FilioScotia

There were several Roy Rogers Roast Beef locations around Houston in the 70s. One was on the West Loop southbound Feeder just south of Westheimer. After RR went out of business, that location has had several incarnations over the years. For a time it was Arby's, but that went south. Today it is - or was - a porn store named the Zone d' Erotica. It folded a few years ago but the signage is still in place.

My favorite "repurposed" store is the huge Spec's Liquor store in the building formerly occupied by Academy Sports and Outdoors. I stop there when I'm in that area because of the huge supply of everything "spiritual".

"Actually the term for governor was a two year term, just like State representantives. The term was extended to four years in the late 1970's. I think Bill Clements was the first governor to serve a four year term under the new rule." Actually, it was in 1972 that Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment changing the Governor's term of office from 2 years to 4 years, BUT it didn't go into effect until 1975 when Dolph Briscoe became the first governor to serve a four year term. Bill Clements was elected in 1978, and he holds the distinction of being the first Republican governor since the Reconstruction Era.

I live in the hope that Innes's toxic personality and reputation will catch up with him sooner than later, and that station owners will come to their senses and realize that he's more trouble than he's worth.

Anybody here remember the Four Palms? The Four Palms was a neighborhood bar on Telephone Road just south of Holmes Rd, which is now the South Loop 610. It was locally famous (infamous?) in the 50s, 60s and 70s for being what was then called a "pressure cooker club". It was like a singles bar, except everybody was married to somebody else and nobody cared. Lonely and bored housewives went there during the day whilst their husbands were at work, and the joke was that they kept dinner warm at home in a pressure cooker, hence the club's nickname. The ladies were there to meet their boyfriends, or just have a good time with anybody who showed up. Most of the time it was just for drinks and dancing, but the lighting was kept low enough for some making out, for those so inclined. It was common to see a man come in the front door, hear a woman's voice say "oh my god it's my husband" and then see her slipping quickly out the back door. Lord only knows how many divorces, and new marriages, can be traced to that place. Ah yes. Those were the days. I confess I went there a few times, during my misspent divorced period in the early 70s. Met some great ladies and I've always wondered whatever became of them. I also wonder how many of today's 30 and 40 somethings grew up eating those pressure cooked dinners prepared by moms who spent their afternoons at The Four Palms.

Here's a reposting of something I posted here in 2006 about the Cinema West and its owner Joe Spiegel. The original Cinema West was in a strip center on West Alabama, out where it merges with Westheimer. The guy who owned it was an interesting guy. Joe Spiegel graduated from the University of Houston with a business degree in the mid 60s, and his father gave him a hundred thousand dollars to start up his first business. Softcore porn was common at that time, but Spiegel could see that hardcore porn was slipping into the mainstream. He thought it could be profitable, so he took advantage of the public's relaxing attitudes and opened Houston's first hardcore porn house. It made so much money that Spiegel was able to build a free-standing adult theatre on Richmond, and open another adult movie house in the Rice Village off Kirby - Cinema West II. His long range plan was to use his adult theater profits to buy legitimate family movie houses and ultimately get out of porn altogether, which is exactly what he did. At one time in the 70s and 80s, Spiegel owned several neighborhood houses around the city. In his spare time, Spiegel was a big softball fan and player. He organized and sponsored teams in the city softball leagues and tournaments for a long time, and they were good. He had their trophies on display in the Cinema West lobby. I always liked Joe Spiegel. He wasn't a porn-meister, and he never got involved in producing adult films. He was, and probably still is, a smart businessman who used the growing popularity of adult movies to launch his business career.

****It's like he thrives on pissing people off**** That's what he's paid to do by idiot station managers who rely on idiot consultants to tell them how to run their stations.

Innes has never found a bridge he couldn't burn. Let us join hands and pray that he will someday run out of bridges. And let us not forget that WE the listeners have all the power in this on-air relationship. WE own the tuning dial and the off/on switch.

***Something tells me Innes will end up at another Radio Station.*** Never fear. He will end up somewhere else because assholes always do, thanks to idiot station managers and their idiot consultants who think obnoxious and controversial generates ratings.

My wife and I ate there once when we lived in Fallbrook in the late 70s. I remember it was a gimmicky place with lots of gimmicky decor and waitstaff dressed in really old fashioned style. I don't remember the food being anything special. We didn't go back, if that says anything.

I agree with Tumbleweed. I'm going out on a limb, but I'm sure this is the intersection of west bound Calhoun Street with Dowling or Chartres.

There was another afternoon kid show on Houston TV at the same time Kitirik's show was on KTRK in the mid and late 50s. Looney Town was on KPRC and the host was "Uncle Bert" Lynn. His show was just like Kitirik's - nutty fun and games with kids and Warner Bros Looney Tunes cartoons. Lynn owned a music and musical instrument store in southeast Houston and he was a skilled steel guitar player. He used that talent in his show playing his "talking" steel guitar he named "Stringy". He talked to the guitar and made it respond to him with funny sounding steel guitar riffs. Another gimmick was letting kid viewers be members of 'Looney Town" by writing him a letter and asking for a membership card. Ahem. I was a card-carrying citizen of Looney Town. Lynn wasn't a young man at the time, so Looney Town went off the air in the late 50s, probably because the high energy it demanded got to be too much for him. Kitirik's show outlasted it by many years. I don't remember a clown on his show. but it's probable that he had one. A live kid show like that is extremely hard for just one person to do. The host needs a foil like a clown to help entertain the kids and keep the show moving.

There was a clown on Kitirik's kid show. He was Nod the Clown, and he and Kitirik played games with the kids.

I wasn't at the Hellfighters Premiere in Houston, but several friends who were there told me the audience cheered and applauded when Wayne cold-cocked Chris Chandler. That's the reputation the cocky and obnoxious Chandler had in Houston. He was so vain and self-important that he got one of those folding "Director" chairs with his name on it and sat near the Director Andrew McLaglen behind the camera. He made sure the KPRC reporter and news crew got film of him "hob-nobbing" with the VIPs, but he got kicked out of that area when he started offering suggestions on how he thought scenes should be shot.

The Internet Movie Database says Chris Chandler was Chick Chandler's nephew.

It was gruesome for sure, but reporters have the luxury of being able to cover stories from arm's length distance. In that line of work you learn very early NOT to get too close to the stories you cover. Reporters who get emotionally involved don't last long.

I'm a retired Houston radio news reporter who has vivid memories of the Mass Murders committed by Dean Corll and two accomplices. I covered and reported that story every day from day one - the day Wayne Henley was arrested for killing Corll and revealing the most sickening story of depravity and cruelty I've ever encountered. My point: The coverage went on for several years, and not once in any of that coverage was Corll ever referred to as the "Candy Man". Yes he worked in his mother's candy business, and he was known for giving free candy to children, and the kids called him the Candy Man, but I don't remember anybody ever referring to him as Candy Man during the long investigation that followed his death. On the other hand, Ronald Clark O'Bryan - the guy who poisoned his children on Halloween in 1974 - WAS called the Candy Man for the rest of his sorry life till he was executed in 1984, proclaiming his innocence to the end. Dean Corll was killed more than a year earlier in August of 73, and the Mass Murder story played out well into 1974 and 1975 as police found bodies of Corll's victims all around the Houston area, on the Gulf Coast, and in east Texas. Trials of Corll's accomplices kept the story going for a long time. The Mass Murders were still front page news when RC O'Bryan poisoned his kids in August of 74, and somehow the two stories got conflated and Corll became the Candy Man in many people's minds, even though he never lured children to their deaths with candy. His victims were teenage hitch-hikers he and his helpers picked up on the freeways, many of whom were runaways.

BigDenTx -- I remember that Pasadena Chuck Wagon too. Got burgers there many times, and I THINK they also sold some Tex-Mex because I also bought tacos there - unless my memory is playing its usual tricks on me. I went to Jackson too. A VERY long time ago. Eisenhower was President. When were you there?

px4man - You already know this, but other readers here may not. Cody Irby's father was Houston Police Officer James Irby, who was killed in the line of duty June 27, 1990. Cody was born 2 and a half months after his father was gunned down in cold blood by a guy who had been stopped for a traffic violation. The killer is still on death row.

Am I the only one here who remembers the Pizza Yoint on Spencer Hwy in South Houston? I think I remember I set a record for chugging a mug of beer one night in the sixties when i was a student at San Jac College just down the road.

There's a new show on Animal Planet called "Lone Star Law". It's a reality show about Texas Game Wardens that shows them at work in various areas of the state. One of this week's cases showed one of the Game Wardens investigating an alligator attack on a swimmer near Baytown. The victim survived and was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where the Game Warden is shown interviewing the victim's family outside the hospital.

OK. I stand corrected on that. Other than that mistake, the rest of the story is true.

Hurricane Fence Company makes and sells all manner of residential and commercial fencing. Founders Raymond and Leon Schindler started the company when they invented the chain link fence in the 1930s. Their factory was on the old Katy Road for many years, but at some point in the 80s they sold that property and moved to Pasadena. The Schindler family sold HFC to Wesley Marsh in 2000. In 1970, Raymond Schindler got into the local TV business when he formed Crest Broadcasting and put KVRL TV Channel 26 on the air in August of 1971. Schindler was the majority stockholder with 43 percent. The call letters were changed early on to KDOG TV as a joke, but also because "dog" is broadcasting slang for a station that isn't making money. It never made money as KDOG, so Crest sold it to Metromedia TV in 1978. Metromedia changed the call letters to KRIV, and sold it to Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. Incidentally, Metromedia changed the call letters to KRIV in honor of then-Metromedia executive Albert Krivin. Fox Broadcasting has never seen fit to change them.

The main entrance to the plant complex was on Silber, just north of I-10. The administrative office building was just inside the entrance.

Since we're soaking ourselves in these old memories, let us not forget the fun many of us had at the Mason Park Gym on 75th street. They had sock-hops there practically every Saturday night in the late 50s and early 60s with DJs from KNUZ or KILT. And now that you mention it Michelle, I think the Mason Park Dances were sponsored by the Civitan Clubs. Not a hundred percent sure of that though.