Michelle C

By the way, in case you're interested, that old article was in the national entertainment magazine Billboard, which covers ALL kinds of entertainment, including roller skating. The link I found was to the October 20, 1956 issue, page 57, and a string of short items about roller rinks around the country. Here's the link:

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=fAoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=old+skating+rink+on+holmes+road+houston&source=bl&ots=NHTF1qZcEE&sig=r5_hsgUQ3gIU2vBjnucwrlWHOdw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SZGtVPj2FoigNqCegOAJ&sqi=2&ved=0CHcQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=old%20skating%20rink%20on%20holmes%20road%20houston&f=true

 

To see what else was going on in the entertainment world in October of '56, scroll up to Page 1 and read to your heart's content. I promise - it will REALLY take you back to the 50s.. 

Pretty interesting read. Lots of stuff with in the link.

I checked your link, the rink I went to would have been west of Gulfgate and was probably the Gulfgate Rink. Looking at Google, it appears that the building is still there. I also pulled out an old Houston map from the fifties and the street that is now Loop 610 was then Holmes Road. There was a crossover at Holmes road and Chaffin. The entrance to the rink was at the end of Chaffin.

When I was ten or twelve years old my mother would take me to a roller rink at Telephone road and what would now be called Loop 610. I don't know what that part of Loop 610 was called then but you could turn right off of it into the parking lot of the skating rink. I do not remember the name of the rink either. Hopefully someone here can remember the name of the rink. I do however remember an older man that was always there named Oscar. Oscar was an avid and very professional skater.

Things change over the years. The building my be configured differently now than it once was. I tried three or four different street locations trying to read the number over the door and at one location it said 7661. That does not mean that it was always that way and you could be entirely correct about the original location now being a vacant lot. It is hard to say with so much change over the years.

Actually the building is still there. I am including a screen shot from Google for you. Please note the address 7657, the next doors is 7659 and the next the taqueria is 7661.

 

Just one more sign that my memory is fading fast. I'm willing to admit defeat on this one. 

 

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Mine is going fast too. I had at first thought the Curls for Girls salon was on the side of the pharmacy building, but after looking at it a bit and I started to wonder and checked the 1970 city directory and found why I was having those doubts. 

I looked in the 1970 city directory and found Big Humphrey's to have been located at 7661 Park Place.

Indeed it is the southbound Gulf Freeway feeder road, however I do not think it was the former location of Big Humphrey's pizza eatery. I read the link that you had attached and it said he was located on Park Place. The location of the beauty salon in the picture I posted is and always has been a Gulf Freeway address.

The strip center is on the west side of the freeway. See the picture above on my earlier post, you can see the side of Kelly's to the left of the picture.

If you're talking about the west side of the Park Place-Broadway roundabout at the Gulf Fwy, I can remember when Big Humphrey Pizza had a store there. Big Humphrey Pizza is now located in Pearland. 

No, I am talking about the east side of the building, the Gulf Freeway side. When I posted yesterday I was almost sure the beauty salon was to the rear side of that building, but the more I thought about it I have decided it was in the building directly behind the old pharmacy building. I used to have my hair done there in the late sixties or early seventies. About the only thing I do remember for sure was the girl that did my hair was named Gail. When I pulled up the street view on Google maps it looked so different, for one it was not a red building back then and also it looked a lot nicer and more professional. The one thing that is still the same it is trim around and above the door to the Curls for Girls beauty salon. I also don't think that it had the canopy extended out from the building like it does now.

Yes it was a Lang's pharmacy was in there for years. on the left side to the rear or Gulf Fwy. side of the pharmacy was a beauty salon named Curls for Girls.

This place has been dead for the past couple of weeks. I guess everyone is out of town or busy Christmas shopping.

When I was living in the city I always had a convertible and thus I was always ask to be in the parades around town. I was living off the Gulf Fwy. near Almeda mall and had a friend that was the chamber maid for the city of South Houston chamber of commerce. She would always ask me to bring my convertible and participate in the Christmas parade and other parades throughout the year. It was a pretty big event for the small city of S. Houston and fun was had by all. I have searched but can't find any pictures of the Christmas parade, but did find a couple of another parade in the Pasadena area.

Yes, it would. On Google Earth, there are houses there in 1944, a building that looks like a store in 1953 and 1978, then houses after that.

Yes, the L and C grocery was located at Arlington and 14th across the street from Reagan. My parents shopped there from time to time.

I forgot about G&G Model Shop. That place has been there for what seems like forever. 

Is the G and G model shop still there? I used to shop in there in the 50's. It was probably one of the best if not the best model show in the city of Houston.

The metal decorations on top of the canopy look like the fleur-de-lis. The dome light fixtures hanging from the bottom look to be very similar to the domed lights of the era that were common indoors. The grocery store on the left would be the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co or commonly called the A&P.

I was using my lap top earlier and didn't have any pictures on it. I have found the picture, hope you enjoy it. It also has a big Rettig's ice cream sign on it too. Looking close at the picture it appears that an A & P store was next to the drug store. The photo is from the Sloane collection so we will give him credit for the pic. I have posted two pictures one from when It was built and the other as it looks now.

When I lived in the neighborhood in the late 50,s the building was a cleaners. I think I have a picture of it when it was a Madings. I will check tomorrow and if I do I will post it here.

I did a little searching and found this article about the Record Rack. ( https://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Rockin-and-Boppin.pdf ) According to the article the Flintjers bought the shop in 1957 from the original owners and sold it to employee Bruce Godwin in 1986.

Being a typical teen in the fifties I liked music. We lived on Sul Ross near W. Alabama and Shepherd. One of my favorite haunts was the Record Rack record shop. I bought a many 45 and 33 1/3 records in that shop. I was there so often that I got to know the owners personally. John and Helen Flintjer (I think that is the correct spelling) were great people and we stayed in touch over the years. We reconnected later years when we all belonged to the car club Convertibles of Houston. They sold the record shop either in the seventies or eighties and it lasted for quite a few more years. A couple of years ago during a visit to Houston I drove by the old location and it was no longer there. It was an old shop and was first opened in the forties. It was sad to see it gone. I am sure that others from that area also remember the Record Rack.

If all the houses in Houston where murders have taken place were torn down, there would be a lot of vacant lots all over the city and a serious housing shortage. Bump that up to all the houses where murders and natural deaths have occurred and there would only be a half dozen houses left in the city. 

I mentioned in an earlier post that a lot of dealerships were located on Milam. I did a little checking and found that there were as many as eleven different dealership locations on Milam. Many of those locations were recycled over the years with different names like Central Pontiac later became Frank Gillman.

900 Milam Dow Chevrolet

1315  Meador Packard

1320 Jacoby Lincoln Mercury

1410 A. C. Burton Chrysler Plymouth

1613 Great Southwest Dodge and Plymouth

1621 Central Pontiac

1701 Southwest Chevrolet

1920 Douglas Nash

2120 Russell Smith Ford

2200 North Buick

2215 Al Parker Buick

Cool stuff.  Thanks for posting the link.  To me it is interesting to see how dealerships gradually migrated from downtown to the far outskirts of the city. It is hard to believe now that Kirby was once fairly heavily lined with car dealerships.

Early in the history of Houston the dealer ships seemed to be not only in the downtown area but were strung along Washington Ave. and Harrisburg and on around the curve onto Broadway. Washington Ave was old Hwy. 90 and continued on to Preston in the downtown area. Milam seemed to be heavily vested with dealerships in the downtown area, I can think of about a half dozen that was on Milam just off the top of my head.

I too would be interested in finding the answer to that question. I'm a San Jacinto alumni. I did a little research and found one military aircraft from Ellington that crashed July 30, 1942 in Houston. It does not say where in Houston but if it was on the base it would say Ellington. Some times they will give a better location like 5 miles northwest of the field or something of that nature. I have only got through the month of Jan. for 1942.
Do you remember what time of the year the crash occurred? Summer? Close to Christmas? San Jacinto High is about 16 miles northwest of Ellington as the crow flies.
 
here's a link for the 1943 Crashes. http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/AARmonthly/Oct1943S.htm

The lady on the right does not look happy about wearing the hat.

It don't seem like it has been that long since I lived there. Time sure does march on quickly now days. I think it must be an age thing, it seems like it took me longer to get from four years old to twenty one than it did from twenty one to now. Those were some great day and filled with good memories. I often wish I could go back to that simpler time. You can never miss anything that you have never had. We had only one phone in the house and it was in the hall. We had a couple of room air conditioners for A/C and we were lucky to have that.

I remember once my mom threw out about a half can of lard. I had a couple of Cherry bomb fire crackers left over from the fourth of July. When I found the can of lard I removed the top and lit one of the Cherry bombs, dropped it in the can and shoved the can upside down into a flower garden in the back yard and took cover. When the thing went off pieces of the can and lard went everywhere. The pieces of the can was easy to clean up but the lard was all over the back of the house, I liked to have never got out of trouble for that incident.