msteele6

I lived near Gulfgate in the '50's and '60's and the civil defense sirens were always tested at noon on Friday every week. Our particular siren was located at Southmayd elementary school.

Reading FilioScotia's post about the bowling alley on N. Shepherd reminds me of the people who, I believe, owned that alley. They were Don Ellis and Pete Treybig if I'm not mistaken. They also owned the Tropicana on Lawndale. Both men are members of the Texas Bowling Hall of Fame. I can still remember watching Mr. Ellis practicing during slow times at the bowling alley on Lawdale, rolling strike after strike. When he didn't throw a strike, he just reset the pins.

The El Portal on Lawndale (near 75th) was originally (since the '50's) called the Tropicana. The building is still there. There was also a bowling alley at the corner of OST and Scott that was built off of the ground and which had parking under the building. I don't remember the name of it, but it was probably built in the 1960's. The building is no longer there.

Using Goldman Sachs as a moral compass may not be the most appropriate, unless, of course, you're some kind of a criminal. Having read through many of the arguments and counter arguments concerning light rail in particular and mass transit in general, I would like to make one observation: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

As sevfiv says, it was the old Montgomery Wards store, one of my best friends mother, Mrs. Guererro, worked at the store in the sewing (cloth?) department. What I remember even more distinctly than the Montgomery Wards was the Jack in the Box that was built just in front of it on South Park (Martin Luther King). This was the first Jack in the Box that I remember in the Houston area. I still remember being driven up to the old Jack in the Box with the hidden speaker and placing my order, generally a burger with "secret sauce" and those great old fries. Had to have been mid '60's?

No doubt you are referring to the estate built by Col. Edward F. Simms c. 1910. There is some information on this estate somewhere on this site. He named the house "Wayside" thereby giving the name "Wayside" to the street on which it was located. As I recall, it was one of the first houses in the Houston area with a swimming pool. As a young person, I went past the house many times (probably on my way to Sears).

I happened to be in Hermann Park twice in the last three weeks. The first time, the statues weren't there, the second time they had magically appeared. It's odd, since I didn't realize that they were Chinese Zodiac figures, I assumed there was some hidden theme, and the only thing I could think of was the fact that 11 of the figures represent real animals that I could identify, the twelfth one is imaginary. It's sort of odd that the Chinese have one imaginary animal in their Zodiac, and furthermore, that imaginary animal seems to play an important role in Chinese mythology.

Forget the bowling alley, there was actually an auditorium under the mall accessed by way of the stairs that led to the mall offices. On Saturday mornings they would show free movies (the only one I remember was a "Frances the talking mule" movie that starred Donald O'Connor. The idea was that parents could drop their children off while they were shopping. When the mall first opened, it wasn't covered (believe me, I don't forget walking around in Houston's heat even 50 years after the fact, Sharpstown had the distinction of being the first enclosed mall in Houston). In various place in the mall there were large "maps" made up of colored plastic blocks indicating the various stores with a key giving the store name. Attached to these maps were holders for paper copies of the map which you could take as a reference. When the mall was built, I can still remember the giant pile of dirt that was built up and on top of which the actual mall was built, the "basements" weren't actually dug down, dirt was actually piled up around the ground floor construction (including the delivery tunnels at two ends of the mall, to give an impression of basements. As far as Palms Center, I can remember going to it for a while before Gulfgate was built with my most vivid memory being of the toy store right next to the J.C. Penney. Of course we frequently ate at the Thornhills Cafeteria where there was a conveyor belt that ran through the dining area that you were supposed to put your trays and dishes on when you were finished, these would be carried back to the dish washing area. Anyone interested in seeing how the mall looked in 1957 from the air can visit a website called "Historic Aerials" and see aerial views of Houston at various times over the last 50 years.

Yeah, Ballatori's was right across from the bakery on Leland. The bakery building is now the City of Houston Water Department if I'm not mistaken.