Bellaire

Want something to drink?  Convenience store is the cheapest place to buy a fountain drink.  No contest.  A lot cheaper.  Most convenience stores are also cheap on milk and bread.  Want a slurpee?  Can't get one at a grocery store or a drug store.  Can't get fountain drinks there, either.  

All drug stores are the same.  All grocery stores are the same.  

Need a quick lunch and don't want to eat 2500 calories?  Most convenience stores have fresh made sandwiches.  I know for a fact that 7-Eleven has fresh sandwiches delivered to their stores every day.  

They must be doing something right.  The number of convenience stores is increasing throughout the nation and the number of grocery stores and drug stores is declining.  

Late to the discussion, but I played 4 years in F.U.N. Football for the Parker Cougars.  1963-1966.

The Freshman team consisted of 3rd and 4th graders.  My coach was Benny Valone and I can still see him kick at the ground and yell "Jimminy Crickets" when we made mistakes.  

The Varsity team consisted of 5th and 6th graders.  My coach was Fred Curry who had played as a lineman for Rice.  I think he was an insurance salesman and had all daughters.  We had coaches for every position, had trainers and doctors and played a very sophisticated game.  Plays called from the press box through the headsets.

Rumors were that the Oilers wanted to practice on the field, but were told no.  The turf was built for kids.  On the Varsity team you couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds at the start of the season.  

When I was 14 I worked at the stadium as part of the "chain gang" with the down markers.  The next year I was promoted to operate the electronic scoreboard and was official timekeeper.  Spent a lot of nights and all day on Saturdays there making some pretty good money for someone too young to get a regular part-time job.

Great memories.

Here's a bit of personal Meyer Speedway trivia.

When I took Drivers Ed at Westbury HS in 1970, we would attend the classroom phase at the school, of course. But for part of the Behind The Wheel phase, we would load up in a van and drive to Meyer Speedway, aka "The Range". The Drivers Ed cars were located there and we would proceed to practice basic driving skills to be followed by real street driving.

The temptation was everpresent to kick it on the straightaway, knowing it may be the only chance in your lifetime to be on a racetrack. However, if your speed began to exceed the acceptable limit, one look from the coach would quickly shatter your AJ Foyt fantasy.

I did the same thing in 1968.  All the cars were brand new Camaro's and the "coach" would sit in the stands and communicate with us through the FM radio in the cars.  We would practice entering freeways and exiting.  We were always telling him that our radios weren't picking up his commands.  So, we could fly down the straightaways.  

All of the Camaros had 350 hp engines and were automatics.  Except for one manual transmission that had a 454 in it.  There was only one guy in the class who already knew how to drive a stick shift, so I never got to drive that beast.

Great story to tell people that I learned to drive on an oval track.

The Thompson family, whose father founded 7-Eleven, attempted to take the company private back in the late 80's.  They overspent and borrowed too much money at too high an interest rate.  They lost the company soon after.  The 7-Eleven franchisee in Japan bought the company out of bankruptcy.  Many locations were sold to help pay for the acquisition.  Houston was sold.  San Antonio was sold.  Much of Texas was sold.

The Japanese franchisee still owns 7-Eleven.  There are over 10,000 locations in north america and over 50,000 worldwide.  Just not in Houston...............yet.

7-Eleven has made multiple acquisitions in the last 5 years.  One of the biggest was Tetco out of San Antonio.  About 175 stores mainly in San Antonio, Austin and Dallas.  The CL Thomas acquisition was mainly in the Austin area.  7-Eleven also bought the wholesale gasoline department from Tetco and now sells gasoline to non-7-Eleven stores.  A lot of those customers are in Houston.  

Don't expect 7-Eleven to open any stores in the Houston area.  7-Eleven's main emphasis right now is fresh food.  Their stores get deliveries 7 days per week from their distribution centers.  Fresh sandwiches, salads, donuts, etc.  They need to have a concentration of stores in an area to make it profitable to open a distribution center to handle the fresh food.  If you see an announcement that 7-Eleven has bought out someone with 75 stores or more in Houston, then expect the Slurpees to return.

Also, 7-Eleven announced that they want to franchise all of their stores.  They company operate some stores, but only long enough to clean them up, convert them to a 7-Eleven and then franchise them.