brerrabbit

I always forget about Arlington Road being filmed here. I live in Pearland off of Dixie Farm Road west of 518. The same builder that built our house was also building east of 518 in an area called Dixe Woods. There were several houses that were complete and not yet sold and so the street was right for reimaging into a Virginia suburb of DC. The actual house used for interiors was being lived in but the movie production company rented it from the homeowners and moved all their stuff out to bring in their own furniture for filming. They brought in all sorts of trees in containers to spruce up the street scenes and spent several weeks filming at the location. They would close all off the street and filmed both day and night scenes. It was quite interesting for several weeks in Pearland.

I have mentioned it before but there was a totally forgetable movie called "My Best Friends a Vampire". A teenage spoof on vampires where they are good guys. The main character works delivering groceries for Jamails, and is shown getting on a bus in Idylwood, and goes to high school at Milby, although while it was filmed there the name was changed for the movie. Has a lot of outdoor scenes during a chase but they jump all over the place from Mecom Foutain to the Dome to who knows where. Fun to watch only to see all the vintage Houston shots.

Friendswood has a long history of being very protective of their little community. If you notice there are virtually no big box retailers in Friendswwod. The city government is very against such a thing. Also look at the school district sometime. Long ago they decided to stay a 4-A school and have gerimandered their district boundries to make sure they stay that way. A significant portion of the new homes in Friendswood are zoned to Clear Creek schools with the majority of them attending Clear Brook High school. Also as I understand it the redevelopment of the town center was not planned to be a Sugarland/Woodlands type design but rather an Old Town type revitalization with more resturants and small retail operations. It was on the same line as the proposed Old Town Pearland redevelopment not along the lines of the Pearland Town Center development taking place at 288 and 518.

The elemetary school near Joplin was Golfcrest elementary. Take McHenry off of Telephone and you are right there. There were several churches near that Kellys location Park Place Baptist was on Broadway down where Sims Bayou cut through Glenbrook. Park Place Methodist was on the other side of the freeway on Broadway. St Christophers Catholic church (where I got married) was on the other side of the freeway on Park Place. I went to Golfcrest from the 2nd through the fifth grade. Sixth grade was when they enforced zoning and I had to go to Brookline elementary because I lived right down the street from it. From there I was zoned in a small area that had to go to Jackson Jr. High and then Milby. I graduated from Milby in 1977 as did my wife. She went to Deady Jr. High. Oh and I think you guys are talking about two different circles. Vertigo I think you mean Park Place circle that goes under the freeway. westguys circle was the Joplin circle which was in the residential neighborhood where three streets came together and they made a mini traffic circle out of it and left the interior of it in grass. Many a kickball and baseball game were played there. No place for those games on the big circle unless you played under the freeway.

We had the same thing happen and it was finally attributed to our older cordless phone. This situation really pissed me off though because my daughter was home alone when it happened and when Pearland Police showed up she told them no one had called and it was obviously a mistake. She said this through the door because she did not want to open the door. The Policeman told her to open the door and let him in. He said if she didi not he would kick the door down and come in that way. She was scared and opened the door and he proceeded to come into our house and start looking around. When we got home and she told me about it I went straight to the Police station and lodged a complaint and had a few things to tell the Lt. on duty. Making calls from your outside junction box is very easy. Thats why I have a lock on mine. It won't stop someone who is determined, but it will discourage some. All you need to make a call is a cheap throw away phone and a couple of double ended alligator clips and your dialing Australia if you want to.

Our solution is we went to Pearland in 1994. Same house for 14 years and love it. We are tremendously spoiled with a $618 P&I a month payment on our house. Yeah its bigger than what we need at 2,800 sq ft but downsizing scares me a lot. We would have to pay quite a bit more for a lot less house. We have certainly gained equity should we ever choose to move but for the forseeable future we're fine where we are. The thing that has totally stumped me and will always stump me are the people I know in Pearland who moved there in the last five to six years and bought $250k to $350k houses. What the hell were these people thinking? Look at the real estate trends over the years in Houston and you will see that the first areas to get absolutly hammered are the burbs. If you want to spend that much money you better be inside the Loop and hopefully in an area trending the right direction. I remember in 1994 my wife and I were scared to death when we paid $137k for our house and were wondering how we would ever be able to make the payments.

I am pretty sure that all regular unleaded has up to 10% ethanol in it these days. That is the oxigenator that helps the fuel burn cleaner. Congress mandated its use when the old oxigenator we were using was discontinued. That was MTBE but since it was odorless, colorless and a known carcinogen Congress decided to discontinue its use. A couple of other observations. South America uses ethanol because their situation makes it more economical and viable. First they use sugar cane to produce it and it's better for the pupose. There is more sugar and it is in a simpler form so the extraction is better. Secondly they harvest a lot of it by hand because they don't have those pesky old worker protection laws. Third they don't mind a little polution so they take all the sugar cane pulp and chaffe and burn it to create much of the heat they need to fuel the ethanol making process. That means they get about 6-8 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of fossil fuel they use. Economically it makes sense and has less to do with the environment than it does with plain old economics. Their auto industry also had a major engineering overhaul a number of years ago to prepare for the advent of ethanol fueled vehicles so in that regard also they are way ahead of us Norte Americanos. In the US we currently make ethanol from corn which is a very inefficient way to do it. We want to use it because it is environmentally friendly and are willing to accept the fact that we only get around 1.2 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of fossil fuel we burn. Not nearly comparable to South America. As a result of the increased demand for corn midwest farmers are planting more and more of it. As a result they are using more and more nitrogen based fertilizers because corn unlike other plants cannot absorb it as fast. As a result the are doubling and tripling the amounts used and the result is runnoff into the rivers leading to the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. This has more than tripled the size of the annual red tide south of Louisiana. Red tide sucks the oxegen out of the water and kills everything. We are causing untolled damages to the Gulf fisheries as a result. Ask any energy company today and they will tell you they have no interest in ethanol produced from corn other than to buy it to put in their fossil fuel mix because the congress mandated that they had to. They are all looking at second and third generation ethanol production that will not come from corn but other biomass. They are more interested in the corn stalks and other agricultural chaffe than they are the corn. Another very viable possibility is good for two reasons. They are looking at ethanol from algae. There are experimental sites that take the Co2 emmisions from power plants and pump it into plastic bags containing algae. The algae doubles in size daily and effectively cuts the Co2 emmisions drastically because thats what plants breath. The algae is then used to make ethanol. The only thing limiting the process is a cheap enzyme to act as the catalyst for the conversion. If anyone could ever figure it out we may have more economically viable ethanol than we know what to do with. Its still way out in the future but it will take out of the box thinking to come up with the solution but as it stands today corn is not the answer.

I never knew that that facility started as a Shell Employees Recreation Area but it would make sense. A lot of the big energy companies in Houston had something like it. I started my first job with Tenneco in 1982 and was introduced to Tennwood which was in Hockley and had 27 holes of golf, a swimming pool, tennis courts, fishing lakes, row boats, volleyball and horseshoes. I t was a great place. Exxon had Baywood Country Club which was right next door to their large gas treatment plant off of Red Bluff. As far as I know its still there. It is at the corner of Red Bluff and Genoa Red Bluff in Pasadena. Texaco had their Golf Course club in Channelview off Sheldon Road. The Jersey Meadows golf course started life as Cameron Iron Works Employee club and was later sold. Cameron then put in a recreational facility for their employees in front of their facility out on 290. Then there was/is the most classic. Diamond Shamrock Corporation built a nine hole golf course on Tidal Basin Road in the middle of all the refineries in Pasadena. Diamonf Shamrock has since sold the facility but as of several years ago the little nine hole course was still there. I always thought how ironic it was that a refinery/chemical worker would want to on his days off return to the noisy and unhealthy environment of the plants to play around of golf.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...... No wait different story, but back in 1980 at the ripe old age of 20 I went to the precinct convention as it is called. I don't think anyone in the party called it a caucus. The precinct judge presided and essentially the main duty was to pick delegates the the Senetorial district convention. My precinct voted at Brookline Elementary and thats where the convention was. First order of business was to essentially find out who there wanted to be a delegate at the next level and then divide those up based on who you supported. Basically if you supported Carter and voted for him in the primary you should not have asked to be a Kennedy delegate. Then based on the outcome of the primary vote for your precinct the delegates were apportioned. IE if you got 10 delegates to the next leve and the vote was 60% Carter, 30% Kennedy and 10% Nader then you needed to choose 6 Carter delegates, 3 Kennedy delegates and 1 Nader delegate. These folks went on to the next level where they talked platform and essentially went through the same process to elect delegates to the state convention. At state where I was a delegate again we went through the same process to elect the Texas delegates to the National Convention. As I recall the discussions at the precinct level were minimal and as soon as the delegates were chosen we went home. The next two levels were where we got into much more discussion on issues and potential platform agendas.

I'm doing some research and came across a listing for an old motel in the 1950s in the Texas Medical Center called Ranchotel Tourist Courts located at 7905 South Main St. Does anyone have any information about this place?

Here is the link to the new (as of midnight last night) Houston Parks Board web site. I has some good information on what they are doing around Houston to add parks and greenspace. It also has an area to register for the upcoming Tour de Houston bike event along with a place to donate to specific projects. There are also some good pictures of the new skatepark being built along Memorial near downtown. http://www.hpbinc.org/root/index.php

I think your okay with the water well. Even though the well water is probably okay to drink straight from the well, state law requires treatment and testing hence a water treatment facility. Usually the other type plant is listed as a sewage treatment facility. That and they generally don't like to have those two things so close to one another.

The link sevfiv posted advertises the movies being shown this weekend February 15-17 so I would assume that means they are still open.

If it hasn't closed there was one still operating out in Hockley off of 2920.

Never knew of one under Gulfgate but there was one at the corner of Woodridge and Winkler. As Midtown said its a taquaria now. Right behind it was a Pizza Hut. The one at Westheimer and the Loop was also one. I am not sure but I thought there was one on Fuqua at one time as well. Those are the only ones I remember.

Agreed, but this aint in Houston anymore ToTo. Pearland has lots and lots of zoning laws.

Got the book yesterday and read it straight through. Brought back a ton of memories. I remember almost every place mentioned in the book. The Medical Office and Blacks Pharmecy is where my first Dr. was. My pediatrician was Dr. Mintz. I later went to Dr. Nirken who was his nephew and wound up taking my first son to Dr. Nirken as well. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had done some writing about growing up on Telephone Road and what follows is one part of my (hopefully) future Book. Houston lies on the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico. The Southeast area of Houston where I grew up was a mere 45 miles from Galveston Island. The geography is flat with a minimum elevation above sea level. Numerous Bayous such as Buffalo, Braes and Sims run through Houston making their way to the Ship Channel and Galveston Bay on their way to the Gulf. These Bayous are slow meandering waterways most of the year. For several days a year they are the primary channels for carrying the approximately 60 inches of rain we average every year in Houston out to sea. They are also a wondrous destination for kids to discover who knows what and sometimes even observe nature. From my house on Askew the closest Bayou to us was Braes Bayou. It crossed under Telephone Road about nine blocks away from my house. Many days were spent riding our bikes over to the Bayou to see what great adventures we could find. On one of these trips we decided to cross the Telephone Road bridge over the bayou and go down the embankment on the other side. As we did we stopped to look in the water and noticed nine or ten alligator gar swimming near the surface. Well that meant only one thing of course. We were going to catch them. What we did with them from there we had no idea, but we were determined to prove our manhood by taming the deadly wild beast known as the Alligator Gar. The name evoked fear among whoever heard it. They were mythical beasts with rows and rows of razor sharp teeth that could severe a limb with a single bit. The Great White Shark had nothing on these guys if you heard our description of them. Once we decided to do something, Ricky, Donald, Tim, Jimmy and I were determined to devote our every waking hour to solving the issue. Upon our decision to catch the gar we immediately launched into a discussion of what kind of hook to use, what kind of bait, a fishing pole or hand line, from the bridge, or from the bank. These decisions swirled in our head and filled our minds constantly. We abandoned our trip to the far bank of the bayou and returned to my house to solve the problem. After much debate and some arguing the strategy was decided. Hand line of 365lb test nylon string with a steel leader with three drops, one for the weight and two for hooks. One hook would be the largest treble hook we could find while the second would be the largest single hook we had. Since these fierce denizens of the bayou were flesh eaters the bait of choice would be butcher

Every car took a speaker from a pole they parked next to and hung it on their window. The sound did not come from the screen as in indoor movie theatres. Later incarnations of the Drive In would play the sound on a radio frequency and you could tune your car radio to the designated station on your dial and you could get sound through your car radio.

BW3's not closed as far as I know. I think the place he is referring to is a location they were at prior to moving to their current location although I think it may not have been a BW3 but rather a knockoff that didn't make it. As far as resturants in Pearland granted there are chain places that thrive but what I have seen is if service or quality or price gets out of line then the place is in danger. I ate a Cabo's once and the place was freezing cold, the food was very expensive, and the quality was no better than Taco Bell. Mely's used to be the place to go before they moved into their new place in front od BW3, but once they moved the quality fell and the people stopped going. Now they are gone.

I think the phrase "turning ghetto" is a little strong, but there is some concern given its rapid growth. Again there is an entire thread regarding that subject as well if you look back at previous posts. As far as the East side of Pearland goes, I think its a wonderful place to live. Of course I am somewhat bias since thats where I live. Its growing but not nearly at the same rate as west Pearland. The center of Pearland is slowy shifting to the West. For many years based on the location of City Hall, the Police station and the more expensive homes (Green Tee, Nottingham, and the back of Woodcreek) were on the east side. Thats where the leaders of Pearland lived, so thats where the city centered itself. With the announcement of the new city facilities to be built near Cullen and the rapid expansion in population to the west everything is shifting west. That does not mean that east Pearland is not a great place to live. Lakes of Highland Glens has nice new homes, and the used market is pretty good in our part of town as well. Depending on where you work the access to IH 45 is good and they are expanding Dixie Farm Road to 4 lanes so that will help traffic as well. Access to Beltway 8 via Pearland Parkway makes getting in and out easier as well. The thing I enjoy is that I can avail myself of all the aminities around 288 and 518 but at the end of the day I can still retreat to the relative calm of my neighborhood. Pearland is certainly loosing that small town feel that attracted my wife and I 15 years ago but I still think its a great place to live.

Memorial Park is an interesting study in Urban Parks. The land was donated to the city by Ima Hogg and part of the process that set up the gift allowed for a conservancy board to guide and direct the parks growth and usage. As I recall there is still one lady who sits on the board who was a personal friend of Ms. Hogg. She advocates and has advocated for years that Memorial Park should be nothing more than a forest with hiking trails only. She was oppoed to the sports fields, opposed to the redesign of the golf course, and even opposed the recent addition of a playground area in the park. She feels and has stated on more than one occasion that Ima Hogg would be shocked by what her donation has become. I do know that the park can only be used as a park and any other use would revert the land back to her heirs. I remember back in the seventies I think when the city thought there might be oil under the park that the discussion was that any attempt to produce that oil would result in the reversion of the property so in the end the city gave up the idea.

I didn't make it to church Wednesday night to ask anyone about the house but did run into someone who has lived in Pearland a long time. According to them the place was definately lived in as a residence as little as four years ago. The people that lived there attended our church. Once again hopefully this Sunday I will learn some more about the house.

I have been waiting for this type of book. I even went so far as to write several chapters of something myself which served more to clear some things out of my own mind more than to offer an enjoyable read to others. In my 48 plus years I have lived all but one, within four miles of Telephone Road. I almost burned down Stubbs Cycles as a kid and spent many a day hanging out with my Father at Sheffields Ice House. I went to school at Golfcrest Elementary, Brookline Elementary and Jackson Jr. High. All very close to Telephone. I remember the Four Palms, the Santa Rosa, the Tropicana Swimming Pool, The Telephone Road Drive In, and going to watch planes take off and land at Hobby Airport. I ordered my copy and look forward to a walk down memory lane. To Burton, I also live in Pearland and my son and daughter both graduated from PHS. My son in 2003 and my daughter at the semester break last month.

To be honest with you prior to SCR being built I venture to say that the were a sum total of zero residents on the property. I don't honestly know what school district covered the area. More than likely the Brazoria County area fell into the Pearland District because the area was in Pearlands EJT. When the SCR developers approached the Pearland City Council to seek the permits to build SCR PISD immediatly said "we can't handle the increase" Pearland Council along with the developers approached Alvin ISD and Alvin said yeah, we'll take it and did. The idea of you asking about a land swap is throwing me a bit simply because a swap denotes I give you something, and you give me something in return. Alvin got SCR and Pearland got nothing in return. After reading your response several times VicMan I guess what your trying to ask is why would Pearland ISD give up the area's tax revenues to Alvin without getting something in return from Alvin ISD? If that's the question then the answer is simple, the tax revenues were almost zero. The entire area was farmed and covered under agricultural exemptions which meant the landowners were paying next to nothing in taxes. For Pearland to continue to receive the taxes as SCR was built they would have had to provide the schools for them and they simply said no thanks from day one.

Undergad and Grad in Finance and yes I work for a major energy company in an area if Finance. Back when I traded for a living, no not really but other than betting some one elses money in Vegas nothing really gets your ready for that.