FilioScotia

I went to Google Maps to find that address on the Street View and found that 7661 Park Place is now a vacant lot.

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

Is the pavement in the foreground part of the Gulf Fwy southbound feeder approaching Broadway/Park Place? If it is, I am almost a hundred percent certain that this strip center was also the home of Big Humphrey Pizza. Big Humphrey - former pro wrestler Joe Vitale - opened his pizza joint there in 1948 before the freeway even came out that far. It was popular and did a good business till the family closed it in 1986 so they could move to Pearland, where it is today with a reputation for good Italian food. Joe Vitale was an interesting guy with an interesting story of where his professional name "Big Humphrey" came from. Ever read the Joe Palooka comic strip? http://www.houstonpress.com/2000-07-27/restaurants/truck-stop-italian/

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Parker Brothers were in the shipping business, and selling sand and gravel. They ran a string of tugboats up and down the ship channel. A Google Search has revealed: The Parker family were early settlers who owned significant farmland in southeast Houston before it became industrialized. They gradually developed the land along Industrial Road and one activity was the Parker Bros. shipyard on Greens Bayou. The yard was located next to the Platzer yard, which used Parker's slips after it closed in 1980 and later bought most of the yard. Here's a link to where I found that information: http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/5small/inactive/parker.htm

I think I was misunderstood. Is the strip center you're talking about on the west side of the freeway? Or the east side?

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.

I miswrote myself when I said in my earlier post that veteran actors Jay Froman and his wife Sylvia Froman have passed on. Jay died in 1972, but Sylvia is still with us and still performing. This past March, Bayou City Concert Musicals honored her with the Kim Hupp Award for her countless contributions to Houston musical theater. She even sang at the awards dinner where she received the honor.

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I recognized two of the actors. Veteran Houston actor Jay Froman played Billy Joe's step-dad. I think that Jay and his wife Sylvia Froman have both passed on, but they were main-stays in Houston's theater community for several decades. They both had day jobs, but dedicated ALL their spare time to staging and performing in a lot of stage plays and musicals at Theater Inc., Theater Under the Stars, and Marietta Marich's Houston Music Theater. The actress who played Billy Joe's mom was Chris Wilson, one of Houston's most respected actresses and acting teachers. She was with the Alley Theatre since its beginnings, has performed in dozens of plays and a few movies, and founded her own Actors Theater of Houston, which has turned out a lot of actors who went on to careers on the stage and in movies. I don't know if she's still living, but her veteran actor son Brandon Smith now runs her academy. Here's a link to more about Chris Wilson. http://www.houstontheatre.com/actorstheatre.html I was impressed with the professional production values of The World of Billy Joe. It brought back memories of when KUHT Channel 8 turned out solid and professional looking films for Houston TV. That hasn't been true for a long time, and probably won't ever be true again, sad to say.

There are lots of beautiful old homes like those you describe in the Montrose Area and in The Heights. Here's a link to an article about some of them. http://www.2mrealty.com/blog/houston-heights-homes-make-old-new-again.html

We need more information. Who was Dr. Powers? When and where did this happen?

Iron Tiger: MOST of Houston's Tex-Mex restaurants are unremarkable. They're adequate for a meal out, and you probably won't come home with food poisoning, but they're nothing to write home about. There are some that are better than adequate, and a small few that are simply great, even "remarkable, but I'm keeping their names to myself. Nothing ruins a great restaurant quicker than spreading the word about how great they are. As Yogi Berra once said about a certain New York City restaurant he once frequented: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too popular." Just kidding. I will share the name of the single finest Mexican Restaurant I ever went to when we lived in Houston. Notice I said "Mexican." It isn't strictly Tex-Mex. It serves real Mexican food found in the southern region of Mexico's interior. On any given evening you will find most of the people eating there are Latinos. The name is Romero's Las Brazas Mexican Kitchen. It's at Hwy 6 and Longenbaugh in Copperfield, about 2 miles south of 290. http://romeroslasbrazas.com/ Check it out. It's worth the drive to Copperfield. I promise you won't be disappointed. When our son got married in 2006 we held the rehearsal dinner there. It was fantastic.

They were a hoot weren't they? Tim and Bob were at KPRC when I went to work there in 1969, when the format was very middle of the road and seriously out of date. It had little or no appeal for anybody under the age of 40. In 1970, a new program director was brought in to bring the format and sound up to date to aim for a younger audience, All the DJ's were replaced, including T&B. The new PD Buzz Lawrence became the solo morning man. Bob Byron retired, but Tim Nolan stayed on doing off-the-air work for a time. He retired in 1972 when the station moved out of the Post Oak bldg to the big new station on the SW Fwy.

You tell a common story. For every person who manages to get a good paying radio job, there are dozens - hundreds - thousands - of others who struggle for a few years and give up on it. I was one of the lucky ones. I got started in the 60s when it was a lot easier to get that first job than it is now. I stayed with radio because it was the only thing I knew how to do well enough to stay employed. I tried to get out of radio several times over the years, but I always went back because I found that I was unemployable outside a radio station. When I retired in 2010, after 45 years behind microphones, it occurred to me that I had spent my entire adult working life doing something I was good at and loved doing. And most of the time I worked with some of the finest people I ever knew. Being able to say that is a blessing. You and I both know a lot of people who can't say that. One of my bosses had a good way of putting our work in the right perspective. From time to time, he would remind us that for every one of us who earns his or her pay talking on the radio, there are thousands of people out there in the real world who would gladly come in and do what we do for free. That thought has a way of making you thankful for what you have.

OK Amsterdam, you have my attention. When did you work in radio? And where? I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours. I worked in radio from 1965 through 2010, most in Houston. When I was doing the two job thing I wrote about I was at KPRC Radio doing local news. That was when KPRC TV and Radio were in the same building on Post Oak behind the Galleria. I was there in 72 when the whole operation moved to 8181 Southwest Freeway. In the late 70s I was at KTRH doing call-in shows. In the 80s I worked at a couple of stations in east Texas, then back to KTRH in the late 80s and early 90s. I retired in 2010 after 18 years at Houston Public Radio KUHF FM. I tried getting out of radio several times over those years but I could never find any other job I liked as much as I liked radio. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

OK, I remember the Fulton from my teenage years, but I didn't know it later became the Colonial. Thanks. I have another memory of my nights at the McClendon Triple and it began in the 50s when i was in high school in Pasadena. Like most Pasadena kids I spent a lot of time at the Capitan Theater, and like most young and horny teenagers I always hoped to meet a girl and do some making out on the back row or in the balcony. One night in 1960 a girl and I got caught making out - heavily - and one of the ushers escorted us to the lobby where he reported us to the manager, a guy named Bill Scott. He kicked us out and told me I was banned for life. Fast forward to 1971. I was married with two kids, working in the radio business and moonlighting at the Mac Triple for the extra money. One night the manager took me to the projection booth to show me their new projectors and introduce me to the projectionist. Guess who it was. Bill Scott, the old Capitan Manager, and even 11 years later he remembered me. We had a good laugh over running into each other again so many years later, and he expressed amazement that I appeared to be making something of myself as a radio broadcaster. Only half joking, he said I had no business working two jobs, and I needed to get a better day job. He was right, and I did. That was more than 40 years ago and I remember it like it was last night.

In the early 70s my wife and I lived in a neighborhood off Hiram Clarke near the McClendon Triple Drive-in. In '71 we went through a few months of very tight finances, so to make some extra money I took a job working in the concession stand at the Mac Triple. Six nights a week till close to midnight. My reward was the minimum wage and a bag of leftover hamburgers and hot dogs I took home every night. Seeing that snack-bar in this video really brings back memories. Can someone tell me where the Colonial Theater was? I lived in and around Houston for many years but I don't remember ever seeing it. And I'm assuming the Cole Theater was in Richmond or Rosenberg. Right?

There was a Lucky 7 store in Pasadena in the 50s and 60s, one block from Pasadena HS, owned and managed by a really nice guy named Ted Pasternak. He lived in Pasadena too, cause his daughter Robin went to Pasadena High - class of 1960. I wonder if Ted was any relation to the owner of the Pasternak store you're writing about ?

***Can we agree that he was well connected, and that such connections may have facilitated his living in the (I still believe publicly funded) Harris County Domed Stadium?*** Oh yes we can agree he was well connected. Better connected than anybody. He was the guy at the top of the heap that everybody else wanted to be connected with. He didn't need anybody's permission to build his own private suite in the dome because he had total control of the dome project top to bottom, inside and out. It was rented from the county, but it was his baby. The Dome cost 35 million early 1960s dollars to build. Multiply that by a factor of at least 10 to get an idea of what it would cost to build the same dome today. Anyway, the 35 mil was public bond money the county is still paying back by the way. But Hofheinz used his own money and some money from the Houston Sports Association to build the luxurious private suite behind and overlooking the right field bleachers.

Not completely sure of what you're trying to say, but Hofheinz wasn't the County Judge when the dome was built. He was a private businessman. Hofheinz served from 1934 to 1936 in the Texas House of Representatives and from 1936 to 1944 as a Harris County judge. After losing the election for his third term as county judge, Hofheinz returned to his private law practice. He returned to public life in 1952 when he was elected to the first of two terms as mayor of Houston. After two terms as Mayor, Hofheinz returned to law and business in 1956. He and his partner, Robert (Bob) Everett Smith, created the Houston Sports Association, which succeeded in getting a major-league baseball franchise on the promise of building a new stadium, and in 1965 the world's first domed stadium was completed.

You're right. Roy Hofheinz's story would make a great movie, but I don't trust Hollywood to make it. H'wood would portray Roy as a typical rich, conservative and racist Texas huckster. And the rest of Texas would be portrayed as a land of racist rubes. To get some idea of what I mean, check out how Robert Altman showed Houston in the god-awful Brewster McCloud back in the 70s. Or how we were portrayed in The Right Stuff, which except for its Houston scenes, was a very good movie. I would pay to see a Hofheinz movie made by someone who respects him for what he did, and respects us Texans.

Glenn McCarthy knew that putting high-end shopping outlets inside the hotel would be a big extra for the high-end customers he was trying to attract, and the Sakowitz Men's Shop was one of the first to take him up on that bet. It opened in 1953 and, as noted above, it closed when the hotel closed in 1985.

It's worth remembering that at one time this area was on the outskirts of town. Nothing but open land south of where Holmes veered to the west. After WWII, there was a national housing boom fed by easy to get GI Home loans, and the area we're talking about filled up with little houses made out of ticky tacky and they all looked the same. (sorry. couldn't help myself) I've always been fascinated by the street names iout there. They're names of people and locations made famous in both World Wars. Burma Rd., Bataan, Chennault, Anzio, Tarawa, Doolittle, Pershing, Jutland, Kassarine Pass, Tobruk, Dieppe, etc. War veterans couldn't wait to move into houses on streets with those names. I'm guessing that was when the main north-south thoroughfare through this suburban neighborhood was named South Park. When it connected with Holmes Rd, apparently, Holmes going to the north was renamed South Park and it ran across Griggs Rd and OST into the Third Ward. I'm just guessing at all this. Anybody got any better info?