Category Archives: US: Texas

Thursday Postscripts

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Beverly Shores, Indiana, pop. 600 or so, is completely surrounded by Indiana Dunes NP. One way to get to the town, or the national park for that matter, is to take the South Shore Line from Chicago. If you do so, the place to get off is at Beverly Shores station.
Beverly Shores Train StationSince its renovation in recent years, the station also includes an art galley. Closed when we got there.
Beverly Shores Train StationWhen I’m pretty sure no train is nearby, it’s hard to resist a shot of the rails converging off toward the horizon. The rails go on forever in a silver trail to the setting sun.
near the Beverly Shores Train Station

Arthur Gerber designed the station in 1929. “Gerber was the staff architect for Samuel Insull, who then owned the line, [and] it is one of several examples of an ‘Insull Spanish’ style used on the rail line,” writes historic preservationist Susie Trexler.

Insull must have been fond of the style. “Say, Gerber, old man, whip up some more Spanish-style stations.”

After all, look at his mansion, which is generally classified as Mediterranean.
Cuneo Mansioncuneo mansionBetter known as the Cuneo Mansion, for its second owner, but utility magnate Insull had it built. Above are shots I took when we visited. When was that? I couldn’t remember till I checked. Ten years ago.

The fellow interred in the Beyond the Vines columbarium at Bohemian National Cemetery is Benjamin George Maldonado, 34, who died unexpectedly of an undiscovered brain cyst, according to a column in the Tribune by John Kass.

“The priest gave a great eulogy of Ben,” Kass quoted Maldonado’s widow as saying. “His urn had a baseball on top. We all signed the baseball that went into the wall. There were sandwiches and sodas, and we had a picnic. He was so young. A headstone would have been so somber.”

The man who created the columbarium, whom Kass also quotes, was Dennis Mascari. He’s interred there now as well.

My brother Jay is skeptical that the parade pictures posted on Sunday were taken in September 1967, he told me by email. Two reasons: yellow foliage and people wearing a little more than they would on a very warm Texas September day.

As Jay points out, mid-September is far too early for changing leaves. But I color corrected the images. In the original, faded now for more than half a century, it’s hard to tell whether the leaves are green or yellow. Denton Texas 1967

In the color corrected version, some of the leaves look green, some yellow. I don’t know whether that reflects the original color of the leaves, or the color-correction process itself. So I’d say the leaf colors are inconclusive.

The clothes are a more compelling argument. The kid on the top of the station wagon is indeed wearing more than any kid would in high 80s temps, and so is the woman on the flatbed, and maybe the men leaning against that vehicle, who seem to be wearing long-sleeve shirts or jackets. Of course, the members of the band would wear their uniforms no matter how hot it was. I remember some sweaty times in my own band uniform, about 10 years later.

“When is it then?” Jay writes. “I don’t know. I know that the Denton HS band was one of many high school bands that participated in the NTSU homecoming — which sources online say was November 11, 1967 — but: (1) I have no recollection of a parade, only of marching in formation on the playing field, and (2) if there was a parade, it seems odd that it’s heading away from NTSU rather than towards it, as it appears to be the case here. Of course, the fact that I don’t remember a parade isn’t dispositive, nor is the direction.”

Ah, well. Guess we’ll never know for sure. The lesson here is to write the date on the back of physical prints. But even that is an increasingly obsolete bit of advice.

Myrick Nathan 1875Here’s Nathan Myrick, founder of La Crosse, Wisconsin, whose for-certain public domain image I obtained. Founding a town is more than most people get to do.

It occurs to me that I’ve now visited all of the 15 largest municipalities in Wisconsin, and maybe the 20 largest, though I don’t remember visiting New Berlin, but as a Milwaukee suburb, it’s likely that I passed through.

Is that important for some reason? No. But for a state in which I’ve never lived, I’ve been there a lot. As an old Chicago friend of mine once said, one of the amenities of living in the Chicago area is access to Wisconsin. I agree.

Hickory Street Parade, Denton, Texas, 1967 (Probably)

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I have a photo book holding a scattering of images made when my family lived in Denton, Texas, which was from 1965 to ’68. There are perhaps two dozen pictures. Photos were only made on special occasions, such as my birthday or when family visited from out of town.

Three of the pictures are of the Denton High School band, of which my brother Jay was a member, marching down Hickory St., which is the street our house was on, in 1967.  The edge of the photos says Aug 69, but that only means we didn’t get around to developing the film for almost two years.
Denton Texas Hickory Street Sept 13, 1967 That is not me sitting on a car in the first image. My mother must have taken the shots with our Instamatic 104, since I don’t think she would have been interested in fiddling with the more complicated cameras that my father left behind. Provided we had our Instamatic by then, which seems likely.

She stood on the sidewalk on Hickory St., probably near its intersection with Denton St.
At least, the angle of the third picture makes me think that’s where she stood. One the houses not far west of that point is still there, though deeper blue.

I must have watched the parade, but I have no memory of it. At the time I was six, and had just started first grade at Sam Houston Elementary School in Denton. I walked to school, so it wasn’t far away. There’s a school of that name still in the Denton ISD, but it’s far from where we lived and has a late 20th century look to it.

Thinking about it now, I suspect the school I went to was already old when I went there — maybe built in the ’20s to update whatever rudimentary facilities the town had before that. I expect the building I knew is long gone.

Also: here’s the house where we lived. The house is a different color now, but the enormous tree is still in the front yard! It seemed so vast to my boyhood self. Then again, it is pretty big. An old maple that produced huge leaves. Or was it an oak that produced huge acorns? Both kinds of trees were in the neighborhood and I would collect their scatterings.

I digress. Why was there a parade on that day in Denton, Texas? One possibility is that it was part of the September 13 publicity celebration for the regional premiere of Bonnie and Clyde, which was at a movie theater near the courthouse, only a few blocks to the east of where we lived. Parts of the movie were filmed in North Texas, near Denton, in places that could easily pass for 30 years earlier. The University of North Texas published an article a few years ago about the filming and the regional premiere.

Some of the stars of the movie rode in a small motorcade down Hickory to the courthouse square, and naturally the high school band had to be part of it. If my mother took any pictures of the movie stars, they’ve been lost. But I seriously doubt she did. Taking pictures of her son’s band is one thing, but actors in a movie (I suspect) she had no interest in seeing? Naah.

SAC Planetarium 1970

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Previously, I wrote: “In the second grade, I got an assignment to write a report about the planet Jupiter. I expanded it into an entire ‘book,’ Dees’s Book of the Solar System. Of course, I copied almost everything from the Junior Britannica entry on the Solar System, but I suppose it was impressive for a second grader.

“Anyway, from about 1970 to 1974 [my mother] took me to the planetarium at San Antonio College nearly once a month (these days, it’s the Scobee Planetarium, named after the commander of the last flight of Challenger). Instead of a taped presentation, those shows were narrated live — all sorts of space subjects…”

The planetarium is still around, though naturally closed right now. Its web site notes: “Since 1961, two million San Antonio school children and community members have learned about stars, planets, black holes and distant galaxies at the Scobee Planetarium. With the extensive renovation completed in 2014, the Scobee Planetarium now offers a more dynamic experience to even more visitors. Planetarium renovations include 100 individual reclined seats, a new light and sound system and the most advanced digital projection system.”

Fifty years ago, SAC gave me this certificate, acknowledging that I’d gone to eight shows — “lecture-demonstrations,” that is. I still go to planetariums now and then, though the truth is that many shows aren’t just for children, but for not-very-bright children.

At some point, my mother — who also received a certificate — put mine in an inexpensive frame. It hung on the wall in my bedroom in San Antonio until it didn’t. A few years ago, after having forgotten about the certificate for 40-odd years, I chanced on it again. That made me smile, so I brought it back with me and hung it in my current office.

Cadillac Ranch Update &c.

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How about that. I assume the top picture is more current than the bottom one, but not by much, despite the posting dates.


This is what the Cadillac Ranch looked like about two years ago.

As long as I’m posting tweets, which I might never do again, I might as well post this one.

Cleese continues to amuse.

Battle of the Bands, 1979

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I see that Fiesta San Antonio is now scheduled for November this year. The first time in its century-plus-decades history it hasn’t been in April, but such is our time. Social distancing isn’t the norm for Fiesta.

Yuriko and I went to a few Fiesta events in 2000, parking toddler Lilly with her grandmother for a few hours, but I remember my high school Fiestas better. Each year from 1976 to ’79, I was with the Alamo Heights HS marching band in the Battle of the Bands at Alamo Stadium and then — with one exception — the Battle of the Flowers parade downtown a few days later.

It’s officially called the Battle of Flowers Association Band Festival, but no one I knew called it that. It was the Battle of the Bands. High school bands from all over the metro area came to compete.

The best a band could do was score a 1 in music and 1 in marching. For decades, Alamo Heights had always scored two 1s — until sometime in the early ’70s, before I was in high school.

Since then, including my freshman, sophomore and junior years, the band had gotten a 1 and a 2. Very good, but not top.

So we were keen to score two 1s in the 1979 Battle of the Bands. I don’t remember what music we played or what steps we marched. All I remember was the announcement afterward: two 1s! The band exploded with joy.

I can remember only one other exuberant moment like that for the band: early junior year when, after two years of losses, the AHHS football team actually won a game, narrowly. The Battle of the Bands moment was better, though — we’d won that for ourselves.

That was a day or two before the ’79 Battle of Flowers parade — April 26, 1979 — that didn’t happen because of a wanker with a gun. Fortunately for us, at our staging area the band wasn’t close to the shooting. I didn’t even hear any shots, though at one moment heard the roar of a suddenly panicked crowd at a distance.

Even that day had its lighter moments. The parade cancelled, we in the band got back on our buses to leave. Just before we left, a non-band senior got on as well, someone most of us knew. Our band director asked him to leave, and the boy, who was chemically enhanced, got the opposite of belligerent.

“All right, all right,” he said in an almost sing-song voice, smiling and giggling. “I’m getting off now. Don’t worry, I getting off now!” (I’m re-constructing those words; but that was the gist.) It was a little puzzling then, but looking back on it, I think he’d done more to prepare for the parade than drink a little beer or smoke a joint. At that dour moment, he was having a good trip.

Adios, Gabuttø Burger

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Update: Gabuttø Burger is closed. At least the one in Rolling Meadows is, which used to be the only location. Maybe I should have mentioned that before, since we found that out one day in November (I think) when we dropped by for its fine sort-of-Japanese burgers and found it locked.

So the Yelpers are right. The place wasn’t a victim of the pandemic, though at times I wonder which of our favorite non-chain restaurants will not emerge from their current retail comas. On the other hand, a restaurant is always a high-wire act. No matter how good a joint is, it can still be the victim of regular retail churn.

Gone from Rolling Meadows, but Gabuttø Burger was planning to re-open in Elgin. Not as convenient for us, but we still would have gone occasionally. Unfortunately, word was it was supposed to open in March. I suspect that didn’t go too well.

I never did take a picture of one of its burgers. One time, however, I did take a picture at the Rolling Meadows Gabuttø Burger — of something arrayed like I’d never seen before.
More valuable than the restaurant or I realized at the time. I hope the proprietors remembered to take the supply of paper with them when they left.

Speaking of retail in peril, what about the fate of Buc-ee’s? If there ever was a place that encouraged the opposite of social distancing — that would be social cramming? — it would be Buc-ee’s, with its mass crowds in its massive stores.
Then again, such is the pull of Buc-ee’s that maybe it’s been deemed an essential operation in Texas.

The Former Rex Theatre, Amarillo

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Our back yard view, Friday morning.

Enough already, I cried to the heavens. Not really. It was more of a mutter. Yet I seemed to get an answer, because the snow melted by Saturday and today we enjoyed a fine spring day.

I even heard people out mowing their grass this morning. The flush of spring hasn’t quite inspired me to yard work, however.

Two years ago, when I spent about a day and a half in Amarillo, I took a walk along Sixth Ave. the evening I arrived. It has the distinction of being part of U.S. 66 at one time.

“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District comprises 13 blocks of commercial development in the San Jacinto Heights Addition west of Amarillo’s central business district,” the NPS says. ” Developed as an early 20th-century streetcar suburb, the district was transformed by the establishment of a national transportation artery running through its center.

“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District is Amarillo’s most intact collection of commercial buildings that possess significant associations with the highway. Featuring elements of Spanish Revival, Art Deco, and Art Moderne design, these buildings represent the historic development phases of this early 20th century suburb and the evolving tastes and sensibilities of American culture.”

I’d read about the street, but more importantly at that moment, I was looking for something to eat. I didn’t find anyplace I wanted to eat, but I did see some of the historic buildings on the street. I was inspired to take a picture of only one of them. A detail of one of them.Sixth Street Haunted House AmarilloSkulls. They’re on a wall of the 6th Street Massacre Haunted House. Note also the plaque. It says that the building is on the National Registry of Historic Places. This is a wider view.

It was once the Rex Theatre, which opened in 1935 and lasted until 1956 as a movie venue. It’s a little hard to see it as a theater building from Sixth Ave. The view around the corner shows it better.

A movie palace, it probably wasn’t. Just a neighborhood picture show. I think that makes it just as interesting, historically speaking, as one of the palaces, but not as nice to look at.

Piggly Wiggly Sewing Kit

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Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:

Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.

There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.

Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).

At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.

On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.

As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.

Hail!

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Yesterday evening, rain was forecast possible and clouds rolled along.

Temps were a pleasant 70 F. or so. I sat on the deck and waited for the rain. Mostly I saw cloud-to-cloud lightning a few miles away to the south, which has a fascination all its own. It was never near enough to drive me inside, and not much rain came either by dark.

Today was a different story. Just before 5 p.m., heavy rain started to fall. With some hail. Luckily not too large, but enough to make a tink! sound when it hit a metal yard ornament in our front yard. Hail, or at least its streaks, is visible against the backdrop of a neighbor’s house.

When I was 11 or 12, golfball-sized hail fell as I watched from our kitchen window. The ice slammed into the yard and bounced every which way. It was over in two minutes. A minute? Not long, but impressive. I collected a few and kept them in the freezer until they merged with the other frost. It was Texas hail. You know, bigger like everything else.

Mm, Grits

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There are two kinds of grits in the house. As far as I know, people aren’t hording grits these days, but I haven’t shopped for them since before the pandemic, so who knows.

To the left, the brand I’ve eaten for years. The standard. The go-to. Often the only brand at the grocery store. Easy to make, best eaten after only a few minutes for cooling. Some add butter. I usually add honey, but not always.

To the right, a brand recently acquired. The texture is slightly different, but not enough to put me off of it. Takes longer to make. Naturally, the verbiage on the package tries to make a virtue of that necessity: “You’ll have to hesitate before you eat quick grits again,” it says. Naah.

The standard grits package tube lists the following as ingredients: degerminated white corn grits, plus iron and various vitamins, which are added in the processing. The new grits bag merely lists white corn. Made me wonder if the hull and germ have been removed, which seems essential to grits.

Note this handy definition at Culinary Lore:

Hominy: An endosperm product made from corn, made up of starch, with the hull and germ removed.

Grits: Ground hominy (usually coarse).

I checked the nutrition facts on the new grits package, and indeed it seems that whatever vitamins might have been present in the hull or germ aren’t there, so I assume they aren’t there either.

Anyway, grits and I go way back. As long as I can remember, because my mother made them and I assume her mother did too, though I don’t have any specific memory of grandma’s grits. I learned to make them myself early on.

I also learned that somehow, most restaurants that offer grits serve an inferior version to what you make at home. How is that? Occasionally, though, I find superb grits away from home. For instance, years ago in Mexico Beach, Florida, I had wonderful cheese grits — at a place probably destroyed by Hurricane Michael a year and a half ago.

When I moved to Chicago in the late ’80s, I was glad to find grits in the grocery stores, despite being well north of the Grits Line. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how many Southerners, black and white, have migrated to the region over the decades.

Grits aren’t available in Japan. At least they weren’t 30 years ago. We gaijin ordered it by the case from North America, which we then split up. (PopTarts were ordered the same way.) I remember serving them at my apartment in Japan to a Scotsman who also lived in Japan. He liked it well enough.

“Porridge, is it?” he said. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Can porridge be made from corn? Maize, that is. Seems yes, or maybe, since porridge can be any grain, though I think it’s usually associated with oats and not de-germed corn. Porridge isn’t part of my dialect anyway. Growing up I never heard anything outside of children’s stories called porridge, such as what the Three Bears prepared for themselves and Goldilocks pirated.

Yuriko had no notion of grits growing up and still doesn’t care for them. Lilly took to them in a big way, but Ann did not. Different children, different tastes.