Michelle C

When I was growing up just about every neighborhood had a superette. They were small mom and pop grocery stores.

Yes, I have visited Hanks Truck Pictures more than a few times. I am also a member of the American Truck Historical Society (ATHS)

From as early as I can remember I have always had this fascination with 18 wheelers. I guess I should have been a truck driver as much as I loved the big trucks. In the 1950's my dad loved fast cars and built hot rods. I guess that is where I developed my love of cars and trucks. So over the years I have had a few older cars that I have restored as a hobby. About seven years ago I got to thinking that I could restore a 18 wheeler just as I had cars. I bought one and stated restoring it. It was a 1967 NT-950-D Ford diesel highway tractor A few years later I decided to do another one. This one was a 1986 LTL-9000 Ford Highway tractor. I am leaving Sunday for a truck show in Springfield MO. and them to Colorado for another truck show in Greeley CO. I will be driving my 86 model and hauling my golf cart, 1965 Ranger pick up, and my daily driver crew cab F-250 on the trailer. I will be gone three weeks all total. My 86 LTL 9000

This is the 5829 Kirby location.

All in one sitting? I would need a designated driver to do that.

I too would be interested in finding the answer to that question. I'm a San Jacinto alumni. I did a little research and found one military aircraft from Ellington that crashed July 30, 1942 in Houston. It does not say where in Houston but if it was on the base it would say Ellington. Some times they will give a better location like 5 miles northwest of the field or something of that nature. I have only got through the month of Jan. for 1942. Do you remember what time of the year the crash occurred? Summer? Close to Christmas? San Jacinto High is about 16 miles northwest of Ellington as the crow flies. here's a link for the 1943 Crashes. http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/AARmonthly/Oct1943S.htm

At the time we lived in the 1400 block of Lincoln street just a few blocks from the explosion. In 1953 Lincoln ran from Allan Parkway (Buffalo drive) to Westheimer. In later years a curve in Montrose just north of Westheimer connected to Lincoln street and the name was changed to Montrose. I was only eight years old but I can well remember the explosion, it rattled our windows and shook our house pretty good.

No Subdude, Best Products would be at the end left end of Kingspoint street. Kingsport is the street in foreground. It is just out of the picture. Here is another aerial of the Almeda Mall area to give you a little more perspective. This picture is a lot earlier, probably in the early seventies. Note where it says SITE that the only thing there is a drive through bank. Nothing had been developed on the other side of Kingsport yet.

The narrow underpass is no longer there. When the bypass was built it was done away with. Now we have a overpass that crosses the railroad tracks at the same location. If you take the old road through town, you still have the dog leg where third street intersects with Highway 95. I don't guess that will ever change. We still only have two traffic lights in town.

I live in Smithville and have seen some bad wrecks at that under pass. When the bypass was built around Smithville the under pass was done away with and is now a four lane overpass.

Thanks for the link, I found it very interesting and informative. There used to be so many really nice old stations in Houston when I was growing up and on into the 70's, then in the 80's they all seemed to disappear and were replaced with the convenience store type stations that we see now.

Thanks for the link for the aerial pictures of Houston. I was able to find several locations and clearly see the buildings of auto dealerships located in the downtown area in the forties and fifties. Earl McMillian Ford on Louisiana, Dow Chevrolet on Milam, Lester Goodson Pontiac on San Jacinto, Two locations for Davis Motor Company, one on San Jacinto and the other on Fannin, Abbot Stansell Dodge and Plymouth on San Jacinto. As I have the time I think I will be able to locate more. The pictures are a real treasure trove.

Tanks Tori for posting the pictures of the service stations. I am fascinated with old service stations and their locations. A special thanks to Ghost for the history of the buildings.

I don't know why, but old service stations seem to fascinate me for some reason. I love finding pictures of old stations and then trying to locate where they used to be. It is a next to impossible task unless something in the back ground gives you a clue. It is always great to find a picture with a location, then look at current Google maps to see what the lot looks like today. So please, if anyone has pictures of old stations in Houston please feel free to post them and location if known.

The lady on the right does not look happy about wearing the hat.

One of the problems of owning a pick up. Everyone is your friend when they need to move. At least it is not as bad now days as it was when I was younger.

It don't seem like it has been that long since I lived there. Time sure does march on quickly now days. I think it must be an age thing, it seems like it took me longer to get from four years old to twenty one than it did from twenty one to now. Those were some great day and filled with good memories. I often wish I could go back to that simpler time. You can never miss anything that you have never had. We had only one phone in the house and it was in the hall. We had a couple of room air conditioners for A/C and we were lucky to have that. I remember once my mom threw out about a half can of lard. I had a couple of Cherry bomb fire crackers left over from the fourth of July. When I found the can of lard I removed the top and lit one of the Cherry bombs, dropped it in the can and shoved the can upside down into a flower garden in the back yard and took cover. When the thing went off pieces of the can and lard went everywhere. The pieces of the can was easy to clean up but the lard was all over the back of the house, I liked to have never got out of trouble for that incident.

I had just about forgot about this thread. I thought I would add another one of my cruisers of the past. I had the 56 F-100 for nineteen years before I got weak and sold it. I had bought it in 93 when I was living in Colorado from a farmer. It had a front frame from a 76 LTD II rear end from a Lincoln giving it four wheel disk brakes, the engine was a 71 Boss 351 Cleveland backed by a Ford C-6 transmission. It was fast and lots of fun.

One of the Hooper twins died last year.

In 1957 my mom and dad left the West end area and moved to the Montrose area at 1525 Sul Ross. The next year I started junior high at Lanier. I have very fond memories of that neighborhood and it was a great place to be raised. The house we lived in is not there anymore nor is any other house on that block. They have all be torn down for a large building that now occupies the entire block surrounded by Sul Ross, Mandell, Mulberry and Branard streets. The building is the Menil Collection art studio. I hate it that our old house is no longer there but the Menil Collection is very worthy of replacing it and the other homes that used to be there. Dunlavy pool was not far from us at Dunlavy and what is now the Southwest Freeway. It was a favorite hangout in the summer. I think the area is now called Evan Chew park. We spend endless hours there whiling away the summers. We even watched the infamous 59 Freeway trench as it was being dug when construction on US 59 was started. I smoked my first and last cigarette on the way to that pool one day. A friend came by me house and she and I had decided to walk over to the Dunlavy pool for an afternoon dip. On the way she ask me if I wanted a cigarette and I said yes I will take one. After a few puffs I was coughing and carrying on and threw it down and said to her, that is enough, they taste bad and they make me cough, I have never picked up another one since. I remember getting ready for a camping trip that a friend and I had planned going on with the Girl Scouts. My friend came over and my dad helped us pitch a tent in the back yard, this was supposed to be our dry run. I had two Tabby cats and during the night one of my cats came into the tent and was meowing and I got up and put her out of the tent, after a few more times of putting her out of the tent I finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning when I awoke I found a littler of kittens laying between my legs on my blanket. What a surprise. One of our many haunts in the area was Phil's café at the corner of Mandell and Richmond. Phil's had some great food and was a very nice man himself. When I first started visiting his café I met a very nice waitress named Dotty. She would always wait on us and not only myself but her and my mom became very good friends over the years. She is now retired and lives near Lake Livingston. The café started out as a small diner with about three of four tables and a counter with stools. Phil later added onto the side of the building a nice dinning room more than doubling the size of the building. In later years he moved over to where south bound traffic from Shepherd splits off to go to Greenbriar, he is right about Norfolk street. It is now called 59 Diner. Phil was known for his good food and had many established customers. Lanier was not very far from where I lived and it was not uncommon to walk to school. Sometimes my mom would take me to school and sometimes the mom of girl that lived across the street from us would take us. It wasn't long before my first cousin that lived a few blocks from us that went to Lamar bought a 31 Ford A model. He would come by our house and pick up my girlfriend across the street and myself and take us to school in his Model A. That was a real treat to ride to school in the Model A. It wasn't long before a couple of neighbor boys near me also wanted to get in on the ride. The two guys would lay on the two front fenders and wrap their arms around the headlights and ride to school that way. For some reason I do not think that would sit very well with the law now days, but back them no one ever said a word about it. One cold winter morning my mother was taking me to school and when we stopped at the traffic light at West Alabama and Mandell there were several police cars and several ambulances parked on the street at the intersection. Their attention was focused on the house on the northwest corner of the intersection. I didn't learn until I got home after school that three people in the house had died overnight from asphyxiation. Another tragedy that happened in the neighborhood came in July of 1959 when twelve year old William, affectionately known as Bill Bodenheimer was killed. He was a neighborhood kid that most knew and liked and lived not far from West gray on I think Driscoll street. He had been to Dunlavy pool one day and left the pool and went home only to leave the house a little while later close to dusk. He didn't return home that night and his mother and her boy friend went out looking for him only to give up sometime after midnight. Early the next morning the continued their search and finally found him in a small tin building on the back of a lot on West Gray stuffed in an old icebox. His murderers were later apprehended and charged and tried. There is some serious doubt that the ones arrested were the actual one that killed him. I am sure many on this board have heard of the Poe school bombing in Sept. of 1959. At the time I was at Lanier Jr. High and remember all the sirens that just kept on coming past the school that morning. The teachers would not let us get up and look out the windows and we had not clue as to what was going on. Of course we later learned of the bombing that happened that morning at Poe. We had no security police at our school and the school went on lock down with all doors locked except for the front door. The school had several of the biggest football players guarding the front door with baseball bats until the school got the all clear that the incident was confined to Poe. Right after the incident at Poe that morning my mother got a call from a friend of my mom and dads that was a deputy with the Harris county sheriffs department. He did not remember if I was going to Poe or if I was at Lanier. Hesitating to ask my mom if I went to Poe, he ask her if I was home, she said not she's at school, and he ask which school, in which she replied Lanier. He then told my mom what had happened and why he was calling. Had I been at Poe he was going to come by and pick her up and go to the school with her. These are some of my memories from the Montrose neighborhood that I was raised in from about twelve years old until I started college in 1963. Many good memories and some not so good. This was our house.

You can add Weiner's to the bottom of the pecking order, it was a notch or two below Wards and Sears.

When they were new they were billed as the twin malls.

I remember the Carrousel well. I had been to the club there a couple of times back in the day.

Britt's was a department store. There used to be one at Northline Mall. If I remember correctly they had a little better quality merchandise than did your average department store.

The Hooper twins were good friends of ours and we used to follow then to different places that would play, groupies if you will. Not really sure where this picture was made, it may have been at Magnolia Gardens but it had to be late 60's or early 70's. The two men with gray hair and the brown hats on are Bud and Bud. One at far left of picture and other on the right above the woman's head.