gonzo1976

Thats right.

The cobwebs are thick: Im all mixed up. I coulda sworn it was for Invisible Touch (I was into Genesis back then).

I miss the blimp.

I remember that weird buzz...and my mom shouting to us across the house, 'The blimp is outside'. It always seemed to fly around my house about twilight.

Yeah, I remember there being a documentary about the tour rehearsals as well.

Remember one day (mid-80s?) when for like a day or two, Goodyear had TWO blimps in Houston? I think one was sent here to replace another. For a day or two you could see two Goodyear blimps in the sky at once.

Speaking of blimps, does anyone remember when Pink Floyd had a blimp over town to promote the 1994 Division Bell tour?

If you check out Grady McAllister's excellent site on Houston radio history, you'll find KILT's coverage of the Kennedy assassination. It's about 30 mins long I think, but at the end is one reporter's recollections of Kennedy's visit to Houston the day before the shooting. WELL worth checking out.

Plus, sound clips from Kennedy's speech in Houston are widely available on eBay, I believe.

I noticed that Luby's has been selling 60th anniversary glasses for $2 at their locations. Picked one up for myself.

I have a couple of birds-eye view photos of downtown Houston that were taken in the 1930s and 1940s. It was part of this program that allowed you to look at such views of various major American cities. This was before the days of Google Maps or Google Earth.

I've thought about putting the pictures up on my blog, but I'm concerned about running into any copyright issues.

Been raining downtown for about an hour. Just showers mostly.

Personally, I boycott Tamale Factory b/c their sign says "Best Tamales and Barbacoa South of the Border." South of which border? Canadian?

You know, I saw that sign for the first time last week. It had me doing a double-take.

My grandparents used to run Mak's Ice House, off Cullen and McKinney. Learned to play pool there!

Good to hear you're back up. And that's a good plan you have. I prefer to read about the other non-momentous things anyway - the backpage stuff as it were. That tells you more about life as it was and to me is more interesting.

You're right. And it's stuff like that that gets forgotten over time. I'm sure there have been plenty of plane crashes, trials, homicides, new openings and parades in town that have long been lost to time. Ninety percent of the stuff I post might have made the front page back then, but it wasn't the top news story of the day.

That's mine, too, but I think of Lost Houston more as an adjunct to the adjunct blog. Both were created for the Amnesia site. The main one is Houstorian. I just tried to add an RSS feed link to it - but it looks funny, so I may be doing it wrong. Anyhow, the feed is here.

I just checked out both Web sites; great work! I'll put a link up to it on my blog. I think it's good to know what others are doing. It sort of shows that Houston has an active online community that is interested in local history.

Hello all,

I just wanted to let you all know that I've finally resumed posting on my blog.

I'm always up for suggestions on improving it. I somewhat try to stay away from the more momentous events that have occurred in local history (ie. opening of the Dome, Texas City explosion) mostly because others have written so much about it. Some exceptions are when I come across tidbits that somehow got lost in the big story.

For now, it will remain advertisement-free.

I'll probably update it at least a couple of times a week.

Thanks!

The Sunday, June 8, 1969, edition of the Post said the first flight landed at the airport "shortly after midnight Saturday."

That plane was a Texas International jet carrying dignitaries and reporters.

"The new airport, with two terminals completed, has 40 gate positions. William P. Hobby has only 19 gates," the Post reported.

I seem to remember a siren going off in the Museum District in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

I used to operate the elevators at Jones Hall. There are three elevators (as far as I know). Of those, only two are accessible to the public.

Anyway, the main elevator in the lobby is sooo sloooooow. Patrons would complain about how slow it is. I read a document once that said if anyone complained, we were supposed to tell them that it moves slowly so patrons can enjoy the view of the lobby.

It used to be that every time a TV news anchor would say something grammatically incorrect the TV station would get hundreds of phone calls and letters from angry English teachers.

English teachers don't do that anymore.

They're too busy trying to get their students straight when it comes to grammar.

My pet peeve is when someone confuses the word loose and lose. Grr.

By the way, here's a question that appeared on a copy editing test for a major daily newspaper in Texas:

"A good copy editder can fine three mistakes in this sentence."

I don't know exactly what the third mistake is, but I have an idea.

Interesting... I always heard a slightly different version than that. Here's how the story I was always told went:

One year, back in the pre-SWC days, Houston traveled to Austin to play UT. The accident which cost Shasta her toe occurred before the game as they were unloading the cage from the van (or bus, i can't remember) it was loaded in. Someone with the UT football team found out about it and told the team so, as they mercilessly pummeled us, they mocked us by flashing the sign at us the entire game. It was a loss never to be forgotten by UH fans. The sign became a rallying point, and the next time UT and UH played (here in Houston, in UH's first year of the SWC), UH fans and players flashed the sign the whole game, as UH utterly destroyed the Longhorns.

This is the version I've heard as well. In fact, I think I read it in some UH publication back in the 1990s.

If anyone wants a peek at life in JDH during the early '60s, check out "The Hospital" by Jan de Hartog.

I've got a question for you "coog" fans out there. Why is the "shocker" your school's chosen hand gesture?

Technically, in "the shocker" gesture, the index and middle finger are together. Not so for the UH gesture.

This is from an undated postcard:

Looks like just a design element to me.

For the Chronicle, subscribers get access to the online archive. If you do a lot of Houston research, it's worth it.

Unless it's changed in the last few months, you don't have to be a subscriber to access the archive. I was able to pull articles from as far back as '87, I think.

You do need to set up some kind of free account, if I remember correctly.

Maybe it's an early version of this:

Nah. Hearst bought the Chronicle in the 1980s.

Local newspapers frequently ran this ad. It took me a little while to realize the cars did not have roofs, maybe?

Looks like the Coogs will face South Carolina! Should be an interesting match-up.

neat little slide show:

http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/spe...ldg/photo1.html

but no close-ups of the top

That's a good slide show.

When I was there in 1994, the paper wasn't even using all of the available space in the 10-story building. I got the impression they pretty much built the exterior of the current building around the old Milam Building where the Houston Club was located. Sort of like a cocoon.

By that time, they just started moving into a part of the 10th floor in the old Milam Building. One could see some decorative moldings that belonged to the old building.

Inside, one can tell where the original Chronicle Building ends and the other buildings begin because some of the floors will rise (or drop) a couple of steps.

Does the Hearst people still own the Chron?

Yep.

On the radio, on TV and even the Chronicle is doing a feature a day starting last Sunday until game day. Wow!

That's excellent!

Talk around South Carolina was that Houston might face the Gamecocks in the Liberty Bowl. But as of yesterday, it seemed like Houston might face Alabama at the Liberty Bowl instead.

Personally, I was hoping to see a Briles-Spurrier bowl game.

My dad took me, my cousin and a friend to Astroword during one its Fright Night periods. This was before they called it Fright Fest. The big deal that year ('87, '88?) was that Freddy Krueger was appearing there. My god, it was so crowded. You could barely walk through the park in some places.

Someone was shot inside the park that night, but it happened after we left that day.