Michelle C

One of the Hooper twins died last year.

In 1957 my mom and dad left the West end area and moved to the Montrose area at 1525 Sul Ross. The next year I started junior high at Lanier. I have very fond memories of that neighborhood and it was a great place to be raised. The house we lived in is not there anymore nor is any other house on that block. They have all be torn down for a large building that now occupies the entire block surrounded by Sul Ross, Mandell, Mulberry and Branard streets. The building is the Menil Collection art studio. I hate it that our old house is no longer there but the Menil Collection is very worthy of replacing it and the other homes that used to be there. Dunlavy pool was not far from us at Dunlavy and what is now the Southwest Freeway. It was a favorite hangout in the summer. I think the area is now called Evan Chew park. We spend endless hours there whiling away the summers. We even watched the infamous 59 Freeway trench as it was being dug when construction on US 59 was started. I smoked my first and last cigarette on the way to that pool one day. A friend came by me house and she and I had decided to walk over to the Dunlavy pool for an afternoon dip. On the way she ask me if I wanted a cigarette and I said yes I will take one. After a few puffs I was coughing and carrying on and threw it down and said to her, that is enough, they taste bad and they make me cough, I have never picked up another one since. I remember getting ready for a camping trip that a friend and I had planned going on with the Girl Scouts. My friend came over and my dad helped us pitch a tent in the back yard, this was supposed to be our dry run. I had two Tabby cats and during the night one of my cats came into the tent and was meowing and I got up and put her out of the tent, after a few more times of putting her out of the tent I finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning when I awoke I found a littler of kittens laying between my legs on my blanket. What a surprise. One of our many haunts in the area was Phil's café at the corner of Mandell and Richmond. Phil's had some great food and was a very nice man himself. When I first started visiting his café I met a very nice waitress named Dotty. She would always wait on us and not only myself but her and my mom became very good friends over the years. She is now retired and lives near Lake Livingston. The café started out as a small diner with about three of four tables and a counter with stools. Phil later added onto the side of the building a nice dinning room more than doubling the size of the building. In later years he moved over to where south bound traffic from Shepherd splits off to go to Greenbriar, he is right about Norfolk street. It is now called 59 Diner. Phil was known for his good food and had many established customers. Lanier was not very far from where I lived and it was not uncommon to walk to school. Sometimes my mom would take me to school and sometimes the mom of girl that lived across the street from us would take us. It wasn't long before my first cousin that lived a few blocks from us that went to Lamar bought a 31 Ford A model. He would come by our house and pick up my girlfriend across the street and myself and take us to school in his Model A. That was a real treat to ride to school in the Model A. It wasn't long before a couple of neighbor boys near me also wanted to get in on the ride. The two guys would lay on the two front fenders and wrap their arms around the headlights and ride to school that way. For some reason I do not think that would sit very well with the law now days, but back them no one ever said a word about it. One cold winter morning my mother was taking me to school and when we stopped at the traffic light at West Alabama and Mandell there were several police cars and several ambulances parked on the street at the intersection. Their attention was focused on the house on the northwest corner of the intersection. I didn't learn until I got home after school that three people in the house had died overnight from asphyxiation. Another tragedy that happened in the neighborhood came in July of 1959 when twelve year old William, affectionately known as Bill Bodenheimer was killed. He was a neighborhood kid that most knew and liked and lived not far from West gray on I think Driscoll street. He had been to Dunlavy pool one day and left the pool and went home only to leave the house a little while later close to dusk. He didn't return home that night and his mother and her boy friend went out looking for him only to give up sometime after midnight. Early the next morning the continued their search and finally found him in a small tin building on the back of a lot on West Gray stuffed in an old icebox. His murderers were later apprehended and charged and tried. There is some serious doubt that the ones arrested were the actual one that killed him. I am sure many on this board have heard of the Poe school bombing in Sept. of 1959. At the time I was at Lanier Jr. High and remember all the sirens that just kept on coming past the school that morning. The teachers would not let us get up and look out the windows and we had not clue as to what was going on. Of course we later learned of the bombing that happened that morning at Poe. We had no security police at our school and the school went on lock down with all doors locked except for the front door. The school had several of the biggest football players guarding the front door with baseball bats until the school got the all clear that the incident was confined to Poe. Right after the incident at Poe that morning my mother got a call from a friend of my mom and dads that was a deputy with the Harris county sheriffs department. He did not remember if I was going to Poe or if I was at Lanier. Hesitating to ask my mom if I went to Poe, he ask her if I was home, she said not she's at school, and he ask which school, in which she replied Lanier. He then told my mom what had happened and why he was calling. Had I been at Poe he was going to come by and pick her up and go to the school with her. These are some of my memories from the Montrose neighborhood that I was raised in from about twelve years old until I started college in 1963. Many good memories and some not so good. This was our house.

The Hooper twins were good friends of ours and we used to follow then to different places that would play, groupies if you will. Not really sure where this picture was made, it may have been at Magnolia Gardens but it had to be late 60's or early 70's. The two men with gray hair and the brown hats on are Bud and Bud. One at far left of picture and other on the right above the woman's head.

During the late 60's I had went dancing there a few times myself. A local country act Bud and Bud the Hooper twins played there some as well as some other great bands that I can no longer remember the names of. Can't remember for sure but I think this picture was made at the gardens circa 1969.

I have an old detective magazine that covers the whole story pretty thoroughly and there is no mention of it in there. The usual places like the boat sheds and High Island, but no mention of White Oak bayou.

I'm posting this picture of the demolition of the MKT depot in 1958. I now live in Smithville and this town had the largest rail yard between Houston and Waco. The MKT was the life blood of this town for many years. When MKT was sold to Union Pacific the operation here was scaled down drastically. I know many former MKT employees here and they can tell some great stories about the MKT. My neighbor's grandfather was an engineer for the MKT and had the honor of taking the last passenger train, the KATY Flyer from here to Houston.

I have this picture showing the Indians albeit its not the best but you can see them pretty clearly.

I found a couple of pictures of Davis Motor Company. Their used lot at Fannin and Bell. one of their service trucks parked on the north side of Westheimer between Mandell and Kueter with a mess of fish tied to the side of the truck. Someone had found a pretty good fishing hole. The building behind the truck is still standing.

Thanks for the info. When I was making the post I had written that I thought it was possible that it could be from the 1929 flood and was miss dated, but then deleted it because I did not want to influence anyone thinking. I wanted total independent conformation which you quickly gave me. Thanks again for the quick response.

I was looking at various pictures of the 1935 flood of downtown Houston and while trying to get a firm location and direction as to what I was looking at I found this contradiction. Look at the two pictures I have posted. Look to the building on the north side of the bayou on the left. I know it is hard to see but if you enlarge the picture you can plainly see what it says on the side of the building. In the first picture it says Grocers Supply Company. The second picture the same building says Guenard Speed and then I can't read the rest of it. I looked up the address in my 1937 phone book and couldn't find the Guenard Speed what ever. I was however able to find the Grocers Supply Company listed at 819 Commerce street which would be a viable location for that building.

At least when it was a Fingers, the home plate of old Buff stadium was preserved. This will be another jewel from the crown of Houston snatched never to be seen again.

This is a picture of the house at the time the murders took place.

Least we forget a picture of good ole Bill Williams, one of my favorite haunts when I was a teen. Bill Williams was located at 6515 Main. Known for their savage style fried chicken. The drive in portion of the restaurant was the big attraction for me. A hamburger and a drink that took an hour to eat gave you ample time for some boy to notice you and start up a conversation.

Yes, after I had posted I started reading the swamplot piece from Nina E's earlier post. A lot of questions were answered.

A little more information on the old cemetery. I have posted some aerial shots from 1957, 1964 and present day, and a Google street picture of the now vacant apartments that are build over the old cemetery. The boundaries are in red showing the location of the cemetery. The boundaries are approximate and it may extend down closer to Memorial or a little more to the west, I do remember that it did not go all the way down to Memorial Drive. It was an abandoned cemetery and not kept up. It was in the a stand of trees and I can only assume that most people in the area never knew it existed except for maybe a few old timers. Some of the head stones had toppled and were laying on the ground. The area was all grown up with vines as well. In the first picture from 1957 you can see a vacant lot directly to the east of the grove of trees. The elevation of the vacant lot was lower than that of the cemetery. There was about a ten or fifteen foot bluff that you had to climb to get up to the cemetery from the lot, however you could access the cemetery without a climb if you gained access from Chandler street. I remember an old tree on the edge of the bluff with its roots exposed from the years of erosion on the bluff. Some of the neighborhood boys built a fort with in the exposed roots and would fend off other neighborhood kids from the high ground with their BB guns trying to gain entrance to their fort. The next day the tables would be turned and the kids feeling the sting of the BB's from the day before would be the ones holding the fort. At the end of the day they were still friends. There was no gangs in the neighborhoods in those days. In picture two from 1964 you can see that some apartments have been built on the vacant lot east of the cemetery. In that picture you can see the cemetery is still untouched. If you look close you can see that something has been built in front of the old cemetery on Memorial Drive, but did not infringe on the cemetery. In picture three, the present day picture, you can see that some apartments have been built there. According to the historical aerials maps there was some building going on there as early as 1981, and in 2002 you can see that they are finished and in 2004 the building are still there. Some time after 2004 those apartments were torn down and some news ones built and now they are now abandoned and from the aerial picture they look like they are being torn down. Why did the new apartments last less than ten years? It leads me to wonder if spooky things were happening there, after all they were build on sacred ground. That leads to another question. When and where were the graves moved to? It would be hard for me to believe that they were just plowed under and the apartments built on top of them. The last picture made from Chandler street shows the apartments that were sitting directly on top of what was once the cemetery. Note, after I posted this, I started reading Nena E's post above and it has a lot to say about this cemetery and the possibility that the graves actually may have been bull dozed over to build the apartments. I do not see or understand how anyone could have done this without knowing it was a cemetery, as there were plenty of head stones clearly marking this as a cemetery as last as 1957 when I was playing in the near by area. I have walked through the cemetery and looked at the many head stones and wondered about the people that were buried there. This could be a case of someone putting money ahead of respect for the dead.

In the early to mid 50's I lived in 5000 block of Gibson. We used to play near an old cemetery just north of Memorial drive. If you look on the Google map you will see a short street named Chandler street. At the far west end of Chandler it dead ends, between there and Memorial drive is the exact location of the old Cemetery, Now there are apartments built on top of it. The graves in it were all old with birth dates from the late 1800's could very well be the cemetery that you are looking for. It is right in the neighborhood of the lost location.

Downtown on the corner of Main and Bell was the Simpsons Dinning car. It has long been closed and last I knew of, it had been moved out on Westheimer. Can't remember now just how far out it was moved and I do not know if it ever reopened again. Also as a kid I remember the Price's Hamburger place on the south west corner of Shepherd and Washington Ave. They had 19 cent hamburgers, 12 cent fries, and 5 cent Cokes. The burgers were great and the prices right. Also there was Phil's café on the corner of Richmond and Mandell. Phil's later moved over to Shepherd between Norfolk and Portsmouth where the What A Burger is now located.

I skated there in the early 60's. We lived on Sul Ross not far from there.

Camp Logan drug store was located at 5723 Washington.

In the late sixties there was a kicker dance hall at Shepherd (I-45) and Stubner Airline AKA Veterans Memorial Parkway called the Texas ball room. There was a house band headed by Ray Bates and Ray had Frenchie Burk playing with him. Frenchie went on to become a fairly big star in the Cajun music world. The Texas Ball room sat in the V where the Texaco stations is now. The V was a lot bigger then as the feeder was only two lanes wide.

I was stationed at Ellington in the late sixties and at that time the building for the Dyer Home for Children was still there along with the sign, but the orphanage was closed.

I remember it now, it was Ashe Lake, it is located just west of the Hardy toll road and I-45 split

In the early 60's friends and I used to go swimming between here and Conroe, if I am not mistaken it was about where the Woodlands are now. It was a popular swimming spot with sandy beaches. It was on the west side of US 75 now I-45. I remember it was privately owned and you were charged a fee to get in. I think it was owned by a member of the Allan Shivers family. For the life of me I can't remember the name of it now. Any help on the name and exact location would be a great help.

When I was growing up at 1525 Sul Ross our number was JAckson 8-2810.

Thanks Subdude for the info. Here is another old one from Houston. Turbiville Lincoln Mercury. They were located at 3535 Main and the building is still being used.