there was would qualify for a modern episode of Fear Factor.
After she had extricated herself and the kittens from beneath the house, a neighbor came over to her to see if she was alright. When she assured the neighbor that she was, the neighbor asked her is she knew how much danger she had been in. "What danger?" my mother asked.
"Tarantulas." the neighbor replied. It so happened that tarantula spiders (You know what I'm talking about. Big. Black. Hairy. Experts also say they're non-poisonous and totally harmless. Yeah, sure. If you believe that, I've got some waterfront property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.) were quite common all over Ft. Worth at that time, but you'd usually see one or two at a time. They could even be spotted crossing streets. Turned out that the little buggers were apparently breeding under many of the houses on Ash Cresent…including ours. Despite the fact that my mother was deathly afraid of tarantulas, she had crawled thru dozens if not hundreds of them to rescue those kittens. Why none of them crawled on her while she was under the house no one ever figured out. Good thing, though. If one of'em had crawled up her leg or she could've turned on a light, she would've created a new entrance into the house by standing straight up thru the floor!
By early 1947, we had bid goodbye to the tarantulas and bought a house at 4928 Morris Street. This was on the East Side, one block south of Meadowbrook Drive and halfway between Queen Street and Tierney Road. My father was working for Swift at the Cold Storage Building on East Lancaster (I'll explain that one later), I would soon have major chest surgery, the East Side was a very desirable place to live and the 1949 flood was still two years down the road.
Except for 8 1/2 years in El Paso, I've been on the East Side ever since. This part of Ft. Worth has ranged all the way from a highly desirable location to a virtual combat zone and everything in between. Where it's going now is still to be determined, but if you don't know where it's been, you won't be able to figure out where you want it to go.
If you've managed to find this installment vaguely interesting, stick around. You may learn some things about the East Side, as well as the rest of Ft. Worth, that you didn't know. And if y'all happen to have information that'll fill in some of the gaps in my memory, don't hesitate to let me know.
Though we didn't remain on Ash Cresent that long , there were a couple of interesting events told by my mother that I'll relate for you. While living there (probably during 1946), a light plane crashed into a gulley that was maybe a block away, I believe, killing the pilot. Essentially, the location was a couple of hundred feet from the southeast corner of Riverside and Vickery. Remember, there was no TV news or instant media coverage in that time period, so it made for a little bit of excitement for those living in the immediate vicinity.
As for the other event, we've all gotten used today to the idea of hardly ever seeing any critters in or under our houses. Today people get upset if they see a roach in the house or a harmless spider in the garden. It wasn't always that way and a case in point was the Ash Crescent house.
My mother was a consummate animal lover, willing to do just about anything to help an injured, starving or trapped animal. Cats, especially. Anyway, she kept hearing kittens crying under the house (pier and beam foundation). No way she could ignore them and they wouldn't come to her when she called. What'd she do? You guessed it…crawled under the house to find the kittens and bring them out. Consider that there was precious little light under the house, so she couldn't see what else was under there with her. What there was would qualify for a modern episode of Fear Factor.
After she had extricated herself and the kittens from beneath the house, a neighbor came over to her to see if she was alright. When she assured the neighbor that she was, the neighbor asked her is she knew how much danger she had been in. "What danger?" my mother asked.
"Tarantulas." the neighbor replied. It so happened that tarantula spiders (You know what I'm talking about. Big. Black. Hairy. Experts also say they're non-poisonous and totally harmless. Yeah, sure. If you believe that, I've got some waterfront property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.) were quite common all over Ft. Worth at that time, but you'd usually see one or two at a time. They could even be spotted crossing streets. Turned out that the little buggers were apparently breeding under many of the houses on Ash Cresent…including ours. Despite the fact that my mother was deathly afraid of tarantulas, she had crawled thru dozens if not hundreds of them to rescue those kittens. Why none of them crawled on her while she was under the house no one ever figured out. Good thing, though. If one of'em had crawled up her leg or she could've turned on a light, she would've created a new entrance into the house by standing straight up thru the floor!
By early 1947, we had bid goodbye to the tarantulas and bought a house at 4928 Morris Street. This was on the East Side, one block south of Meadowbrook Drive and halfway between Queen Street and Tierney Road. My father was working for Swift at the Cold Storage Building on East Lancaster (I'll explain that one later), I would soon have major chest surgery, the East Side was a very desirable place to live and the 1949 flood was still two years down the road.
Except for 8 1/2 years in El Paso, I've been on the East Side ever since. This part of Ft. Worth has ranged all the way from a highly desirable location to a virtual combat zone and everything in between. Where it's going now is still to be determined, but if you don't know where it's been, you won't be able to figure out where you want it to go.
If you've managed to find this installment vaguely interesting, stick around. You may learn some things about the East Side, as well as the rest of Ft. Worth, that you didn't know. And if y'all happen to have information that'll fill in some of the gaps in my memory, don't hesitate to let me know.
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