Ol' SEHouston Girl

Dang. Well, I hear that Park Place is heavily Hispanic so that'd be why it changed. But the Chuck Wagon's burgers--ohhh! They were to die for! There's a great discussion of the place on the Milby message board of classmates. com .

OMG. My youngest brother had her in '65-'66. My other brother was a year ahead of him. Ashikaga, where did you live in Park Place? We lived off of Old Galveston Road and my grandparents lived on Easton. Does anybody know if the Old Chuck Wagon still exists in Park Place? And for shopping centers--is Palm Center still around? And y'all were talking about Playhouse Toys-does anyone remember the one at Gulfgate? It had a giant giraffe head over the stairs that led down to the ground floor. I still dream about that wing of Gulfgate and that giraffe, no clue why.

Does Ruth have a daughter named Iwona?

My sister and her friend were laughing so hard on the Black Dragon that they wet their pants. Then they jumped out of the ride and went on their merry way. I always wondered, since the rides were loaded so fast, if the next people in that car sat in it.

I don't know if any of you guys know this, but Jerrel Elliott was killed a few years back in a freak accident in his home. My aunt and uncle were his close friends and neighbors.

Southeast Houston had MIssion and OLive numbers. My uncles and aunts have the same numbers that they had 40-50 years ago and I still remember them by the exchanges, not the 7 numbers.

In 1970 I worked first on the old-fashioned cars and later at the Wacky Shack. The Shack had just been built and the wood smelled really awful--very strong chemical odors. We could hardly find our way to our cars after hours bc we were so sick. My cousin worked in the park too and his favorite thing to do after his shift was over was to get on the Alpine Sleigh Ride with his coworkers and harass his friends who were playing the Abominable Snowman.

Did anybody else get caught up in this in 1970? The board, probably fearing a mandate for federal forced busing, gerrymandered the high school districts and even if you were a senior, you had to attend the school in your new district. If you were a senior, though, any position or honor you'd gotten back at the old school had to be given to you at the new one. Therefore, Milby had a ton of cheerleaders that year and it seems that Jones had only 4. Many schools had double heads of pep squads, multiple football captains (before that became the norm), you name it. Our family was redistricted from Sterling to Milby and fed up with it all, I graduated from high school after my junior year. The policy caused all kinds of problems. Many families moved or at least rented apartments in the old district so their kids could attend school with their old friends. HISD was then in the position of having to try to find out who was lying and they did, too...many students were "outed" and sent forcibly to their new schools. There was white flight and black flight. Within maybe 5 years, the whole composition of HISD had changed. Many families simply moved outside HISD (to Pearland, Alvin, etc.) and re-established their lives there. When I think of "policy failure", I'll always remember that horrendous HISD one.

When we moved to Park Place in '65, my sister and brothers transferred there from Lewis. Both places had some great Halloween carnivals!

My sister and I were on Kitirik about '58 and we couldn't wait for our little brothers to be on when they were old enough. When the big time finally came, my brothers were the last 2 and they had a hard time holding it...they humiliated their sisters by dancing back and forth and holding themselves. I guess there were no outtakes or do-overs back in the day....