Orphaned Factoids: Year-End Grab Bag

by Paula Bosse

Riding habits, bike togs, slacks… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Another year is coming to a close — time to share a whole bunch of bits and pieces I’ve come across over the past year or so but haven’t found a home for.

My posting of vintage Dallas ads has been severely lacking this year. Enjoy the Berwald’s ad above, found in the 1934 Forest Avenue High School yearbook.

Let’s dive in to the rest of the potpourri of randomness. (Most clippings are larger when clicked.)

The Adolphus Hotel once had a bakery (located in Deep Ellum on what is now Clover Street, between Commerce & Canton, and between Crowdus & Malcom X). They produced products called the Adolphus Sr. (one-and-a-half-pound loaves) and the Adolphus Jr. (one pound loaves).

Hotel Monthly, June, 1920

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1921 Dallas city directory

That uncooperative Trinity. This odd blurb made it into a small-town Kansas newspaper. Man, Texas sounds rough.

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Great Bend Weekly (Kansas), July 20, 1888

In 19th-century Dallas, things were forever erupting in flames.

Dallas Herald, Feb. 15, 1882

Dallas has always had a lot of bars. This newspaperman’s musing is from 1874. I don’t know what the city’s population was that year, but in 1870 it was 3,000.

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Dallas Herald, Dec. 31, 1874

Potholes have been a problem since there were roads. And people have been writing sarcastic letters to the editor almost as long. (Masten Street is now St. Paul.) (The man who wrote this letter — George Atkins — was a purveyor or medicinal rattlesnake oil. I wrote about him here.)

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DMN, Jan. 29, 1890

Egg Phosphates, made from pure-dee Dallas rainwater.

Dallas Herald, April 14, 1887

It’s 1907. You need a clairvoyant in a “refined parlor” STAT! Where do you go?

DMN, Aug. 30, 1907

This is amusing.

Fort Worth Daily Gazette, Nov. 25, 1887

Wanted: orphan. (From The Dallas Express, the city’s long-lived African-American newspaper.)

Dallas Express, Jan. 13, 1900

Bazillionaire C. C. Slaughter’s tricked-out Packard (probably the one I wrote about here).

Motor Age Magazine, May 27, 1915

How many times do we have to ask you people? Do NOT spit in the streetcars!

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DMN, Dec. 18, 1911

PSA: How to use your telephone.

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Dallas Herald, May 31, 1881

I’ve run across a lot of articles about locally-made little movies like this one, which most likely no longer exist anywhere. It would be so great to be able to see things like this one, “Moonshine and Roses”!

DMN, Dec. 2, 1920