McKinney & Haskell, Circle “T” Frozen Foods, and VWs in Dallas

by Paula Bosse

Fender-bender in front of NDHS… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Odd stuff shows up on eBay. This photo shows a damaged Circle T Brand frozen-food Volkswagen delivery van at the intersection of McKinney Avenue and North Haskell (with North Dallas High School making a partial cameo in the background). The view today? See it here.

Circle T was one of the many brainchilds of the Southland Corp.’s Thompson family: it manufactured and distributed frozen foods (initially meats and Mexican food) which were sold in the company’s 7-Eleven stores. The company began in 1954 and was located just a couple of blocks from this photo, at Haskell and Central. (In 1954 they announced one of their first specialty products: frozen queso. I’ve never even considered that frozen queso would exist, but 60-some-odd years ago it was flying off shelves at the neighborhood 7-Eleven.)

The Southland Corp. sold off Circle T in 1966.

Below, an ad for Circle T’s frozen steaks, from 1954 (click ad to see larger image).

June, 1954

And because I’m nothing if not pedantic, here’s an ad for VW trucks and vans, from 1961 (which appears to be the date on the van’s license plate in the photo):

Feb., 1961

And speaking of Volkswagens, the first Dallas car dealer to import Volkswagens appears to be Clarence Talley — the first ads are from 1954. While I was searching for the link to the eBay listing of the above photo (which I could not find…), I serendipitously stumbled across this 1950s photo of Clarence Talley on N. Pearl, with appearances by the Medical Arts Building and the Republic Bank Building. Thank you, eBay.

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Sources & Notes

Photos from eBay: could not find the link to the first one, but the second one sold a couple of months ago, and the archived listing is here.

2 Comments to “McKinney & Haskell, Circle “T” Frozen Foods, and VWs in Dallas”

Not Bob says:

February 15, 2018 at 1:14 AM

I am pretty sure that is the Southland Center south tower under construction on the right side of the last photo so that would make the date 1957 or 58. The license plates in the photo have black numbers on a white plate which is what was used for 1957. Still could be early 1958 since the 57 plates didn’t expire until the end of March 1958.

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- Not Bob says:
  
  February 15, 2018 at 1:42 AM
  
  Just realized that means that the photo is not at 710 N. Pearl as shown in the ad.
  
  It looks like they opened a new location at 2121 Pacific in 1957: https://goo.gl/MqZJBR
  
  I believe that would have been at Pacific and Pearl like in the photo.
  
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