Libbie

What a great picture! Exactly as I remember it, even to the big inkblot-shaped ceiling design!

Interesting! My father had an MRI done very near there in about 1989 or '90, but I don't have a picture.

Do any old-timers remember the original incarnation of UHD, the University of Houston Downtown School, located at 925 Caroline, downtown? My father taught there and once mentioned that the Caroline building had previously housed a paint store. My father was Mr. O.R. Hicks. He taught English in the night school there from the late fifties until his retirement in 1973. I can't find anything in Wikipedia or elsewhere about the first UHD. The current one, at One Main Street, was established in 1974. My father may have planned his retirement to coincide with the closing of the U of H Downtown where he taught, but at 22 I didn't have those details on my radar. In any event, I wonder if any HAIFers either actually remember or have heard anything about the original University of Houston Downtown School.

Your mom worked at Suzanne's? Interesting! I must have seen her during the years when my parents and I ate there. In the mid eighties, a sort of high-end Mexican restaurant (an Austin transplant called Fonda San Miguel) had a brief stint in the old Suzanne's building. I remember sometimes taking my attention away from my pollo pibil to look around and see what I could recognize that had been there when it was still Suzanne's.

Remember the Alabama at Shepherd strip center in the old days? It's still there, of course, and Trader Joe's kept the old Alabama Theater marquee, so that at first glance the strip center looks almost as it used to. But do any of you remember it from the old days? Left to right (i.e., south to north on Shepherd), it was Walgreen's, A & P Supermarket, Alabama Theater, Suzanne's Cafeteria, Wacker's, and Western Auto. When I was a child and a teenager, it was my great treat to be taken (or to ride my bike) to the soda fountain at that particular Walgreen's for a big glass of chocolate milk -- or on more luxurious days, an ice cream soda. The A & P, AKA the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (just to the left of the Alabama Theater, I think) was, to my child-mind, merely a supermarket, nothing special, a place where we shopped if we happened to be in the area -- second choice after the Dunlavy Weingarten's (which had been the 1400-block-of-Richmond-Avenue Weingarten's in the earlier '50s). Next door sat the Alabama Theater, which lasted a long time, till the '80's, wasn't it? To its right (north) was Suzanne's Cafeteria, a very good cafeteria of the same species as the Cleburne, Albritton's, or Luby's, run by a genial Greek gentleman called Mr. Gus. On Thursday nights it was sort of festive, and a pretty waitress would sing. Her specialty was "Moon River." We continued to eat there even after my mother was served a well-boiled grasshopper atop her bowl of spinach one evening. And next door to Suzanne's was my childhood shopping paradise, Wacker's: a sort of mini-Woolworth's, where a child with a quarter could buy a small plastic doll with MUCH more strength of character than one of those snooty, new-fangled Barbies. Finally, on the north end, was Western Auto. My father would go there -- not to browse in dreamy joy as he did at Southland Hardware (at this writing, still sitting there, ageless, in its appointed spot at 1822 Westheimer) -- but simply to buy something for the car when the need arose. In 1969 I moved to Austin for college and for a long time didn't think much about the Alabama Shepherd Shopping Center and its various shops. I moved back to Houston in the mid-eighties. Venturing back to the Alabama Shopping Center, I encountered Butera's, Whole Earth Provision Company, Cactus Video, Bookstop, and Whole Foods . Roaming one day in Bookstop (constructed within the old theater) one day in the 1990s, I suddenly had a joyful flashback, among the bookshelves on the second floor: a sudden memory of having seen NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS there in 1958 with my parents. Now, well into the 21st century, the A & P is Whole Earth, I think; the Bookstop is Trader Joe's; and Whole Foods is Petsmart. I still enjoy driving past the new/old Alabama Shepherd Shopping Center, squinting a little. Out of the corner of my eye, I can almost see Walgreens, the A & P, the Alabama Theater, Suzanne's, Wacker's, and Western Auto. It's a good feeling.

I remember the L&C. From 1950 or before till some time in the '70s, every Tuesday night the Scribblers Club met there. That was a group of amateur and published writers, including Hughie Call (some old-timers or old-book lovers may have read her). I started going with my mother in the early '60s when I was in junior high. I remember the food as being very good, as well as the novelty of entering a restaurant from a down-escalator, right outside in the open!

When I first moved back to Houston in 1984, I saw it and was really impressed by it. It had a sign that said "Boarding House," and there was what looked like a cabbage patch or vegetable garden along its front walk. I soon moved into the neighborhood but had little reason to pass by the mansion/boarding house for several years. In 1991 I enrolled my daughter in a daycare home down the street, and by then the mansion looked vacant, but soon there were signs of construction and remodeling, and before long I was told that a fraternity moved into it. I wished I'd had some excuse to go inside when it was a boarding house. How was that for an anachronism!

I thought it might be farther west, like maybe West Dallas at Montrose, since it's both far enough and close enough to see so much skyline. Could we see that much skyline at Scott? Dunno. I'll have to look and visualize the next time I drive that way.

My husband, Mr. Martinez, taught there as a full-time substitute (they called them "dedicated" subs) from 1986-1988.

I haven't read this entire thread from 2007 to 2 weeks ago, so I might be repeating something, but how about Reba in River Oaks, which becomes Fairview East of Shepherd, which then becomes Tuam right before downtown? And Gray, which just past Shepherd becomes Inwood.

Another quirky Village store I remember from the '90s was a handcrafts shop called Iowa and Guatemala, which sold hand-made folk art crafted by rural Iowans and rural Guatemalans.

It's actually Mexican-Spanish-Cuban. I don't know if the elderly owners I knew are still living, but the husband was a Spaniard, the wife was a Cuban, and the adult son was a sort of Cuban/Spanish/Tex-Mex-American Houstonian. Very nice people, all three of them.

It's still there. It's now double the size it was, though, because a few years ago it took over the space of what had been a baby-clothes-and-accessories store. (Come to think of it, in the late 80s and early ninties, Rice Village had two baby stores. Was there a baby boomlet in those years?)

That's a fantastic old picture! And it DID have a Rettig's ice cream sign on it. It is delightful beyond all logic to see that old picture. You have helped me to scratch a decades-old memory itch! Thank you.

I hope you find the picture. I would really love to see it.