FilioScotia

To this day, the 1965 murders of Fred and Edwina Rogers remains Houston's bloodiest and most sensational unsolved mystery. Their bodies had been cut up into small pieces and stuffed into the refrigerator. Their grown son Charles Rogers -- who lived with them -- became the prime suspect but nobody had any idea where he was. In fact he was so reclusive that the neighbors didn't know the Rogerses even had a son. The murders happened in the Rogers' home at 1815 Driscoll St., in the Hyde Park section of the Montrose area, five blocks east of South Shepherd and three blocks south of West Gray -- behind the River Oaks Shopping Center. Check page 492-R of your handy Key Map. The Rogers house isn't there anymore. There's a townhouse there now, but the house next door has been there for a very long time. I wonder if the current residents know what happened next door to them almost 50 years ago. Countless newspaper and magazine stories and several books have been written about this case over the years. It has even spilled over into the dark netherworld of Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Lunacy. With no shred of evidence, some of those moonbats believe Charles Rogers was one of Kennedy's assassins, from somewhere in Dealy Plaza or on the Grassy Knoll. In any event, he has never been found or heard of since the murders, and he was declared "officially" dead in 1975.

As someone who worked in Houston radio and TV for 45 years I can tell you that the GHP does not buy positive media coverage. Furthermore, no news media outlet that cares about its reputation would sell positive coverage. The GHP does however buy advertisements in print and electronic media to promote itself and its members, but it does not buy news coverage. That doesn't mean the media don't cover the GHP. They certainly do, but it is to report genuine news stories about the GHP and its work in bringing new industry and companies to town, but that coverage is not "bought". That is what is known as earned" media coverage, or free media. It refers to favorable publicity a company gains through its own initiatives and promotional efforts other than paid advertising. Examples: a big developer announces plans to build a new skyscraper or a new business complex. Or a big company announces plans to expand and hire thousands of people. That's news that can be defined as "earned" media coverage.

It helps to remember the purpose of shows like this one. It's not intended to be a food "critic" show that dishes the bad with the good. The show's mission is to find the good places and show why they have that reputation. He only has half an hour -- including commercials -- and he can't waste HIS precious few minutes with places that are less than great places to eat. As for how they pick their featured restaurants, I'm guessing their production staff contacts food critics in each city well in advance to get a handle on the popular eateries and map out an itinerary. That's what I would do if I were doing this show.

On the new Travel Network show "Burger Land", host and burger gourmand Steve Motz tours the country looking for the best hamburgers. One of his shows last night (May 6) was shot in Houston. Motz went to four or five locally owned burger joints in the Houston area sampling their wares, and declared that these burgers were among the best he's ever consumed. What a job. Motz says it's because the meat is not frozen. It's ground fresh and highly seasoned on the premises and the patties are hand made. The finished burger has a lot of ingredients the burger chains would never use. One place puts batter deep-fried bacon and jalapenos on top of the beef. Another place grinds bacon up with the beef. Is your mouth watering yet? Here's a link to the Houston episode on the show's website, but the clip is only a couple of minutes long. I love the title though: Houston We Have a Burger! http://www.travelchannel.com/video/fried-bacon-jalapeno-burger Check out the photos. They'll make you want to jump in the car and go find one of those places. I live in east Texas and I can't wait for the next time I drive down to Houston. I am definitely going to get me one of those.

Anybody have any idea who the reporter was? He's seen briefly 17 seconds into the video interviewing a police officer. I was around Houston in 1963 and I watched KHOU a lot, but I cannot put a name on that face.

Not sure which Ranger Drive-In you remember, but the Ranger I remember was at Telephone Road and Holmes Road behind Gulfgate. A long way north of Hobby. That was long before the South Loop cut through on the Holmes Road footprint and blew out a lot of businesses that had been there a long time. As I recall, the Ranger had the hottest car-hops on that end of Houston.

Not sure which Ranger Drive-In you remember, but the Ranger I remember was at Telephone Road and Holmes Road behind Gulfgate. A long way north of Hobby. That was long before the South Loop cut through on the Holmes Road footprint and blew out a lot of businesses that had been there a long time. As I recall, the Ranger had the hottest car-hops on that end of Houston.

***If anybody is still visiting this site and has access to the Westbury60.jpg picture that has been mentioned on this site and the Plane Crash in Meyerland site, could you please post the picture again.*** Is this the photo you're talking about? http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=2490

***Great. So, our tax dollars will be hard at work feeding, clothing and educating this scumbag.*** Would you rather have him out on the streets robbing people?

Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais (note spelling) both graduated from ND in 1913. Rockne went to work as an assistant coach the following year, 1914, so he was probably on the sidelines of that 1915 game in Houston. He became head coach in 1918, and died in a plane crash in 1931. Gus Dorais also went into coaching. He coached at several colleges around the country, and he was head coach for the NFL Detroit Lions in the 1940s. He was backfield coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers for one year in 1952. He died in 1954. I am fascinated by the fact that when he was ND's QB, Dorais stood 5 feet 7 and weighed 145 pounds. I haven't been able to find Rockne's physical stats, but he was probably about the same size. They were tiny compared to today's giants. A lot of people think Rockne and Dorais invented the forward pass. Not true. The pass had been around for some time, but it was only used as a desperation last resort when a team was trying to come from behind late in a game. Rockne and Dorais were the first to make the pass an important part of their offense and use it throughout the game. It made national news when they used it confuse and beat Army 35 to 13 in 1913. The fans loved it and it revolutionized the game.

I think we can finally state conclusively that the Jim West mansion has been "saved", although what it has been saved for isn't making everyone happy. Those people need to get over it. As for me, I am delighted with the mansion's newest incarnation under Hakeem Olajuwon and I hope it succeeds. Check out this item in the Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/life/article/Clear-Lake-s-West-mansion-starts-new-chapter-with-4211422.php?cmpid=hottopicshpatfpm

Turns out my memory was faulty on who the sponsor was, and faulty about what he was talking about. After some Internet searching, I've found that the commercial I'm talking about was for McDonald's. Early in the 1985-86 season, McDonalds started airing a local commercial that showed Hakeem doing his trademark "dream shake" move and dunking a McNugget in some sauce at the same time. That's when he uttered the word, in his thick Nigerian accent, that has been linked to him ever since: "Unbeatable".

Looks like a very high-end boutique to me. Way above my pay grade. Don't get me wrong. I salute Hakeem for using his wealth to turn that beautiful old mansion into something new. He's probably the only person in town who could and would do this, so we we can give thanks that he's the one who bought it from the previous owners. This story makes me very happy. I wonder if he's going to be doing TV commercials. I can hear him now. "Come to the DR34M ! It's unbittable." * *(For Houston newbies: Back in the 80s or 90s Hakeem did some local TV commercials -- I forget whose they were -- and his last line was always about the prices -- "They're unbeatable." Except when he said it with his Nigerian accent, it came out "They're unbittable." It got to be something of a local joke.)

I remember the bowling alley in the Merchant's Park Shopping Center on North Shepherd at West 11th. It was where I bowled the best game of my life one night back in the 60s. I bowled 8 straight strikes spread out over two games, and finished that second game at 238. It was a memorable night, but, sadly, I never even came close to that again. Thanks for the memories.

You are correct. I misstated the history in saying the rivalry began in Houston. The site of the old West End Park is still a kind of "hallowed" ground though, don't ya think? I've always felt a small ping of pride driving through downtown and thinking about what used to be on that spot just south of the Dallas St. overpass.

And to this day the Aggies cling to a relic of those days in the Aggie War Hymn, where they sing "Saw varsity's horns short". I am a dyed in the purple Aggie fan, but speaking just for myself I think it is long past time for someone to come up with some new and more relevant lyrics to that old song. Can you name another college in the country where the entire theme of their fight song is to sneer at an old rival they don't even play anymore? BTW, West End Park was that baseball field on the southwestern edge of downtown Houston. It was on a spot where the NB I-45 Pierce Elevated starts curving around that hotel to go under the Dallas St. overpass, and where the SB side curves around past the Leland Federal Bldg. https://www.tsl.stat...ges/map0435.jpg Think about this the next time you drive I-45 through downtown. You're driving over the hallowed spot of ground where the first three UT/A&M games were played.

It's also worth remembering how common the name "Bear Creek" is. There's the one in west Harris County, and I know of at least two more "Bear Creeks" near where I live in East Texas. To say there was a battle at "Bear Creek" is a bit like saying there was a car accident on the Interstate. Which one?

I lived in Copperfield in the 1990s and drove past that old house countless times and wondered about it. One day in the late 90s, driving on W. Little York, I saw a couple of cars parked there, so I decided I would knock on the door and ask about the house. It only took one knock to get a response. The door was opened by a scruffy looking guy with a police ID badge on his belt. When he opened the door I could see several other scruffy looking guys sitting at desks working on computers. I told him I drove past that house every day and I was just curious to know something about it. The guy told me he didn't know anything about the house, and they were only there doing property research for a planned widening of W. Little York. Then he closed the door. I went on my way more curious than ever, but I never went back. In any event, W. Little York WAS widened out to four lanes a few years after that. I'm guessing that some undercover cops were using the house as a base of operations for some investigations in the Bear Creek and Copperfield area. At that time, it wasn't visible from Hwy 6, and just barely visible from W. Little York.

The biggest difference between old time millionaires and today's millionaires is that today's rich guys have their money tied up corporations. They can't spend their money the way guys like West, HL Hunt, Howard Hughes and others did. Their spending is now controlled by Boards of Directors. Bill Gates is a notable exception to that rule.

I found that old aerial photo in one of my old postings in another thread. Here's a link to it and I hope it works. I hope it's the pic you're talking about. http://www.houstonar...&attach_id=2490

We feel your pain. Really. But as much as it may hurt to even think about, it's possible that Jeanna Claire's nephew tossed all that memorabilia in the trash just to get rid of it. You say he told you he didn't want to bother with it, so it had no value to him. I have to wonder why anyone would want it enough to buy it. And if someone did buy it, what are they doing with it? People buy celebrity memorabilia because they hope to show it off in some way. That's why I suspect the nephew tossed it. This memorabilia really has no monetary value beyond its sentimental value to you and other family members.

***Seawall Blvd. in Galveston was realigned sometime in the late 1950's when Ft. Crockett was abandoned.*** Fort Crockett was never "abandoned". The army deactivated it as a military post in 1948, and it became the Galveston Recreation Center for the Fourth Army. Fishery research started at the fort in 1950, and in 1957 it was acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries acquired 10 buildings there. The fort was transferred to the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1970, and the Department of Commerce began renovating the complex in 1998. The Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary moved its offices to the Post Exchange building in 2006. Just last year, Galveston celebrated 100 years of history with Fort Crockett. Here's a link to that story. http://galvestondail...m/story/266278/ I was surprised to learn that Fort Crockett was not a Civil War fort. It was built in 1897, but didn't acquire the name "Fort Crockett" until 1903, when it was rebuilt after the 1900 hurricane.

Here is a link to a 1913 Houston street map. It's expandable so you can find the precise location of that baseball park on the very southwestern edge of downtown. https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/maps/images/map0435.jpg You will see that it was later covered over by the west end of the Pierce Elevated. Locate Heiner Street, running north/south across San Felipe, (now West Dallas). Heiner still exists as the exit street for I-45 South. This is a fascinating glimpse of how Houston's streets were laid out almost a hundred years ago.

Yes that does appear to be the one. Thanks much. We can see a lot of the Meyerland/Westbury area, including the beginnings of Meyerland Plaza at the bottom, Westbury Square, and the outlines of the old Sam Houston Airport at the top. Although, I think the top of the photo is a little bit more cropped at the top than the one I remember. i say that because in that photo we could see where Hiram Clarke crossed over Sims Bayou. That was of interest to me because four blocks east of Hiram Clarke and Sims Bayou on Simsbrooke Street I could make out the house where my first wife and i lived for a couple of years in the early 70s. That blew my mind. I can't find that house in the photo you provided, but I like it anyway because it's a great look at how that part of Houston looked 50 years ago.

Some time back, somebody here on HAIF posted a link to an eye-popping high altitude aerial photo of the entire Meyerland-Westbury area taken in 1960. It showed the entire vast panorama of a part of southwest Houston just before it started getting overrun by residential and commercial developers. Does anybody here have that link?