FilioScotia

I am not easily impressed, but I AM impressed by this restoration. That old building looks wonderful, at least in the photos included in this article in the Chronicle Online Edition. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Restored-courthouse-brings-history-to-life-2138217.php

This is true. Caddo is the only natural lake in the entire state of Texas. And this factoid is the source of a large laugh I got from an old map of Texas in National Geographic a long time ago. You know how Nat Geo will devote most of an entire issue to a particular country or state, with its history, lots of photos and present day and historic maps. They did that with Texas back in the mid 1980s. One of the big fold-out maps in this Texas feature was Texas as it was in 1846. I immediately laughed out loud when I saw that every one of our present day man-made lakes and reservoirs were shown on that map. All of them, from Texoma on the Red River to Lake of the Pines, Rayburn, Toledo Bend, Lake Houston, Lake Livingston, Lake Conroe and all the others. I had a lot of fun showing this map to friends and we all had a good laugh over it. I wish now I had kept it. I never got around to contacting Nat Geo to let them know about that mistake. I wonder if anybody ever told them.

Here's what Art Casper did when he got out of commmercial TV in the early 60s. Art (BJ '54) and Susan Casper Casper Creative Consulting, Houston, Texas "After brief stints in broadcast and newspaper journalism and military service, Art Casper opened his namesake agency in Houston in 1963 with no clients. Within two years, Art Casper & Associates was billing approximately $250,000. After selling and repurchasing his agency, now named Winius-Brandon, Casper and his staff grew the office to become the largest independent agency in Houston, with capitalized billings of more than $35 million and a staff of 56. He retired in 1995. Casper was also the producer and play-by-play announcer for University of Houston basketball for 28 years, including the broadcast of five Final Fours." Here's a link to a website at the University of Missouri, and if you scroll down a bit you'll find a photo of Art and his wife Susan. http://journalism.missouri.edu/news/2007/03-27-strategic-summit.html I am almost certain that I read Art Casper's obit in the Houston Chronicle sometime in the past several years, but i can't find it in the Chronicle obit archives.

I think the library microfilm files are the only place you're going to find local reviews of 2001. The Chronicle's online archives don't go that far back, and they've never posted the Houston Post archives online. Happy hunting. It's fun digging through microfilm files. Really.

They show him in that video. They said he was the "voice" of KHOU, which I assume means he was probably the one that announced the station ID's, etc.. Jerry Dale was indeed "the voice" of KHOU. He had the job known then as "booth announcer." He sat in a small closet-sized booth in the TV control room where he voiced station breaks and other "live" copy. Jerry was also the designated substitute as needed for Sid Lasher, and he often did the weather himself on weekends. I don't think TV stations use a "live" booth announcer anymore. Everything is now computerized, and all the station breaks are prerecorded into sound files which the master computer plays on the air at the programmed time.

Sid Lasher was one of the most popular TV personalities Houston has ever had. He wasn't a meteorologist. Never pretended to be one. He just explained the weather and the forecast in words we ordinary folk could understand. His warm and cordial on-air style endeared him to everybody. He died one night in 1971 between the 6pm and 10pm news. Ron Stone told me an interesting story about the guy who replaced Lasher. Stone was anchoring at KHOU then, and a guy named Jerry Dale was Lasher's backup and weekend weather guy. When Lasher died, Dale was promoted into the full time weather job. Stone told me that Dale really loved Lasher as a friend and father-figure, and he was so grief-stricken by his death he had a "nervous breakdown." Today we call that a "deep depression." Worse, Dale believed with all his heart that Lasher's spirit was still roaming the halls and studios at KHOU. He ended up leaving KHOU not very long after that, and I heard from one source at the time that he went into therapy. But that story has been debunked, so I have no idea where Dale went or what happened to him.

"Outdated" clothing? No such thing back then. People of earlier generations didn't replace their wardrobes every year the way so many people do today. Styles didn't change from year to year. Suits and dresses made in 1960 looked just like suits and dresses made in 1950. This allowed people to buy clothes that were made to last, and they wore them for as long as they could. Growing kids were the only ones who got new clothes all the time. If people added or lost weight, clothes were made to be "let out" or "taken in." Torn clothing was repaired, even socks. Shoes were re-soled and re-heeled. Remember cobblers and shoe repair shops? A photo of people on the streets taken in 1950 would look almost just like a photo taken in the same spot five or even ten years later.

Harry Kalas had a career most radio play-by-play announcers can only dream of. For a long time he was the #2 man on the Houston Astros radio and TV broadcast team, with Gene Elston and Loel Passe. Until 1969. That was the year Astros Publicity Manager Bill Giles moved to Philadelphia for a major move up. Giles' father -- National League President Warren Giles -- was about to retire, but on his way out the door, he persuaded the Phillies to hire his son Bill to be General Manager of the Phillies. Two years later in 1971 Kalas's Astros contract came up for renewal, but Giles made him a better offer and hired him to lead the Phillies broadcast team. The rest is history. Philadelphia is also the home of NFL Films, so Harry was a natural for doing many NFL films voice-over narrations, behind "The Voice of God" John Facenda. Harry moved into the first chair at NFL films when Facenda died in 1984. Yes indeed. Harry was one of the great ones.

I grew up in east Texas in the 40s and 50s and I remember driving past Brookside Cemetery even then, before U-S 59 was a freeway. It was huge even then and it really stood out. Back then the highway was two lanes and known locally as "Humble Road." Somewhere just south of the cemetery it became Jensen Drive. Back then this cemetery was "out in the country" from Houston, but I always knew we were getting close to town when we drove past it.

This is a reply to my own posting, with more information about Amanda Arnold's ex husband Jimmy Carter. I've learned that he was a fair to middling singer and entertainer, and a working television news reporter and producer. He and Amanda were made for each other.

Wow. That promo is a real "trip" back in time. Incidentally, the guy singing the song and showing up on camera with her was her husband, a small time country singer named Jimmy Carter. Amanda sang with his group for a time in the 70s, and she would often sing with them at some Houston area night spots. I don't know if they're still married or not. I liked Amanda doing the news. She wasn't one of the perky plastic phonies that were taking over TV news, and for me at least, she came across as "real". I liked the little wave she always gave at the end of the newscast. Amanda now makes her living as a TV and media consultant. She has her own consulting firm in Dothan, Alabama, and by all appearances, she's doing very well. http://amandacom.com/ Your posting inspired me to do some digging of my own. Take a look at this promo photo of the nightly news crew at a TV station in Cleveland Ohio. It says it was in 1980, the year before she moved to Houston. There's another familiar face in this photo. http://neohiotvmemories.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/a-scrapbook-of-cleveland-tv-memories-3/doug-adair-amanda-arnold-tom-ryther-sports-al-roker-1980/

There's the Downtown Houston Association. They've been there for years trying to encourage and guide commercial and residential development in the downtown area. If they can't help you nobody can. Director Bob Eury is the guy to contact. http://www.downtownhouston.org/

A local preservation group called Historic Houston is devoted to the very things you say you want to do. Here's their website, and I think the group's Director Lynn Edmundson would be very interested in meeting you and working with you. http://www.historichouston.org/home.html You should also contact the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance. Here's their website: http://www.ghpa.org/ Good luck.

This is weird. I live in Lufkin, and I went to a Memorial Day observance yesterday at a large cemetery on the edge of town. Walking into the cemetery, I went past a gravestone with the name "J. Frank Wilson" on it. I wondered if it was the 1960s singer, so later, at home, I Googled up that name and found it is/was the guy famous for The Last Kiss. J. Frank Wilson was born in Lufkin in 1941, and he died in Lufkin in 1991, a few weeks shy of his 50th birthday. Now, today, I run into his name again here on HAIF. What's going on?

That plane was a DC-3 AND a C-47. The DC-3 was the civilian model. The C-47 Gooney Bird was the same plane Douglas modified for military use as a cargo plane. It had no passenger windows. I'm guessing the one you saw was the military version because the Pentagon sold off a lot of those old planes as surplus after WWII and Korea. I can't imagine anybody dumping advertising fliers out of a low flying plane today. Homeland Security would keel haul their ass-es and the pilots would never fly again.

What a shame. I am 90 percent sure that this C.W. Abercrombie was the father of Navy Ensign William W. Abercrombie, who was decorated - posthumously - for heroism early in WWII. The Navy immediately put his name on a Destroyer Escort that was under construction at the shipyards in Orange. The USS Abercrombie was launched in 1944, and christened by his mother, Mrs. C.W. Abercrombie. The Abercrombie served in the Pacific theater through the end of the war. In 1946, Abercrombie was decommissioned, and put in the mothball fleet in San Diego. She remained in the inactive mothball fleet until 1968, when she was towed out to sea and used for target practice. Useful to the very end. BTW, I have found no evidence that C.W. Abercrombie had any relation to James Abercrombie, the longtime President of Cameron Iron in Houston.

I think you'll agree that it is unbelievably stupid to fly at such low altitudes, especially in a small plane. Any pilot who would fly below a thousand feet is risking his life. A small plane that loses power, for whatever reason, can be glided to a safe landing, IF, and ONLY IF, he has enough altitude to find a place close enough to put it down. And I speak from personal experience. My Sky Spy plane lost power several miles from Hobby Airport one morning. We were going there anyway, and still at up around 2000 feet when the motor shut down. My ace pilot said "no sweat", and very skillfully glided it down for a perfect no-power emergency landing at Hobby. The crash trucks were standing by, because it's SOP anytime a plane has to make an emergency landing. If we had been down around 500 feet or less when that happened we probably would have crashed. That's why pilots who fly low are just stupid and don't deserve to have a pilot's license.

Airborne advertising with trailing banners doesn't appear to be violating any law I know about. There are altitude requirements though. FAA regulations require pilots to maintain an altitude that's at least 1000 feet above the tallest obstacle in the general vicinity. That means the minimum legal and safe altitude for flying around Houston would be about 2000 feet. Back in the 70s, I did airborne traffic reporting as KPRC Radio's original Sky Spy. We leased a Cessna 172 and a pilot from Cruse Aviation at Hobby, and flew around Houston at 2000 feet. My pilot said flying any lower than that would be dangerous for people on the ground and for us. Not all pilots are as scrupulous and conscientious as that one. It's common to see small planes buzzing around the city just a few hundred feet off the deck. Those planes pulling the banners appear to be at about 1000 feet, give or take.

Back in the 50s there was this guy who flew a small plane around Houston broadcasting announcements of various kinds on a loud speaker. Local businesses hired him to fly around advertising their sales and special events. He'd fly around in big circles very slow at about a thousand feet, and he had that amplifier cranked up so loud you could hear him a mile away. The one I remember most from that period was about Frizzell Pontiac, 69th and Harrisburg, where you get A WHALE OF A DEAL. He also did occasional short announcements for the Pasadena Citizen newspaper. He was an audio version of one of those flying billboards that trailed behind the plane. And isn't it "lovely" to see those monstrosities are making a comeback? What's next? Sky writing? It just proves there's no such thing as a "new" idea.

Roving Ice Cream vendors were common all over Houston and the suburbs in the 50s. I remember them when I was growing up in Pasadena in the mid and late 50s.

I agree, it does look newer than 1942. Looks more like mid 50s. Lawyer Oscar Nipper is an old friend who started his legal practice in the mid 1950s. In the late 50s he and a lawyer friend, Jim Knox, formed the firm of Nipper & Knox and moved into that building. I don't know when Knox left and moved on, but Oscar practiced law in that building until he retired sometime in the 1990s. Oscar's wife Bennie Nipper is a retired and legendary HISD speech and drama teacher who taught a number of people who went on to professional acting careers.(She never taught at Bellaire HS, the cradle of a number of well known actors.) She taught at the old San Jacinto High in midtown and at Jones HS on the southeast side. Outside her school work, she has also directed plays and musicals in Houston area community theaters for more than 50 years. Pasadena Little Theatre, Clear Creek Country Theatre, Theatre of the Mainland and some others. In the late 1980s, she and Oscar bought that old boarded-up movie house on Hwy 3 in Dickinson, completely rehabbed it and adapted it into a theatre for live stage plays. They named it the Harbour Playhouse. http://www.harbourplayhouse.com/ Bennie and Oscar are getting on in years, but they're both still actively in charge of it and putting on a season of plays and shows every year. The Playhouse also offers classes for aspiring actors of all ages. And Bennie teaches some of them. They're both old and dear friends and I wish I could see them more often than I do.

You must be new in town. KPRC got out of the business of reporting "real news" a long time ago, when it was taken over by the Post-Newsweek Corp. For nearly 20 years now, KPRC has relied on shallow news stories with lots of flashy graphics, in a fast-paced style designed for people with low IQ's and short attention spans. It's the perfect lead-in show for Entertainment Tonight. Sometimes you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. They're practically seamless. I'm not surprised they're sending Dominique to London. Not sending her would be the real surprise. BTW, for Firebird65, Dominique's maiden name is Sachse, and you're right about its Saxon origin. It's an old Prussian/German name.

You don't remember Big Humphrey's Pizza? It was on that big circle at Park Place and Broadway for many years. It was originally a hamburger joint, but they added pizza in 1960. The pizzas were so good and popular the place became a Pizza parlor. My memory has it on the southwest corner of that circle, on the south side of the freeway. It was owned by one of the most interesting guys Houston has ever had. In the 1930s, pro wrestler Joe Vitale was the model for the Big Humphrey Pennyworth character in the old Joe Palooka comic strip. Big Humphrey proved to be such a popular character that the cartoonist, Ham Fisher, let Vitale use the name Big Humphrey professionally. He was hugely popular on the wrestling circuit, and he made enough money to open five Big Humphrey restaurants around Houston, including the one on Park Place. You can read the whole Joe Vitale/Big Humphrey story on their website http://bighpizza.com/?page_id=17 There's only one Big Humphrey's now, in Pearland, where it is Big Humphrey's Pizza and Italian Restaurant. http://bighpizza.com/ Joe Vitale died in 1977, but his son and granddaughter own and run the Pearland restaurant. Here's what the Houston Press food critic wrote about it. "...Taking in Big Humphrey's King of the Hill ambience, customers might wonder about the food. But all they need to do is sit down and order. Jasper Vitale uses recipes left by his grandmother, who was born and raised in Sicily. They supplement Grandma's Italian dishes with good ol' American and Tex-Mex favorites, as if to concede that truckers do not live by the meatball alone. Those who want wine with their pasta will have to bring it themselves."

The law didn't "bar" adults only complexes. It prohibited discrimination against families, who were, and still are, having a hard time finding decent apartments to rent. It's still hard because apsrtment owners found a loophole in this law, and they used it to keep their complexes pretty much free of people with kids. The law just said the apartments couldn't discriminate against families, but it didn't require complexes to have anything that would make families want to live there. Owners who wanted to continue attracting adults with no kids took out all the amenities. No pool, no play area or common area for recreation of any sort. Nobody with kids wants to live in a complex that has nothing to "enhance the experience" of living there.

Thanks Sev. As one of the "oldtimers" around here, I think it's useful to remember that OST was a major Houston highway back in the day. It really was -- and still is -- the "Old Spanish Trail". As your map clearly shows, the route of U-S Highway 90/OST still comes in from Beaumont on McCarty and runs through Houston NE to SW where OST merges with U-S 59 at South Main, and continues down to Richmond/Rosenberg where it splits. 59 continues south to Victoria, the Valley and eventually Mexico. 90 heads west to San Antonio. Our system of Freeways and Interstates eventually took all the "pass through" traffic away from 90/OST, but, as you indicate, evidence of that heavy traffic is still evident up and down OST. OST from the east end to South Main was a very busy area once upon a time. I can remember seeing it lit up like the Las Vegas strip with motel and restaurant neon signs from one end to the other. It's sad to see it today.