brucesw

This article from Texas Monthly, March, 1976, says the Houston distributors of Coors hoped to launch May 15 of that year (last paragraph). There were 6 distributorships awarded for the Houston area, due to the high initial investment cost.

An earlier topic in the Historic Houston forum. There are other scattered mentions in that forum, too.

Weingarten's sold to Grand Union, which didn't last long (there could be a thread here on grocery store chains from elsewhere that didn't make it here). Safeway took over some of the Grand Union locations (Safeway was already here). When Safeway sold its Houston area stores to pay off some debt, they became AppleTree Markets, headed by a former Safeway exec who retired shortly thereafter and AT began to fall apart, eventually retrenching to just a couple of stores in B/CS. The Fiesta at W. Bellfort and Fondren was originally a Weingarten's, then Grand Union, Safeway and AppleTree. I shopped there under all the banners. The Seller's Brothers at Weslayan and S. Braeswood was a Weingarten's; it was one of the ones that was forced by a lease agreement to hold on to either the Weingarten's or AppleTree name long after the companies had exited the market as I recall. The Weingarten's in Freeport, on 2nd Street, just east of Brazosport Hi, was opened in the early 50s; a Penney's shared the center. The building has been demolished. The HEB on Plantation at Dixie in Lake Jackson was originally a Weingarten's. Back in October, JR Gonzales did a post about Henke and Pillot on his Bayou City Houston blog, with dates, pictures, addresses and tons of comments. I can't get the individual post to come up but here's a link to the October archive on BCH - it was a great month of features on Houston history.

510 Lovett was the mailing address for both KTRH and KLOL-FM; my understanding was that the KLOL operation was actually across the street in one of the old mansions but I never visited there. Sorry if this decreases the coolness factor. I never heard anything about 510 being haunted or Jesse Jones having lived there? Maybe that referred to the mansion? The building on the corner of Lovett and Whitney (500 Lovett) was the longtime home of KILT (and KILT-FM). Built in 1957 by Gordon McLendon when he bought KLBS and flipped it to KILT and moved it from the original studios in the Milby Hotel. The building also housed the offices of Air Call, a pager company that was owned by LIN Broadcasting, which bought KILT from McLendon in 1967. I think the antenna was originally used by the pager company but also for the dishes for the microwave links from studio to transmitter by the radio stations when microwave links replaced land lines and also for microwave links to remote broadcast units. KILT moved out to Greenway Plaza in 1995; the building sat idle for several years then housed the offices of TWIT, This Week In Texas, a gay, state-wide weekly, for a while as I remember. Don't know what's there now.

That is now the location of Bombshell Tattoo which moved down from near Dunlavy.

Sorry to hear this. He was a passionate contributor who sometimes went over the top but I have missed his posts. Thank you for taking the time to look into it and bring us up to date.

The original location of Capt. Benny's was at Main @ Holcombe, caddy-corner from the Shamrock. It was a real shrimp boat with a door cut in the side and a horshoe-shaped bar and cooler inside and not much else, very limited menu, too, according to my brother, who went often. Later moved down to the Greenbriar location. Benny was an oyster shucker at Bill Williams who opened his own place when BW closed. See the posts including the quotes from vonroach in this thread.

Thanks. I thought I should get more. Will they send this to me or to the County Clerk? It's been over two months now; BOA was servicing the loan and ReconTrust, a BOA company, sent the note, so it's not a small bank.

I paid off my mtg a couple of months ago. I got a refund of the overage in a week or so then waited 7 weeks and all I got was the original note stamped 'Paid in Full.' Is that all I should get or should there be some other document, formal letter or something? As part of the settlement costs I paid a $16 County Recording Fee. Is this taken care of? Do I need to go down to the Clerk's office and take care of anything or is it finished? Thanks for any advice from anybody who's been through this. I've only paid off a note through a sale before, never done it this way.

I live less than 10 miles due north of the transmitter and get only spotty reception. In a thread about this on R-I, everyone reported either bad reception or no reception and all except one lived well within the purported coverage area as I recall.

Retro TV, which was supposed to wind up on 51 before the bankruptcy of the former owner, has landed on KUVM.2, 34.2. It appears to be a very bad signal just about everywhere.

A search didn't take that long, and assuming the Search engine on R-I works well, there are only three mentions of interest: Retro TV sched for 7/9/62, Mon shows no Midnight with Marietta; a short Consult Dr. Brothers follows the Tonight show. Friday, 7/13/62 lists M w/M at 12 Mid, following Tonight. Saturday 7/7/62 shows nothing special on Saturday night. So I guess I was wrong about it being on Saturday night.

You have already run circles several times around my knowledge. I grew up 50 miles from Houston and only read about Marietta and lived away from here for almost all the 60s so my knowledge is rather limited, although I certainly knew more than that Wiki article SpaceAge got the info from and IMDB is even less helpful. Thanks for everything you have posted. I was under the impression Midnight with Marietta was a Saturday night only show, that there was something else during the week. Not likely I would have been up to watch TV that late during the week, although I probably would have been awake many nights, under the covers, with my cans on, listening to my Zenith Transocceanic. I have only a couple of TV schedules from the 50s; one in 53 and one in 54 both show a Movie Showtime on 2, starting as late as 11:30; one from later in the decade on a Sunday shows nothing. A quick search for 'Marich' on R-I's Classic TV forum turned up nothing. A more intensive search for retro Houston TV schedules in the 50s might turn up something plus a search for variations of Marich and Marietta, perhaps? There's one guy who has posted a number of Retro Houston TV schedules but he never lived here and gets some names wrong. Given everything you've already posted about her it's a shame there's not more information to research.

Maybe best known to people in Timbuktu from that film but if you were around Houston in the 50s you knew the name; it appeared regularly in the entertainment pages of the papers from her work in local theater (still can't remember which one she was with but it wasn't the Alley). She was on another Channel 2 show before she got her own, I think, but I can't remember which. It may have been Howard Hartman's The Guys Next Door or Gottlieb's Matinee. Her husband Bob Marich was a director at Channel 2 for a long time. I only stayed up to see Midnight with Marietta once; it was aimed at a mature audience so I found it very boring.

Paul Schmitt was music director of Ch. 2 in the early years and appeared on several shows, probably not all on camera. The show Johnny Nash appeared on was Matinee with Dick Gottlieb, a daily show at 4pm. 13 year old Nash, a student at Jack Yates Jr. Hi, had been overheard singing for his fellow caddies at a local golf course and his number passed along to Channel 2. He debuted on September 2, 1953, and went on to be a regular. Schmitt and his TuneSchmitts were on Matinee and I think also the show with Howard Hartman and others earlier in the afternoon called The Guys Next Door or something. Hartman was a baritone crooner and father of Lisa Hartman Black; he played piano himself, as I recall. Schmitt supposedly had the distinction of turning down an early appearance by a young singer managed by Col. Tom Parker named Elvis whom Schmitt said was 'not what TV is looking for.'

The Bob Bailey collection at the Briscoe Center at UT has several pictures of the Sharpstown area including some aerials of the mall from 1963. (These pictures came up on a search for 'Sharpstown;' might be able to find others searching for other terms). JR Gonzales has been doing a series on malls and shopping centers on his Bayou City History blog in the Chron but hasn't done Sharpstown yet.

You are substantially correct. KLEF-FM became KJYY in March, 1986. Didn't John Profitt become GM or PD or KUHF? KLEF had been a classical station since Oct, 1964, when it took over the frequency from KARO, a sweet music station that had struggled for 4 years. At the time, KRBE was also a full-time classical station (The Key To Radio Broadcast Excellence) but switched to Top 40 ca. 1968. When KRBE first came on the air in late 1958, every FM in town except KFMK (97.9) was airing at least some classical music and several continued into the early 60s. There was also classical on AM - KPRC had been airing the Houston Symphony concerts for decades. In it's first 2 decades, FM was the medium of high brows. There are more details on Mike Stude's involvement with the huge upgrade in KTRU facilities in the thread on Radio-Info linked to by Filio above but essentially, Rice never set out to operate a 50,000 watt Class C2 FM station as a student run station and there's no reason they should be expected to fund such an enterprise unless they're just rolling in cash and don't know what to do with it. As it is they're reaping a huge financial return on a minimal investment. The first 'educational' station in town was WRAA, licensed to Rice Institute from December, 1922, to mid 1925. Before that, Rice students had been among the forefront in experimenting with the new 'science' of radiotelephony, active in amateur radio, working with the oil companies in developing their use of radiotelegraphy to keep in touch with their widespread operations and operating the big amateur station that had it's antenna on top of the Carter building. Radio has been on the downward side of the growth curve for decades and consolidation of signals and frequencies in the hands of a few operators has been going on for almost as long. The best engineering and entertainment minds haven't been attracted to the medium for years. It's time for Rice students to get creative and inventive and see what they can come up with to distribute their programming. Maybe they can come up with something to trump HD and Internet radio.

I looked through my notes and found the reference I was remembering: "Big ad for Angelos Cafe (Oyster Bar) opposite Tower Theater. Grand cabin (?) dining room w/2 (...some kind of...) fireplaces, meat counter too." (my handwriting can be a little hard to read, even for me). This was p. 17, 10/4/46 - Houston Press, if someone has access to the papers and wants to look it up. I think there may have been a picture of the restaurant in the ad that I intended to go back and get a copy of some time. I'm almost certain this was the Press although this particular page of my notes I didn't remember to write the name of the paper I was scanning at the top; if it had been the Chronicle, there should have been a section citation along with the page # and the Post was virtually worthless in that era for my subject matter so it's not likely the Post. If it was where Mary's was 'opposite the Tower Theater,' i.e., caddy-corner, would have been appropriate but I took it to mean directly across.

I remember coming across a newspaper ad a few years ago when I was doing some research in the 1940s for a restaurant on the curve across from the Tower called Angelo's, a seafood restaurant/oyster bar. I remember thinking that must've been Charlie's but I didn't compare addresses so I don't know if it was that same building or if that was the original use. I think that Angelo's may have later moved out on South Main outside the Loop where it was known as Angelo's Fisherman's Wharf.

Wasn't that Montrose location originally (or earlier anyway) Tex-Chick?, the Puertorrican place now on Fairview?

That was it. Thanks. I was pretty sure there wasn't any lantern. I think that was the only f & c shop I ever went to. As I recall, the fish was very greasy. It was served in cardboard cone printed on the outside to look like a newspaper since f & c in England supposedly is served in rolled up newspapers.

I couldn't swear to it but I think we had each of the f & c chains here for a while - Arthur Treacher's, H. Salt, Esq., and Alfie's. There's still an Alfie's down in Texas City. There was a f & c place on Shepherd, a block north of Richmond, on the east side of the street; I think it was an Arthur Treacher's but I'm not sure. I don't remember that lantern. Treacher's was supposed to be the best according to a friend of mine but he didn't go with me there, I went on my own to check it out. I don't remember the food at all. I think I remember the Arthur Treacher's ads, too. They shouldn't have been running here if there were no outlets but sometimes ads on a national buy do get run in markets where they are irrelevant. This would have been ca. 73-74. The building was later Mama's Po' boys or something like that and is now gone.

I lived just a couple of blocks from the DR on Westheimer (at Graustark?) in the early 70s but went only once. In Austin I had eaten many times at the DR just off the Drag on 24th street but there were a lot more food options in Houston - lower Westheimer was Restaurant Row back then. Within a couple of blocks were Ari's Grenouille, Original Marini's Empanada House, Udder Delite, Los Troncos; further down were several including Hungry International and I think Michaelangelo's was around back then. I went to a Wienerschnitzel on Braker Lane in Austin back in January, just to see what it was like after all these years. The basic wiener is a little bit better than the JCI but the toppings weren't. However, they now have an 'Angus Beef Dog' that I thought was pretty good - you could actually have the sense there was some meat included in the sausage. The JCI Chili Cheese Coney is an iconic Houston dish and I have to have a fix every now and then but it's really a mediocre wiener - it's all about the toppings. And it's really hard to get excited about a hot dog, anyway.

I think the best I've had in town is at Spec's deli downtown; also had good ones at Candelari's and District 7 Grill. I don't remember the prices though and I just get a half one - I can't eat a full sized one. District 7 is probably going to be the most expensive. In the interest of full disclosure I'm not from LA and have never had one in NOLA so of course I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Gone. Kaput. All She Wrote. Stopped by there today and nothing but some cabinets. It's been only 5 or 6 weeks since I was there. Really a bummer; very nice folks, food was so good and so convenient to me but not a good location, inconvenient parking and almost invisible signage. Also, the Chill Grill, another family-run little diner on Hillcroft at West Airport has closed; it was Cajun too. I'm really looking forward to the Cajun Made Cafe, 7950 W. Bellfort, one block west of Fondren, where there was a Frenchy's store-front for a few months. Should be opening soon. A teaser flyer in the window says 'Fresh, Hot Hog Cracklings Everyday' plus a lot of other good stuff. Also, around the corner on Fondren, next to the Chevron station on the corner, is Sno Dreamz, a NOLA style snoball place - the real deal. It's been open a couple of months. Really nice folks there, too.