TikiOwl

Thanks for the Rebelette picture as I dated a Rebelette all through my time at Westbury. Remember in uniform they must sit on the right hand side of the rear view mirror.

I concur with Tana about the view most of us had when attending Johnston (named for Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston) and Westbury, though by my time (graduated in 1968) integration of HISD had begun and I think most of us realized that the school mascot was probably not a good thing.

Let me add my thanks to you Tana as well. I too had seen your previous site and very happy to see the new and improved one!

BTW I am also a Westbury grad....1968

I remember going to Foley's in the 50's for American Flyer trains. Great store and great times indeed.

This is a little off-topic now, but here are examples of two of the Jax beer commercials that used to run on Channel 2 News every night in the early '60s, featuring the voices of Mike Nichols and Elaine May:

Another one I remember (and can't find on YouTube) had a woman on the roof of her house after a flood. A man came rowing by, yelling "Red Cross! Red Cross," and the woman yelled back, "My husband gave already at the office!" At least I think it was for Jax. How they tied joke that back to beer, I don't know.

There was also one with guy in a bar with his dog.

Guy with his dog at a bar and he asks the bartender for a beer for him and his dog. The bartender says they don't serve dogs and the guy answers "even talking ones?"

The bartender says prove it and the guy asks the dog "what is on top of a house?" The dog says "roof"...the bartender frowns and says "ask him another". The guy says "when I play golf where do my drives go?" The dog says "rough". The bartender frowns again and says "OK let me ask him one".

The guy looks at the dog and the dog shakes OK with his head...then the bartender asks "who was the 35th President of the US?" The dog pauses, looks at his owner who shakes his head, then the dog looks up and says "Coolidge?"

Great news...a Foley's book. I'll be getting that one. Thanks for the heads up.

finished reading the book this weekend. very well done and as someone who grew up in the 50's and 60's in Houston, Foley's holds a special place in my memories.

Nice to see the picture of the South Main Drive In on the video. I grew up in Willowbend in the 50's (my folks built their house in 1956) & 60's and remember going to the the Drive In many times. I also remember the controversy when the Willow Creek Little League built their new complex across South Main (Homeco Field IIRC) and the Drive In complained because of the lights for the fields bled over to their screen. They eventually raised the fence on the South Main side quite a bit higher to shut out the light. Also remember trying to get a glimpse of the movie as you drove on Willowbend as you passed the Drive In.

My mom and I always had lunch at the Azalea Terrace when shopping at Foley's. When I was real small (in the 50's) I would always order the "Little Bo Peep" special which was vegetable soup and four points of a ham sandwich which had the crust cut off....there was also animal crackers at the end.

Christmas time was the best and I always saw Santa at the downtown Foley's since that is where the "real" Santa was according to my mom. I could spend hours in the toy store looking for the latest American Flyer trains.

Ernie Coker's Ye Olde College Inn was just north of Bill Williams' and across S. Main from the Rice campus.

A little info on Ye Olde College Inn as well as some early Rice U memories from the great "Rice Football Webletter".

http://www.ricefootball.net/collegeinn.htm

Spent a few New Year's Eves at Liberty Hall as well as catching Kinky Friedman and the Jewboys. Before one concert he and the Jew Boys performed a whole set on KPFT for Huey Meaux which I recorded on an old reel-to-reel that I need to find. The Kinkster spent a good amount of time kidding several Baylor Med students who showed up at the studio.

I lived several hundred feet from the Chuck Wagon located on Willowbend(which has a lawnmower repair shop now). You would order your food at one window and drinks at the other. To pay you dropped your money into a clear plastic box with a slot at the top and the employee would open the trap door and the money would drop into the restaurant. My carpool to Johnston and later Westbury would always stop there on the way home and then one day the Burger King on Post Oak opened and things weren't the same.

I know it had a drug store, because my friend and I would ride our bikes there to get sodas - that was around 1960-61. It might have been a Dugan's.

Trampoline centers were really popular in the summer of 1960. There was one on Beechnut close to Post Oak - across from Meyerland. I believe that the one in Westbury might have closed by the time I moved there in the fall of 1960.

Sometime around 1959 there was a trampoline center roughly where the SP tracks cross Willowbend just west of where Mel's BBQ was several years later (Mel who owned the BBQ was ok, but his front man Bunny was a great guy) but on the north side. If I recall (and it's been a long time) it was called Jumpin Jimminy or something similar. It didn't last to long and I remember my parents didn't want me to go since the trampolines were little squares with a hard (wood or cement?) square surrounding each.

Funny how this is burned into one's memory...from another '62-'65 nude Johnston Jr High survivor.

In the early 60's Willow Creek Little League that had been playing behind Red Elementary was given land across South Main from the South Main Drive Inn and Homeco Field was built. Due to the lights from the baseball fields the Little League had to pay to have a large sheet metal wall built to keep the lights from disrupting the movies.

Growing up in Willow Bend I remember driving up Willow Bend Blvd and always checking out what movie was playing on the South Main Drive Inn screen.

I'm looking for photos,I know about the three that are part of the digitized Bob Bailey Collection at UT, but was wondering if any others exist. Would also like to hear from anyone who skated at the Polar Wave.

Fever Tree

Joe also sponsored amateur hockey teams in what was called Space City Hockey that played at Sharpstown.

I had heard from an old family friend that the first airshows were held quite close to where the Shamrock was.

Sometime around 1975 Kinky Friedman played Liberty Hall and the afternoon before the performance he appeared with Huey Meaux on KPFT, where he and his Jewboys played an impromptu concert that I still have on tape somewhere.

Willow Bend started out as MOhawk (1956) and sometime later approx (1958) became PArkview.