devonhart

It was real far away, somebody built a motel in anticipation of the completion of the airport, but apparently the airport's completion date was severly delayed, the dude went bankrupt before it opened. At least that's what my fuzzy memory recalls.

It must have 1966, I lived just across the bayou (Sims?) from Madison (4114 Knotty Oaks Trail), a couple kids and me walked through the site while it was still under construction. In the summer of 1966, we moved over near Meyerland, I have a faint recollection of my mother telling me about a tornado hitting South Main. I think if we had still lived by Madison, I'd have stronger memory. In the late 70s early 80s, a tornado roared by the house I was living in then, when I say roar, I mean like trains and jets roaring, something I'll never forget.

Hmmm, I loved it myself, but could see how others wouldn't. Like convience store nachos, I know its crap, but I sure did wolf it down.

I too went there from 1st to 4th grade (1961-1965), then to Hobby when it was completed in 1965. We were very aware that the school was named for a "janitor" who died in a school explosion, but never got the exact details.

Can't remember where it was, my dad took me a few times before I was drinking age, had soda, played this game where you slide a metal puck thingie into what looked like bowling pins, instead falling down, they'd raise up when you struck below them. I came across it once on a motorcycle ride and went in for grins, even saw one of my dad's friends, but they didn't recognize me.

"Then Jim Love moved in. [Jim Love is a Houston sculptor who had hair down over his shoulders back when long hair was the exclusive property of women " In the late 50's, we lived in Montrose on Vermont, my Dad became a regular at a bar called "The Little Hut" or "The Hut." I remember he had a friend named Jim Love and he showed us a metal sculpture. Anyway, we moved to the burbs in '61, but my white collar, Dad continued to go to "The Hut," while it gradually became a Hippie Bar during the 60s. My Dad would invite these long-haired dudes and dudettes for New Years to our suburban home. A lot of them were hardcore drinkers, pot smokers and Lord knows what else. I guess because my mom met these folks individually over the years, she had no problem with these long-haired, bearded folks. I was probably the only teenager in the neighborhood, whose Dad had friends no other parent would approve of.

I'm a netflix guy, but I still go a few times a year, Casino Royale for example or 300 at IMAX. Is it the expense or the experience (rude patrons etc.) that turns you off. I get to go during the weekday afternoons, a couple bucks cheaper, rarely crowded.

I think it had to do more with profits, with the same staff it takes to run one screen, a movie operator could run two or more screens. More screens usually means more concession sales, which is where the real profits for the operator is.

The chair Lincoln was shot in is also there.

If you don't buy conspiracy theories, the first shot missed, probably deflected by a tree branch, and possibly striking a curb some ways down. The second bullet passed through the President, and the Governor resting in the Governor's thigh, later to dislodge and to be discovered on a stretcher. The third shot struck the President in the head, fragmenting, and damaging the windshield. In this scenario there are no bullet holes, except for the windshield damage. If you believe there was a conspiracy, and bunch all the theories together, LBJ took a shot from behind while JFK's limo driver shot from the front, just as the umbrella man fired, while the guy on the grassy knoll fired from behind the wooden fence, just as the guy hidden in the sewer fired from his position, while numerous cubans and mafia scattered around the plaza were all taking their shots. Oh yeah, and the three tramps were CIA and they took their shots from the overhead train tracks. The 58 bullet holes in the car were patched, and the 87 bystanders wounded by stray bullets were whisked away by the goverment in their great cover up.

Drove by it all the time, but never went.

We used to jokingly say, "want go for a Furr burger."

That was partly why I was puzzled, I saw several restaurants and a couple converted condo/apartment right on or just off Main. Admittedly, it was well after lunch, just thought there'd be more folks out. I don't know if makes any difference, but I was wrong about the day it was Monday, the day before the George Straight concert.

Hmm, maybe it was a computer thing, I worked on the IT floor, large main frames, no smoking allowed on the floor. We also had a break room, no smoking allowed. You'd go by our office building entrance and you'd see plenty of smokers during break.

Dang, that's what different, the internet was in it's infancy in the 80s, people had to physically sneak out of their jobs to do fun things. Now, they can just sit at their desk and do them.

No, thanks. My wife has one. But seriously folks . . . not everybody works the same schedule, night shift, or afternoon shift change, 4 10-hour days with 3 days off, etc. And some folks' job is being on the street, delivery, repair, etc.. Shoot, people take lunch starting from 11:00am to as late as 2:30 in the afternoon. Add in retired folks, tourists, people taking a couple day off, stay at home mom's (yes, there are still a few around) and part-time workers, you have have a bit of a crowd.

Funny you should say that, my wife and I don't shop at Walmart at home, and both had just read the book "The Walmart Effect." We even mentioned should we look for somewhere else, but when you are in a totally strange city, Dallas in this instance, and have been in flight or airports for 14 hours, and need 2 or 3 changes of everything (socks, shorts, pants, shirt), plus toothbrushes, paste, etc. and a duffle bag to carry it in, there literally is no place like WalMart. Starving, and needing to find a hotel, I'm afraid I wasn't thinking about the children in sweatshops who probably made a dime that day making my shorts, or that the couple pairs of Levi's I bought were made of inferior denim, and had a cheap slide fastener, instead of a snap, and the belt loops are probably going to pull away in a couple months. I needed cheap and quick, and that's what Walmart is at 8:00 pm on a Saturday night, near DFW. At home, I do most of my shopping online, and if I have to go to a store, it's Target, Home Depot, Whole Foods, anywhere but Walmart.

Hey, maybe people don't smoke anymore, in early 80s you had more people standing outside building entrances taking a smoke break than were walking Main Street in '07. Main Street wasn't always quiet at 2:30, people coming in and out banks, Woolworths, Palis Royal, coffee shops, video arcades, newstands, hopping on and off busses, running all kinds of errands the couple hours before rush hour. I guess what I was looking for was did light rail kill Main Street, or did the business that derserted Main Street stiffle it, fewer people work downtown now, or had the hub bub of downtown shifted away from Main to somewhere else? Between 1966 and 1985, Main Street was always busy before 6:00 pm. Something happened since then, I was curious what it was. I live in a town of 50,000 people and our main street is busier at 2:30 than Houston's, but we don't have the Galleria, (actually we do have "a" Galleria) Greenway and dozens and dozens of other retail centers and office parks to syphon off traffic from our downtown.

My wife and I were headed for Vegas from NY when we were grounded in Dallas due to high winds last Saturday. A third of the flights had been cancelled so no Vegas flight till late Monday. We decided to rent a car and visit the folks and siblings in Houston instead. Had to stop at Walmart to buy a new wardrobe, our luggage managed to get a flight to Vegas, no problem. Anyway, we parked at Herman Park last Tuesday, and rode the light rail Downtown and walked around. I worked downtown in the early 80s (Superior Oil) when it was a hustle and bustle place, lots of traffic, vehicular and pedestrian, but now it was quite quiet. Obviously, Main Street diverts vehicle traffic away, but why so few people walking around. This was around 2:30 in the afternoon. Except for the former Foley's (now Macey's) there doesn't seem to be much shopping, but I saw several restaurants, though, that weren't around in my day. In the old days, downtown didn't roll up it's sidewalks till after 6. Anyway, took a look at the former Rice Hotel Lobby which was cool, and noted all the new court buildings and general cleaner look up that way, which used to be quite scuzzy back in the 80s. I'm assuming it's not usually so quiet during the week, that something was up that day.

Apparently not, after a little googling I found out that Modern road building designs and techniques date all the way back to the ancient Roman times. Roman empire city streets were normally paved with "basalt slabs". Couldn't find an exact date for cobblestone streets, but they were used in colonial US, often using the balast stones from ships arriving from the old country. Then in 1820 a guy named John Loudon McAdam came up with a road paving system that was three layers of varying rock size, laid at various thickness then compacted with a heavy roller. It was a very labor intensive process, so brick paving must have come up as a quicker alternative. With the arrival of the automobile, the McAdam roads kicked up too much dust and that's when asphalt came in. The US apparently still has miles and miles of the old McAdams roads that have been asphalted over.

Though I moved to the Northeast 13 years ago, I've only had to directly deal with snow the last two winters when we bought a house. The rest of the time we were in apartments or condos where nice men with shovels, snow blowers and trucks with plows did all the work. I've got my little electric snow blower to do our walkway to the curb, and our short square driveway. I still like snow, 2 or 3 times a year. Our first winter it snowed 17 times, that gets a little tiring.

Double and Triple features. In the late 60s and early 70s, the James Bond producers figured out guys would pay to see James Bond movies they'd already seen. I saw Dr No and Goldfinger at Meyerland Plaza, Dr No., From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger at McLendon Triple. Thunderball and You Only Live Twice at the Loews downtown. And a couple other combinations of the films elsewhere.

Man, that gave black-light flashbacks.

Windows Movie Maker was loaded on my PC which got me into doing videos, I upgraded later, to do more intricate special effects, but I would stay with Windows Movie Maker for basic music text. It's easier to use, and does just as well with text and music as my upgrade. The complicated part is converting a dvd file to a avi or mpg file that Windows Movie Maker can recognize. I use FlaskMPEG flaskMPEG which was a free download as I recall. It lets you select just parts of a video to convert or the whole thing. For example, I just converted the snow scenes out of a much longer film. My Dad had our home movies converted to VHS years ago, as a christmas project I converted the VHS to DVD on my Pansonic DVD-R and passed them out to my siblings as gifts. There was a bit of a learning curve for me, but once I got the hang of it, I've had a lot of fun.

It looks like the side of city hall.