FilioScotia

We're all Bubbas. There was a time when most of us had only one phone number. ONE!! Now, most people have several, and many have more than several. The main landline, at least one secondary landline for children, another for computer DSL hookup, and a cell phone number for every member of the family. It's not unusual for a typical family with two children to have as many as 7 or 8 phone numbers. Brave New World is here.

It's important to remember that, historically, this part of Houston was and still is largely neglected. It's a highly industrial area that's virtually on the banks of the Houston Ship Channel. It has always been a low income area, where the City of Houston has only recently put in public utilities like water and sewage lines. By "recently" I mean the past several decades. This is why I seriously doubt that the large oval and concentric circles represent a park, or fountains, or pools, or a lake, and definitely not a running track. Those kinds of amenities are reserved for more affluent parts of town. That's not a racial thing. It's just the way things were, and still are to some extent. I'm guessing that these strange circles represent something industrial.

Actually, HI stood for Hillcrest. In the days of word-prefixes on phone numbers, you could tell at a glance what part of town a person lived in. For example, MOhawk numbers were in Bellaire. Actually, they still are, because the letters "MO" are "66" on the dial. Even today many numerical prefixes in the 713 area code tell me where a phone number lives, because at one time, ALL Houston phone numbers were 713. This is hardly a complete list, but here some others, with the current numeric prefixes listed first, 22 - CApital, and it was the downtown Houston area. 52 - JAckson, in the Montrose area 62 - NAtional, on the west side. 64 - MIssion, on the southeast side. 92 - WAlnut, on the east end. 46 - HOmestead, on the west side north of Buffalo Bayou and in Spring Branch 69 - OXford, on the north side. 45 - GLendale, in east Harris County in the Jacinto City Channelview area 47 - GReenwood, in Pasadena, Deer Park and La Porte. Originally, this was GRand, but it was changed to GReenwood in the mid 50s. Why? 48 - HUdson, in South Houston, and later the Clear Lake Area as NASA moved in. This was changed to HUnter in the 1970s. Again, I ask why? This all went the way of the Dodo bird when the population grew and they needed more phone numbers, and they decided they could no longer use numbers that conformed to the first two letters of a familiar word. So that's why we now have "numbers only" phone numbers. And as Bubba can testify, the area codes fill up so rapidly they've been forced to create more. Ah yes. Progress.

There were only a handful of multi-screen drive-ins in the 50s and 60s. You could count them on the fingers of one hand. The most notable was the King Center Twin Drive-in at South Park Drive and Holmes Road. That intersection is now known as MLK and the South Loop 610. The drive-in was owned by the guy who owned the King Center Shopping Center across the street. His name was "King", but he wasn't Martin Luther King. King Center was built and named years before the Civil Rights Era. South Park was changed to MLK sometime in the 80s. That area is now very run-down and shabby looking, and only small traces of the King Center Shopping Center remain. I THINK the Hi-Nabor Drive-in at Witte Road and Old Katy Road was also a multi-screen. I could be wrong, because I never went there. It was too far from my stomping grounds in Pasadena. That was before the Katy Fwy was built, so for us kids in Pasadena, Witte and Old Katy was on the other side of the planet. As for the Decker in Baytown, it was a single-screen. Multi screens started spreading in the 70s because film rentals were getting so expensive drive-in owners needed at least two screens to make money. The McClendon Triple at Hiram Clarke and South Main was the first in Houston to have more than two screens. It was built in 1970 or 71. It was followed by the McClendon Six out on I-45 North.

That's a great shot of downtown with old Buff Stadium there at Cullen and the Gulf Freeway. I went to a bunch of Buffs games in the mid and late 50s, and that was a fine little stadium. FYI: the Houston Baseball Museum inside the Finger's Store has Buff Stadium's last home plate in the floor, marking the very spot where it was when a ball park once stood there. That museum, and that home plate, are the late Sammy Finger's gift to Houston Buff fans.

You're right. A closer study of the aerial photo and that incredible 1942 map someone supplied a link for shows clearly that the oval and circles were in the area of that photo at one time. The street names haven't changed, but that area certainly has. Sorry about that. Even more amazing, for me, is seeing on that 1942 map clear proof that the Gulf Freeway was in the planning stages even then. They didn't start building it until several years after WWII, but it was on the drawing boards for a long time.

That's my guess too. Those rail yards have been there a very long time.

The aerial photo you showed is not the neighborhood shown on that diagram. The neighborhood you're looking for, with all the streets named after presidents, is several miles west of there back toward the Turning Basin. It's north of Clinton Drive, on both sides of North McCarty Drive. You'll find it in the Key Map on page 495, squares J, K, N, and P. The area in the diagram is 495-U. Interestingly, the only current streets with the same names as the diagram are Garfield and Buchanan. They're six blocks apart on the diagram and on the Key Map. All the other street names have been changed. Now that we know the site that old diagram represents, you can also see on the Key Map that it's right up against the Port Authority Railroad Yard, where my father worked in the 50s and 60s. So we can surmise that those circles and ovals had something to do with the railroad.

Memories of the Capitan Theater -- ah yes I grew up in Pasadena in the 50s and that was the place to be on a Friday or Saturday night. It was built in the 1940s in that old art deco style, by the same company that built the Granada Theater out on Jensen Drive on Houston's north side. The two were practically identical in appearance and decor. I have vivid memories of some of my adolescent "pursuits" in the balcony of the Capitan. We won't talk about the night in 1960 I was thrown out by the manager, who was very angry at me because of what I and a girl were doing up there, but let's just say that we had gone beyond necking to some "serious" groping. The manager was so steamed he banned me from the Capitan forever, and this incident is the basis of one of my favorite stories. Ten years later, in 1970, my first wife and I were living on Houston's far south side, not far from the McClendon Triple Screen Drive In Theater on South Main at Hiram Clarke. I had to take a part time job there for a few months to make some extra money and get me and my wife through a financial tight spot, and lo and behold, guess who the projectionist at the McClendon was? The former manager of the Capitan, the same guy who threw me out and told me to never come back. We had a good laugh when I identified myself to him and we spent many good hours reminiscing about those "innocent" times at the Capitan. He told me he was surprised and pleased to know that I had amounted to something. The movie house in the old downtown part of Pasadena on Shaw Street was the Long Theater. It was owned by the old Phil Isley theater chain, which had movie houses in a number of Texas towns. You may be interested to know that Phil Isley's daughter was a very famous movie actress. Her name was Phyllis Isley, until she moved to Hollywood and the studio changed her name to Jennifer Jones. The Long stopped showing movies sometime in the 60s, and the building was used for other things, like an indoor gun range. More Pasadena memories: does anybody remember that miniature golf course and trampoline park on Shaw Street about a block from the Capitan? Or Trainer's Drive-in on La Porte Rd, also about a block away, where the high school kids cruised and hung out, the same way the kids cruised and hung out at that drive-in American Grafitti? Another popular drive-in hangout was Vicki's, on South Shaver at Spencer Highway in South Houston. Vicki's was enormously popular with the high school crowd, because Pasadena was "dry" and South Houston was "wet", which means Vicki's sold beer. We could always find a college friend over 21, or someone with a fake ID to get us some beer at Vicki's. There was another drive-in on La Porte road in the shadow of old Sinclair Refinery -- it's now the Lyondell Refinery. It was also just outside the Pasadena city limits, and it also sold beer. For the life of me I can't remember the name of that drive-in. I worked at the Red Bluff Drive-in Theater for a couple of years in the late 50s when it was still showing family movies. Oh the stories I can tell.

The San Jacinto Battleground and Monument have been one of the most visited historic sites in Texas since it was built in the 1930s. Only the Alamo gets more visitors. I grew up in Pasadena in the 50s and I can offer first hand testimony that it was, in those days, the most popular lovers lane on that side of the county. It was wide open 24/7, no gates, no admission, and we could drive out there and park all night, which I did on a number of occasions. For years, it was a running joke that the Monument was getting smaller, because very night some guys would go out there and knock off a piece. That era ended around 1960, when a kid from La Porte was killed there one night. Some Pasadena kids and some kids from La Porte were drag racing and for some reason a big argument developed. As the kids from La Porte drove away, a Pasadena kid fired a shot at the car with a 22 pistol. He was just aiming in the general direction of the car but his shot killed one of the La Porte kids. That was the end of 24/7 access to the Battleground. TPW put up the gates right after that, and started closing the park around 10pm.

I need to get over to Pasadena more often. I wasn't aware that the old Timmers Chevvie store had closed. Won't be the same on that corner without a big car lot. Ah yes, progress. I guess.

The Chevvie dealership at 225 and Richey has been Timmers Chevrolet for at least 20 years -- maybe more. Before that it was Boyd Mullen Chevvie for as long as I can remember. It was Mullen when I moved to Pasadena in 1955. Also, in those days the 225 freeway wasn't there. It was named Sterling Street in Pasadena, and La Porte Road outside Pasadena. That street is still there but it's now the westbound feeder road for 225.