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57Tbird

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Posts posted by 57Tbird

  1. For 57Tbird...

    I checked the papers for contemporary accounts and they confirm the story above. However, the schedule for KLEE-TV Sunday eve, 1/2/49, included 'Cotton Bowl' at 7pm. It was only a :30 minute program which the paper described as 'scenes from yesterday's Cotton Bowl game at Dallas (SMU 21 vs. Oregon 13), I guess what we would call a highlight reel.

    Thanks for the clarification. I did remember seeing the Cotton Bowl. I guess I just assumed the telecast was on New Years day.

  2. Here is Hebert's Ritz:

    RitzRest.jpg

    On the back it says

    "We Invite You to Visit the Ritz Dining Room

    Where Good Food Is Cooked and Served Under the Personal Supervision of the Owners

    Mr and Mrs CLIFTON P HEBERT

    and Where You Can Eat and Feel

    You are Among Friends"

    Wow!! Subdude...You continue to impress me with your collection, or expertise, on where to find things like this. I will forward this piece of memorabilia to the former owners. I am sure they will be most appreciative. Thanks! I have them looking for an old menu from their establishment. They said they have a bunch of them stored away in a box somewhere. I will post, if I get one. Hebert's Ritz was a fine dining establishment in its time. Would be interesting to compare prices with today's menus of comparable restaurants. I am curious about the spelling of McGowen. On the card, it is McGowan. I thought it was spelled with an "e".

  3. Hebert's was still in operation thru the mid 70's. I used to take clients there for lunch. There was a private dining room in the basement with a well-stocked wine cellar. Loved their corned beef & cabbage or red beans & rice. The Hebert family is still in the food business. They have Hebert's Speciality Meats on Richmond and another on 45 N in the Pavillion Mall in the Woodlands area. Another not-so-well known restaruant that operated from an old house was Mama Galli's (sp) located near Gulfgate.

    I am acquainted with the husband of the daughter of the Hebert who owned the Hebert's on McGowen, so I forwarded your comments to him. His reply:

    The Hebert family associated with Hebert's Ritz on McGowen is not related to the Hebert now in business with the meat markets. The corned beef and red beans and rice were served for lunch only. We closed the restaurant in 1987, and the building was demolished shortly thereafter. The economic crunch of the times gave us an excuse to close it and get out of an increasingly competitive business. We had inherited the business and were not content in the operation of it. We are are now happily retired and living in contentment overlooking the shores of Galveston Bay.

  4. As one who is possibly the most senior contributor to this forum I'm tossing out these names which might have been mentioned previously in some old thread...

    Valian's Pizza - which I believe was on Main near the old Shamrock Hotel. THE place to go after a UH home football game in the 1950's and one of the first pizza places in Houston.

    Bud Bigelow's - a steakhouse "way out" on Westheimer, possibly near Hillcroft.

    Weldon's Cafeteria on Main - a rather upscale cafeteria in a Mod-looking brick building near the present Museum District. I think that the building is still there but may have had the facade altered.

    Well, silverartfox....Looks like I have some competition for the Old F*** title around here. Good to have someone to help me with 40's-60's Houston memories and other assorted items of interest.

    I went to Valian's often in the 50's after Rice home games and on other occasions. It has been discussed here often. It was across Main from the Shamrock. I also remember Bud Bigelow's and Weldon's...located as you mentioned.

  5. Potted Meat:

    Mechanically Separated Chicken, Beef Tripe, Partially Defatted Cooked Beef Fatty Tissue, Beef Hearts, Water, Partially Defatted Cooked Pork Fatty Tissue, Salt. Less than 2 percent: Mustard, Natural Flavorings, Dried Garlic, Dextrose, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite

    Yuuuuuuuummy!

    Potted meat sandwiches and peanut butter/jelly sandwiches were standard fare for me in my school, sack lunches loooooooong ago. I had Spam when I didn't have potted meat. Strangely, I liked both of them. Glad I didn't know what was in the potted meat. I guess that was before the ingredients had to be posted on the can. Please don't tell me what's in Spam. I still like it.

  6. Generally "Raising Cain" is the same as "Raising Hell" ! I agree, it is a strange name for a restaurant, I'm sure it is a play on words, I just don't know the meaning yet.

    Cain was the first murderer, according to biblical accounts. If you make trouble you are raising the spirit of Cain.

  7. Actually Billy Wade was unbeatable at Meyer Speedway which was a 1/2 mile track. Another Billy, Billy Griswold was the man to beat at Playland Park. The car owner was Johnny Reiff, who I worked for and later drove his car when Griswold retired.Playland was a 1/8th mile track. The big names at Meyer Speedway other than Wade were M.J.Burton, Bill Blumerich, Charles Ray Schild, Griswold,Jimmy McKinny,& Ronnie Chumley & Joe Plowman. Add H.B.Bailey to the list

    Wecome, sprintcar! From your comments, it's good to see there is someone on this forum that appears to be almost as old as I am...maybe older. From previous posts of mine, you can see that I went to many races at Playland and then to Meyer, when it opened. I always thought Playland was a 1/4 mile track, but you should know better than I. Did you read in a previous post of mine that I was very close to Blackie Lothringer's car when it came flying over the fence/wall that night? Were you there that night? Thanks for posting more names of the drivers of that era. I remember them. One you left out was Norm Pierce. He and Billy Wade had many close races to the finish line at Playland. A close friend of mine, Ben Bishop, raced at Meyer when it first opened. He was a rookie and only raced for a year or two. He ran in a '57 Chevy. Know him? Did you ever race at the old Arrowhead Park Speedway? I saw A. J. Foyt race there in midgets a few times when he was just starting out.

  8. History

    The station first broadcast on January 1, 1949, as KLEE-TV (KPRC has repeatedly said that the callsign has no meaning and came from nowhere when being thought up). It was the first television station in Houston and the 12th in the United States. It was owned by the Hobby family, owners of the Houston Post, who had signed on KPRC radio in 1925 as Houston's first radio station. The television station changed its calls to match its radio cousin in 1950

    My dad told me many years ago (before there was a TV station in Houston) that the radio station, KPRC, call letters stood for Kotton Port Railroad Center. Don't know where that came from, but I remember him telling me.

    I saw my first TV broadcast in Houston on that January 1, 1949, at a friend's house. They were broadcasting the Cotton Bowl game that day. SMU was one of the teams...with Doak Walker and Kyle Rote. Don't recall the other team. There was a problem with the TV that no one knew how to fix. The picture kept rolling from bottom to top. I bet we looked funny as we kept nodding our heads to follow the picture. Of course, no one there knew that there was a simple adjustment called the Vertical Hold that could have fixed the problem. Since TV's were a new technology, no one wanted to attempt to turn any knobs for fear that it might self-destruct.

  9. Does anybody have any interior photos of the Alabama Theater, from before it became the Bookstop? I'm curious what the balcony area used to contain ... where was the projection booth? Was there a concession stand up there?

    I'm also looking for any information about the Theater between when it was built in the 1930s and when it was converted.

    Thanks!

    Steph

    slideyfloor @ yahoo.com

    Try The Center for American History There was no concession stand in the balcony area that I can remember from the mid 40's - early 60's.

  10. Awesome stuff, Subdude. My parents said they took me there once but I was too young to remember. IIRC, Allen Parkway was called Buffalo Speedway or Buffalo Parkway back then, and of course Buffalo Bayou is 50 yards away.

    Name of the street was Buffalo Drive. When I was a kid, I played baseball, in a teen league, against a team they sponsored... The Townhouse Buffaloes.

  11. The first Cinerama movie was "This is Cinerama," produced in 1952 and premiered in NY. There were numerous other travelogs in the 50s; "How the West Was Won" was released in '62 according to IMDB.

    You're right! I had forgotten about that one. I saw it, so must have been at the Windsor. I don't think the Windsor Theater was built until the early 60's, though. I know the Windsor shopping center was under construction in the mid-50's because we had impromptu drag races on several Sunday afternoons in the parking lot, which was completed while the shopping center buildings were still under contruction.

  12. What was Cinerama? What was the big deal and how did it work? This was before my time. I got here just in time for Senserround.

    The screen was about a 90 degree arc/segment of a circle, if I remember correctly. I know the first Cinerama movies that came out used three cameras/lenses to shoot the action on three different reels. The three film reels were then placed in projectors that were synchronized to shoot in one-third sections on the screen, so that the motion/action would move from one section to another in a continuous motion to theoretically appear as shot with a single camera/lens. However, there was always a distinct separation/overlap between the sections that was, at times, very distracting. The best seats were at the center of the arc. I guess you could say it was a very rough version of today's IMAX, but the screen was not nearly as high. This is all from memory, so the details may not be exact, but it gives you a general idea of how the system worked. I think the first Cinerama movies debuted in the early 60's. That's when I saw my first one.

  13. Was the Cinerama a dome?

    No dome....just a huge curved screen. I think they used three projectors for the wrap-around effect. The first ones, I know, were done that way. It may have evolved to a one projector configuration later on. I think How the West Was Won was the first Cinerama movie.

  14. The Central Bank Building was a real swinging place-the second location of Glenn McCarthy's Cork Club in 1957 after he sold the legendary Shamrock Hotel to Hilton. The Cork Club featured the top entertainers of the era including Frank Sinatra. (The last location of the Cork Club was to be at the office tower on Highway 6 at Memorial Drive in 1983 but the economic bust left that building unfinished for years and the club did not open.)

    I just recently came across this thread, and since I know someone who was intimately familiar with the Cork Club, I thought I would pass this info by him for his comments. An interesting bit of trivia...

    "The discussion says the second location of the club was on Travis. Actually, the second location was on Fannin, across from the Warwick Hotel...in the Republic Insurance Building. It then moved to the Century Building. Yes, there was talk of having it open, after it closed in the Century Bldg, in a building at Hwy 6 and Memorial, but it never got beyond talk. McCarthy was going to receive a monthly, small set fee for allowing the use of the name Cork Club. The guy who owned the building was going to take over the Club and use its membership list to promote tenant leasing in his building. He was a con-man from Chicago and a real sleaze bag. The reason he was never able to complete the building was that his past finally caught up with him."

  15. You can go right over to Sam's Boat on richmond. Fresh Oysters and they shuck 'em right there in front of you. When they are in season.

    Would that place be near Weslayan? Is it a restaurant or meat/seafood market? A good friend of mine has mentioned a good meat market in that area, but I don't remember the name. I know this one sells beef, but I'm not sure about the seafood.

  16. There were a couple of Larrys at KNUZ, I think. Larry Vance and Larry Kane. The latter also had a teen dance show on KTRK that many people thought was better than Dick Clark's American Bandstand.

    I remember Larry Kane very well. He was a contemporary of mine. He worked part-time as a DJ at the time he was attending San Jacinto High School just down the street from KNUZ. His real name was Harry Lieberman. The San Jacinto class of 1954 had their 50th reunion last year and Paul Berlin was one of their celebrity guests.

  17. I'm trying to remember where I heard them, and I believe it was Steak and Ale in SW Houston.

    Heights, you are right on! I remember them as Elliot, Walter, and Bennett, if we are talking the same group here. They played at the Steak and Ale on the SW Fwy not far from Sharpstown Mall in the mid-70's. My daughter and some her pubescent friends adored them. My wife took them to see E, W, & B in person and they got to (gulp) talk to them. I forget which was her favorite. I bet that 41 year-old "girl" still has a record or two of theirs.

  18. And then there is the old Shirar's Bicycle Shop...a Great Moderne relic...now beyond recognition.

    You mean to tell me that Shirar's is still there!? When I was a young kid, living on Elgin in the early 40's, I used to walk by there and drool at those new Schwinn's on display in his window.

  19. Hey,57tbird, which was delicious, the BEER or the Oysters, or Both !? :lol:

    Well.....I'd have to say both. I really miss the raw oysters now. Haven't had any in a long time because of the health issues associated with where they might be harvested. However, I've gotten hungry for some just talking about it, so I just might sneak one or two down on my next visit to the coast.

  20. T-Bird, were you at the Alabama game that year?

    No, but a bunch of us were watching it on TV at Kay's on Bissonnett. I'll never forget it. Didn't realize what had happened, at first, when Tommy Lewis of Alabama came off the sideline and decked Dicky Moegle as he was running in the clear for a TD at about the 50 yard line. It happened so fast. No instant replay then. Didn't take long for everything to get straightened out though, and Moegle was given the TD. It made Tommy Lewis an instant celebrity. I think I remember him being on the Ed Sullivan show the next Sunday.

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