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.