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marmer

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Everything posted by marmer

  1. My sense, borne out by what exterminators have told me, is that they are more likely to inhabit cool, dark, places or places where they can find water. They like bathrooms for this reason. They also like electronics, maybe for the warmth or because they have some sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. I have replaced two phones in my office this past year because they were full of little German cockroaches. (!) It's not just me saying so; Matsushita has recently released a printed circuit board impregnated with pyrethrins (roach poison) to minimize damage to gear caused by short circuits from zapped roaches. The Nundini report said the roaches were found behind posters, unused equipment, and the plastic wrap box. I'd be a _lot_ more worried about 59 Diner's off-temp meat storage cited in the same article. marmer
  2. I have roaches in my kitchen, and I eat there every day. Roaches are a fact of life in Houston, and it didn't sound like they were on food prep areas. Besides, you have to decide, do you want poison spray everywhere, or can you live with roaches? Anyway, a few more: How could I forget Murder by the Book on Bissonnet? Fred's Italian Corner on Greenbriar The Hot Bagel Shop on Alabama British Isles in the Village. This would have been so much easier twenty years ago, when we could have added World Toy and Gift, Kaplan's Ben-Hur, Phil's Restaurant, Hamburgers by Gourmet, Zeke's, Neal's Ice Cream, Chicago Pizza Company, British Market, Cactus Records, the Ale House, and Avalon Drug to the list. marmer
  3. Variety Fair on Rice Blvd. Allrecords on West Gray. Brazos Bookstore on Bissonnet. Bellaire Broiler Burger Cafe Artiste JMH (?) Market in West. U. Admittedly, these aren't as obscure as some of those mentioned. Still, all a part of what makes Houston special, and all somewhat threatened by larger national chains and big-box competition. marmer
  4. Houston Public Library has it in their reference section. Rice University's library has it, as does the Lake Jackson branch of the Brazoria County Library. marmer
  5. Yep. My wife and I were there for Wizard of Oz. Movie, drinks, and popcorn for less than a buck. One of my best Houston memories. marmer
  6. She is too. Seems appropriate, since she spent so many happy hours so near there. And, yes, there are lots of neat old plots there, the Perry family for one. I knew some Perrys when I was growing up and they were related to some of the original settlers. marmer Edit: "She" meaning the high school girlfriend mentioned in Post #27 above. May she rest in peace.
  7. Yes, that's the washateria. Now Domino's pizza, and across from it when I was a kid, Lake Drug and Sportville. The area by the esplanade was never called Other Way to my knowledge, always a continuation of Center Way. Here's a cap from a Sanborn map from 1951 that seems to confirm it. The Lavelle building is not there either on the map or in the picture. Now that I think of it, it is a beautiful rendition of what would later be called a strip center. The stores are several feet above the street level and there is a continuous set of steps up to a covered arcade in front of the stores. I've never seen anything like that anywhere else. No DDT spraying when I was a kid, thanks to Rachel Carson. Maybe the later sprays didn't work as well, or we were just used to a comparatively lower skeeter population, but we always thought there were lots of the damn things. I wasn't quite born yet for Carla, my parents evacuated to Central Texas and their house on Acacia had little damage. A few downed limbs, a few shingles blown off, the aluminum awnings torn up. No significant water or wind damage. Of course I well remember the draw bridge to Quintana but not a separate bridge to Bryan Beach. We always turned left at the end of the drawbridge to go to Quintana or right to go to Bryan. I'm pretty sure I remember the Freeport light. A new one went in when I was pretty small, though. The picture caption says 1967 and that sounds about right. I thought there was a significant resort area in the late nineteenth century at what is now called Surfside, but don't remember the name. Maybe Quintana? Apparently the whole town was a total loss after the 1900 hurricane, sorta like Indianola farther up the coast. WRT toxicity, I don't know anything specific; I know my former high school girlfriend died of cancer at thirty and she spent a lot of her growing-up years drinking well water from her grandmother's place on 36 between Freeport and Jones Creek. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a connection but there's no way to prove anything. On the other hand her grandmother lived there for fifty years, smoked like a chimney, and lived past seventy. I remember when the intersection of 288 and 332 was a stop sign, right there by the Surf drive in. It was replaced with the area's first cloverleaf in about 1968.
  8. Yes, I seem to remember that theatre building downtown being a nightclub when I was in college. Nice to see it looking so good. I don't remember the name ORA, but it may have changed later. I remember the Rea and Suggs families, just barely. As far as I know, the root beer place was always called An-to-nel-li's, though it could have been elided to three syllables by some folks. Yes, I heard the urban legend about the canal on the way to Quintana, and it's probably true that there were some accidents there. There was indeed a deep canal and a sharp turn in the road on the way to Quintana up until the '80s but the new bridge and Hwy 36 to Jones Creek fixed that. As far as several people disappearing and several cars missing, I find that a little difficult to believe. Of course in 1971 the hijacked airliner made an emergency landing at the old Lake Jackson airport, and young Houston TV reporter Jessica Savitch got thrown in jail for trying to get too close after the sheriff's deputies/Lake Jackson police told her not to. The "big explosion" of a tank car happened in December 1967, I believe it killed about ten people but I'm not sure. A couple of very credible unexplained UFO sightings took place in the area but are almost forgotten now. One, in 1959, occurred as a group of women were driving from Freeport to Jones Creek (probably Hwy. 36). A bright light crossed in front of them and disappeared into the heavily wooded area beside the road. The car engine died temporarily and the frightened women called the sheriff's office. According to the sheriff's report, there was a light visible back in the woods but the brush was too thick to allow searching. The better known one happened near Damon or Bailey's Prairie between Angleton and Brazoria in September 1966. Two sheriff's deputies chased a gigantic craft at speeds exceeding 100 mph on the country roads in the area. One of the deputies had an alligator(!) bite he had received earlier in the day which was apparently healed by purple light beams from the craft. marmer
  9. Yes, during my time in the area (1961-1985, more or less) the commercial shift from Freeport to Lake Jackson happened. Of course, things like boating and fishing supplies were still found in Freeport. But when I was a little kid we had to go to Freeport for everything. By the time I was in high school, my Freeport/Brazosport High girlfriend really resented the fact that we had to go to Lake Jackson for movies, shopping, restaurants, etc. I remember the Showboat and the Beacon in Angleton. Both of them finished their lives by showing pretty seedy movies. I never went to either of them but I remember the Showboat looked pretty nice. I think there was another theatre, maybe called Freeport or Velasco? I thought the Showboat lasted longer than 1970 because I thought I remembered some friends about my age talking about rats running around the seats when they went to movies there. Lee's Credit Jewelers may very well be moving in there. They had a devastating fire in their building on the corner but they plan to re-open. I think the little Art Deco pharmacy with its Rx ornamentation is the one that is near there, and I think it is a law office. Lanier High School was the building on the east side of town, on 523. It was the first campus for Brazosport College and now is a training center for Dow. Yes, it was for blacks only until approximately 1966. I'm pretty sure they were a state football champion in the Prairie View Interscholastic League in the early '60s. -- probably the Brazosport area's first state championship! I've been able to find out almost nothing other than that -- it's though the culture of that high school has completely disappered. The Davis family moved to LJ about that time. Their daughter graduated from Brazoswood a year before me in 1979! Yes, LJ was basically lily-white in the '60s I remember Krause Office Supply and I'm pretty sure that that's the Grant's store I mentioned earlier that is barely visible across the street on the far left of the picture. MidtownCoog -- yes, there are several excellent mods, especially along Oyster Creek Drive. One of those days I need to go take pictures. marmer
  10. Yes, that's the bowling alley. I actually think it was one street east of Brazosport Blvd. (288) or on a cross street. My parents were also frequent bowlers in the 50s and that's where they met. I wouldn't be surprised if they knew/ran into your folks. I too would like to do some photography in Freeport. There's a lovely little Art Deco pharmacy building in the Downtown, and a few other neat things. Dow built the plantation house in 1974. You could see it across the lake from Dow Park; it was near Dr. Beutel's house. I went to a couple of honors dinners/receptions there in high school. I don't know if it's still there; probably is. It would probably only be open for events and stuff. I knew Bill Colegrove, he published a folksy weekly called "The Brazorian News." Were you there during the Lanier High School years? I suspect that the Brazosport area has an unpleasant racial history, since the original inhabitants were mostly black farmers and the surrounding plantations depended on convict labor from the nearby prison farms. I know there were black schools in Brazoria and Angleton, and the black Lanier High School, but there weren't any other black schools as far as I know. marmer
  11. A few random replies. Sorry if I don't bother to quote. There's a small pic of Antonelli's River Inn at the Second Street location in the link I posted above from the Museum newsletter. The Mystery was definitely a real, albeit, mostly sunken and derelict, shrimp boat. I clearly remember seeing it at the dock about 1971 or so and I'm pretty sure it was past the Cherry Street bridge. It was not the only one that looked abandoned and sunk. I suspect the reason they chose that one was because either it was abandoned or a total loss, but structurally not too deteriorated. Upon a closer look at your photo, the sealing of the deck and the wheelhouse windows is fairly new. I don't actually remember seeing that before. Yes, the bowling alley was in (north) Velasco (actually just across 288 from the Rambler dealership.) It burned down about 1967 or so. The Dow Park land is completely developed with houses now, except for the plantation archeological site. Here's a Google Earth cap: I don't remember the weird green boat at all. I do remember a rotting derelict wooden sailboat and a Korean War fighter jet both on display in Jasmine Park. The boat was for kids to play on, but it was full of wasp nests and rusty nails. It was a different time. There is a nice article in the Summer 2004 Cite by Ben Koush about the early buildings in Lake Jackson and Freeport. It's too big to scan, and since it's fairly recent you should be able to find it. There are some pictures of the Ben Franklin building and some duplexes, and this picture with plans (from Architectural Record, May 1942) of the Second Street houses we discussed earlier (that your Dad worked on) Yes, LJ thinks they have done their historical duty by building a museum, though there are starting to be some vestiges of interest in architectural preservation. By the way, the new McSchool Lake Jackson Intermediate has been built on the site of the former Little League fields at the corner of Oyster Creek Drive and Oak Drive. Some of the old Lake Jackson Jr. High buildings were still there last time I was there, but not all. I don't think there need to be separate threads/topics/forums for the cities. Between you, me and MidtownCoog I don't know that anyone else is that interested. Maybe BenH? marmer
  12. Wow! I didn't think there were any foreign car dealerships in the area. By the time I was a kid, one almost never saw anything except VWs. I never saw a Hillman or a Metropolitan (I have, but didn't as a kid) One almost never saw Mercedes'. Once at Bimco marina in Surfside I saw someone's privately owned Mercedes O-class coach. That was a real kick. Pretty sure Mercedes was distributed in the USA by Studebaker Packard in the late 50s. My parents had a '58 Desoto Firedome that my older brother laid a lot of rubber in before I was born. When I came along they got the Rambler and kept it until I was in college. (along with various Chevy trucks, and a somewhat asthmatic '55 Ford pickup.) Shy Pond was a large pond sort of in the curve of Oyster Creek. It was in the undeveloped land bordered more or less by Forest Drive, Oyster Creek Drive, FM 2004, and Oak Drive. Yaupon continues northward over Oyster Creek now and goes right through that area. There is still a small section of Shy Pond remaining, I think. My parents both came to the area to work at Dow. My father was actually here pre-war then returned to his home of North Carolina after Navy service. He moved back to Velasco again in the early 50s. He met my mother at the bowling alley in Freeport just east of 288; they both were avid bowlers. I still have vague memories of going to that bowling alley as a very very small child. When I was an infant, my father got his name in The Brazosport Facts for bowling 290-something. I know about Joan Few's work and I have corresponded with her by e-mail. I work at Rice and went to Rice with her daughter Alice. Her husband is a professor at Rice. But I can't say that I have actually met her in person. Funny about the Rambler wagon. When I was in HS I really wanted the little AWD Eagle or Spirit wagon which they had at that Freeport dealer circa 1977 or so. It's still a handsome car, at least by late 70's standards, and beat Audi and Subaru to the punch for car-based AWD. Apparently the sale and development of Dow Park (which funded the historical museum) was a cause for major controversy in the community. There was even a brief article about it in Texas Monthly at the time. There was an article about mod buildings in Brazosport in a recent issue of Cite. The mod houses on Second Street were specifically mentioned with pictures. I'll see if I can find something that I can post or PM you. Posting entire articles, as you know, is frowned upon here. marmer
  13. This, maybe? Antonelli's River Inn
  14. Oh, yeah. Mr. Antonelli's. I remember when it was on Second Street near the shrimp boat docks. My parents had a boat when I was a kid and I remember seeing the sad-looking derelict Mystery half-sunken at the pier. Then they cleaned it up and put it on that display in the park. marmer
  15. Wow, again before my time. But I can believe it was a jungle. I certainly remember motorcycle riding around Shy Pond. Talk about a jungle! Wow, I didn't know any of that at all, and I'm a car and history nut. The Schwinn dealership in my time was Woodrum-Duensing Hardware. My parents bought their 1962 Rambler at a Rambler dealership in Angleton and had it serviced at an American Motors dealer right on the edge of Freeport. That dealer remained until the late '70s; the building is still extant -- I think it's a construction rental place. Sounds like the Weingarten/Woolworth center went in after you were gone. Just to be sure, I'm talking about right across from Restwood Cemetery. The book I'm talking about may be the Chronicles. I don't have it here right now. Green cloth cover, fairly substantial. I'll look at home tonight. Re: Brazosport High School. Yes, they disabled that picture now that the school has changed so much. But yes, I was talking about the BHS you graduated from. It looked like that, with the tall folded plate breezeway and the open-air mall. Sad to see it go. The old Freeport HS, later Freeport Intermediate, on ?Second? downtown across from the Baptist church, was torn down about a year ago after local preservation attempts failed. Curiously, the first Freeport School, next to the river, is still extant, being used as a warehouse. Google Earth still has the old BHS shown. Pretty much everything east of the auditorium (the courtyard and the classroom wings) has been replaced by that blue-roofed postmodern McSchool. It has a nice food court, gotta give it that. And they have several well-maintained display cases of memorabilia and pictures of every graduating class. marmer
  16. Could he have stayed at the Rice when he was here and gave the "space speech" at Rice Stadium in ?September? Maybe the two visits are getting confused in collective memory. marmer
  17. Try this link: http://www.houseandhomeonline.com/home/doc...pp_0207_hou.pdf
  18. Yes, I think there are quite a few on Caroline, Austin, La Branch, etc. (I went out once with a girl named Caroline Austin. No kidding.) _Houston's Forgotten Heritage_ does explicitly state that the new South End developments were very attractive to wealthy Houstonians who were then able to sell their downtown homes for significant profit as commercialization moved southward. Silverartfox also believes that neglect fostered by the Depression and by wartime austerity caused many of these houses to deteriorate beyond repair so that they were demolished after WWII. That seems perfectly reasonable, as does the nineteenth-century level of amenities in even those large houses, as compared with, say, the houses built in River Oaks in the 20's. And, too, the city was still less than a hundred years old and preservation was not on anyone's mind. I'm less willing to go along with the deterioration due to climactic factors only because of the large numbers of contemporaneous houses still extant in Galveston. But the thing that I find tremendously surprising is not how many of those houses were torn down after WWII, it's how many of them were torn down BEFORE 1920. marmer
  19. I know that book well. In fact, the Pearland Public Library's copy is sitting on the counter in my kitchen right now, along with Marguerite Johnston's _Houston, The Unknown City 1836-1946._ I checked them out hoping to find a picture of the Simms mansion Wayside, but all I found was the description posted earlier from the Johnston book. Many of the photos and information on the houstonhistory site I posted earlier seem to be from _Houston's Forgotten Heritage_ From what I can tell, the lure of living in "the country" was very strong to the early developers of places like River Oaks and Shadyside. That plus the increasing availability and reliability of automobiles probably contributed to the flight of well-to-do people from the downtown area. Concerning the short poles shown in the picture: Probably they were still under construction; either telegraph poles without wires installed yet or maybe gaslights without lanterns installed? marmer
  20. On the Houston History site, there's a great slideshow of old mansions and homes. http://www.houstonhistory.com/poduct2/album3/jsalbum.html Most of them were downtown or in Midtown. There were literally dozens of High Victorian mansions, some designed by George Dickey and one by Nicholas Clayton. What I found totally surprising was how short a time they lasted. Many were built after 1870 and torn down just after the turn of the century. The 1920's saw most of these grand homes, none as much as fifty years old and many closer to thirty years old, demolished, seemingly without a second thought. A bare handful survived until the 1950's but no later. I suspect the development of Broadacres, Shadyside, Shadowlawn, and later River Oaks and Riverside Terrace contributed to this, but it's enough to sicken any ardent preservationist. Anyone else heard of this? marmer
  21. I don't have a copy of the Johnston book, or of Houston's Forgotten Heritage, but I've seen both and wonder if there's a photo in one of them... Anybody have a copy? Marty
  22. Ben Koush's article in the newest Cite says it was by Sanguinet and Staats, completed in 1909. Hugo Neuhaus had Harrie T. Lindeberg (New York architect of Shadyside fame) remodel it in 1921 with arcades, pink stucco bath houses, and a swimming pool. In 1939, club member Kenneth Franzheim remodeled it again. After the club moved in 1957, Gus Wortham bought the golf course, and then in 1973 the City of Houston bought it and named it for Wortham. According to Ben, "Today, none of the buildings are extant...The existing clubhouse dates to this (1973) period."
  23. When I was at Rice it was by far the most convenient first-run theatre. I saw Excalibur there in 1982 or so. Yes, it was gone by the mid-80s. Marty
  24. The Witch's Hat House, from the Houston Architectural Guide, second edition. I used to see this house all the time because I used to bank at Gibraltar, now Bank of America, on San Jacinto and it was right across the street. In the late 80's it looked pretty sharp and slowly deteriorated. Sad, but no one wanted to live there in those days. Interestingly, it won a Good Brick award in 1981!
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