Ashikaga

I'm sorta thinking it was based on several posts about it here and other places. There's a thread about it on the Houston Area Postcard club site.

Someone said it was located at S. Main & Murworth - which would be inside the loop (currently).

Found a small news item about it on Historic Houston: "July 1951: A gang riot erupts near Playland Park and 36 youths are jailed."

For some reason I'm thinking of a racetrack that was further south on the Alt 90 section much closer to Stafford/Sugarland.

Since Astroworld is gone and it sounds like there are no more amusement park in Houston, does that leave Kemah with the only one?

i dunno. the bluebonnet theater is/was a block north of 225 on the east side of broadway.

You can look on CinemaTour.Com or CinemaTreasures.Org. I thought that Texas Highway 225 ended into IH-610. I didn't know that it intersected with Broadway.

ooh! i like it!

not to stray even more off topic...but

reminds me of this book i have (how to repair small appliances, circa 1961):

album cover? yes?

There was a rock group back in the 1960s called The Electric Prunes.

You would be correct, it is about 5 blocks from the Galleria.

I didn't go to Pilgrim Elementary School. I attended kindergarten at Park Place Elementary School in 1963-64. Can you tell me anything about that school after I moved away during the summer of 1964?

Milby Mansion was along Milby Park. Back in the 60's one could score some good acid at the place. Good rock concerts at the park at that time. I think I remember that.

On Cheech & Chong's "Big Bambu" album, "Unamerican Bandstand" hosted by Laid-Back Lenny, introduced the winner of the "How Many Downers You Can Drop Contest."

Does anyone remember a big house that used to sit on Old Galveston Rd by the name of Milby Mansion? It was about a mile from Broadway. It was torn down some time back and an industrial plant was built on that site. The trees that lined the front of the street are still there. Would appreciate any info.

I think that I can safely say that the house was either the home of Charles H. Milby or it's a house that was named after him the same way that Milby High School was.

As kids, my sister and I used to make our own version of S’mores. We slathered peanut butter on a Ritz Cracker, topped it with a marshmallow, then baked them until the marshmallow turned brown.

Yes, sometimes when you have to make up your own recipes, they turn out better than the original product.

A few more Rice atheletes that went pro throughout the years:

Jose Cruz Jr. (baseball)

Dicky Moegle (football...played for the 49ers and Cowboys)

Tobin Rote (football)

Bill Howton (football)

Buddy Dial (football)

Hugo Hollas (football Saints)

Ricky Pierce (NBA Bucks)

...several baseball players from Rice's nat'l championship baseball team of a couple of years ago were drafted and are in the minor league's now. Look for several to be in the majors real soon...

I guess in the old Southwest Conference enrollment didn't matter. UT and Texas A&M have between 40,000 and 50,000 students. Rice University was at the bottom with 5,000. This is from the 2006 World Almanac, page 658.

My memory/knowledge + google

Nabisco does well. I'm looking on page 390 of the 2006 Edition of The World Almanac. Of all cookies, Nabiso Oreo sold $197,957,900 worth in 2004-05 and topped the industry with a 5.4% market share. Nabisco Chips Ahoy came in second.

The Budweiser brewery there in Houston should be in good economic shape. Bud Light beer sold $1,341,192,448 worth in 2004-05 for a 15.6% market share. Regular Budweiser came in second with a 9.8 percent market share.

The letters are still there except they were replaced with numbers.

For example; 525 0000 is JA5 0000 JA is the Jackson exchange in Montrose.

862 0000 is UN2 0000 UN is the Underwood exchange in the Heights

222 0000 is CA2 0000 CA is the Capital in downtown.

The exchange buildings are still there and I think they still have their old names on them.

Hope that helps. There was also a Mowhawk exchange. Maybe google for old houston telephone exchanges.

The exchanges were and are large telephone buildings with all the switching equipment.

Yes, back then there was no Caller ID/Answering Machines/Voice Mail/Call Waiting, etc. If your phone rang, you had no choice but to answer it and hope that it wasn't a bill collector. If you called someone and you heard a busy signal, you had to hang up and try calling them again later.

I attended back in the 70's and my second grade teacher, Mrs. Abbs was my nemesis. I remember being forced to run around the whole field during P.E. seemed to be a chore also. Gosh, all I seem to have are bad memories of this place. Anyone else have recollections ?

Going by the zip code, this school appears to be near the Williams Tower building.

I remember:

U-Totem -- came just before Stop 'N' Go

Globe -- There was one off Shepherd where the flea market is now

Britt's (?) -- That five and dime in Northline Mall

Sound Warehouse

Wyatt's Cafeteria

Remember when Sears used to sell popcorn and candy?

I seem to remember Foley's doing the same thing, too.

I remember going to Globe on Woodridge next to Gulfgate. I also remember going to a U-Totem. In my mind, I'm thinking that it was south of where I lived on Galveston Road just before you get to South Houston. If I'm right, it's probably not there anymore. Or if the building is still there, then some other business is most likely occupying it.

Where are you now Chet? What kind of work do you do?

Gnu,

If you respond to that last message of mine, it might be more appropriate to post yours and my response and that photo (if it can be posted) on this topic.

Ms. Hurlburt....elementary school kids would have had a field day with that name.

I think she was depressed after you moved away and ended up a lonely old woman begging for change under the I-45 overpass at park place. j/k

know her first name??

found this short obit in the chron archives.

This could have been her since the services were at the funeral home on Broadway (near Park Place)

Thanks. I did the math. I was in her class back in 1964. That would have made her 43 back then. She sure looked a lot older than that. I have that class photo with her in it in my e-mail folder. If you could give me an e-mail address to forward it to and if you or someone else on this forum could post it, then all of you could look at it. I think you'd agree that she looked much older than 43.

Nice Save!

I attended Kindergarten at Park Place Elementary School in 1963-64. I recently found my class photos and my report card. My teacher's name was Ms. Hurlburt. Have any of you heard of her? I doubt very seriously that she's still living.

My 2nd cousin use to work there.

I guess you could say that Nabisco is "All-American." Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers are regarded as American snacks. When I was a little kid, I remember one of their competitors was a company called Sunshine. Its logo was the robust baker.

Other runner-up by Kohn-Pederson-Fox

Competition winner by Murphy/Jahn

What could have been..

I'd be too afraid to take a job as the window washer for this building.

All I could recall of the old Tommie Vaughn jingle is:

"..They got great service..they got good price, they got everything (missing words) that's nice......Tommie Vaughn...Tommie Vaughn Ford" All done in a deep baratone/"Texan sounding" voice.

Allthough no song comes to mind...I guess everyone recalls the "Rocket City" dealership on the Gulf Freeway near the Gulfgate mall. Was it Dan Boone's dealership? Lastly. was it Frizell (??) that had "A whale of a deal" with a whale cartoon as a logo?

Yes, I remember the baritone singing voices of the Tommie Vaughn radio commercials. I also remember the singing for the radio commercial for Chuck Davis Chevrolet. No, I don't recall "Rocket City." I do remember seeing Frizzell. It was on that street that ran alongside the Weingarten's store in Gulfgate, I think that it was Woodridge/Woodbridge??? I remember when we'd go to Globe Department Store, I could see Frizzell when we were walking through the parking lot.

There was one in the Brazosport area for a few years, complete with throwed rolls, but it closed about four years ago. It was spelled "The Potatoe Patch" (with the trailing "e")

Marty

Dan Quayle must have owned it.

DUDE!! The Potato Patch is great. It is up on 1960. Instead of putting a basket of rolls on your table they throw muffins and rolls and such at you before you food comes out.

Is The Potato Patch just one restaurant or is it a chain in the Houston area?

The Original One's a Meal was on West Gray, next door to the River Oaks Theater. My father used to have breakfast there before attending St. Thomas High School in the late 40's. It was out Tuesday night dinner spot for many years in the 70's. I believe it closed about 15 years ago.

A woman whom I used to know who lived in Houston told me that she worked at a restaurant called the Potato Patch. I've never heard of it. She told me that she remembered Uncle John's Pancakes.

My parents owned a house in Breckenridge, Colorado until 1994 and way back in the early 80's I remember only having to dial the 4 numbers. Every phone is the city had the prefix 453. As the town grew I assume this all changed. I just remember dialing the four digits. Interesting.

Yes, I remember a small town that my aunt and uncle lived in was the same way. If the whole town had the same prefix, you would dial only the last four numbers. I live in Bridge City, Texas. From the 1940s until the late 1980s, 735 was the only prefix. Now the town has five, but the population hasn't increased. It's the proliferation of cell phones, fax machines and pagers which has caused the number of prefixes to increase fivefold.

What was infuriating (to me) was when 281 was first introduced, people were SOOOOOO outraged at the possibility of dialing 10 numbers just to call their neighbors.

The city argued that the numbers could last longer if people with new phones went 281 as new service was granted. The people whined about it and they forced people outside of the beltway to be 281.

A number of years later, when 832 was introduced, all that went to hell and had to dial the 10 numbers anyway.

It was one of those instances when, even at 18 yrs old (I think) I was just yelling "get over it!" at the TV on how people simply didn't like change.

I wonder when we're going to get a new Area code since bubba is using up all the numbers.

Oh, yes. I remember when the whole state of Texas had about five area codes. 713 encompassed not just Houston, but way over here to where I live in Bridge City, as far north as Jasper, and as far west as halfway between Houston and San Antonio. In 1983 my area code changed to 409. I'm surprised that it hasn't been broken up with a new one added. But, that could happen.

Yup, we frequented them often. I remember the ones on N. Shepherd. Hwy 59 North, and Little York Rd. I grew up on the northside.

Went to the Globe stores on Hwy 59 North and N. Shepherd too.

Also had a Danburg's Department Store on Jensen.

Went to the Shopper's Fair which was on N. Shepherd & Crosstimbers.

Also frequented a Dugan's Drugs on Homestead Rd. that later became Eckerd.

Dang, I'm old.

Are you talking about W.T. Grant? A five-and-dime store like F.W. Woolworth and Ben Franklin? There was one just a little ways down from Newberry's in that open middle part of then-Gulfgate Shopping City. I remember my parents bought me some Silly Putty in that store.

Memories of the Capitan Theater -- ah yes I grew up in Pasadena in the 50s and that was the place to be on a Friday or Saturday night. It was built in the 1940s in that old art deco style, by the same company that built the Granada Theater out on Jensen Drive on Houston's north side. The two were practically identical in appearance and decor.

I have vivid memories of some of my adolescent "pursuits" in the balcony of the Capitan. We won't talk about the night in 1960 I was thrown out by the manager, who was very angry at me because of what I and a girl were doing up there, but let's just say that we had gone beyond necking to some "serious" groping.

The manager was so steamed he banned me from the Capitan forever, and this incident is the basis of one of my favorite stories. Ten years later, in 1970, my first wife and I were living on Houston's far south side, not far from the McClendon Triple Screen Drive In Theater on South Main at Hiram Clarke. I had to take a part time job there for a few months to make some extra money and get me and my wife through a financial tight spot, and lo and behold, guess who the projectionist at the McClendon was? The former manager of the Capitan, the same guy who threw me out and told me to never come back. We had a good laugh when I identified myself to him and we spent many good hours reminiscing about those "innocent" times at the Capitan. He told me he was surprised and pleased to know that I had amounted to something.

The movie house in the old downtown part of Pasadena on Shaw Street was the Long Theater. It was owned by the old Phil Isley theater chain, which had movie houses in a number of Texas towns. You may be interested to know that Phil Isley's daughter was a very famous movie actress. Her name was Phyllis Isley, until she moved to Hollywood and the studio changed her name to Jennifer Jones.

The Long stopped showing movies sometime in the 60s, and the building was used for other things, like an indoor gun range.

More Pasadena memories: does anybody remember that miniature golf course and trampoline park on Shaw Street about a block from the Capitan? Or Trainer's Drive-in on La Porte Rd, also about a block away, where the high school kids cruised and hung out, the same way the kids cruised and hung out at that drive-in American Grafitti? Another popular drive-in hangout was Vicki's, on South Shaver at Spencer Highway in South Houston. Vicki's was enormously popular with the high school crowd, because Pasadena was "dry" and South Houston was "wet", which means Vicki's sold beer. We could always find a college friend over 21, or someone with a fake ID to get us some beer at Vicki's. There was another drive-in on La Porte road in the shadow of old Sinclair Refinery -- it's now the Lyondell Refinery. It was also just outside the Pasadena city limits, and it also sold beer. For the life of me I can't remember the name of that drive-in.

I worked at the Red Bluff Drive-in Theater for a couple of years in the late 50s when it was still showing family movies. Oh the stories I can tell.

When I was about four or five years old, my parents and I went out one night. I fell asleep in the back seat of the car. When I awoke, I sat up and found myself staring at the big, green Sinclair dinosaur on that storage tank. Talk about something scaring a little kid!

A guy that I graduated from high school with named David Snyder posted a comment about the Red Bluff Drive-In Theatre on Drive-Ins.Com. He said that it spent its last years showing XXX-rated movies and that it had a tall fence around it so that nobody could see the screen. Someone on this forum said that he was able to see it.

If you log on to Drive-Ins.Com, you'll see where I posted some photos and microfilm newspapers ad on the Don Drive-In and the Surf Drive-In Theatres in Port Arthur and on the South Park and Showtown U.S.A. Drive-In Theatres in Beaumont.

Chet i beg to differ, on several occasions i have been to Kemah, Six Flags OVer texas and Fiesta texas both this year and last year it has been packed! No DVD or video game could replace memories at an amusement park!

I was simply stating my personal belief/theory. I'm certainly not right even half of the time. Like I've told people on this forum, I believed back in the late 1970s/early 1980s when the VCR came out, that the result would be all movie theatres going out of business. Well, it turned out that most drive-in theatres closed, but there are still quite a few indoor theatres still in operation. In the Chronicle ads, I saw two of them had 30 screens!

Yes, you're right. No form of home entertainment could ever replace my memories of Astroworld, Peppermint Park, Busch Gardens, etc.