Oh dear, no….
by Paula Bosse
This was the official flag of the City of Dallas, from 1916 to 1967. Um … ick.
The flag of Dallas County, adopted in 1975 and seen below, is actually worse.
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More Texas flags can be seen here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
I grew up in the Lower Greenville area, and since we had a nice steakhouse just a couple of blocks away, that’s where we always went for family birthdays and special occasions: Kirby’s. I had forgotten about the birthday cards they sent out until my mother came across one in a recent move which was addressed to “Miss Paula Bosse.” Other than receiving actual mail, the thing that made these cards really exciting for a child was the inclusion of a dime. I always thought of it as a little birthday treat, but my mother suggested it was more of a subtle reminder to the parents to spend that dime on a call for reservations.
I loved that place. It was very dark. My brother and I always had the same thing: a non-alcoholic, super-sweet Shirley Temple from the bar, a salad with big chunks of roquefort in the salad dressing, a baked potato, and, oh my god, a filet mignon. I was mesmerized by the bacon wrapped around the steak. And the little wooden marker that showed how the meat was cooked. It was a nice, friendly neighborhood steakhouse. It was loud and happy. You could hear the steaks sizzling on the grill. It was always a treat to go to Kirby’s. And the place smelled GREAT! Even out on the sidewalk.
I was sad when they tore the building down, and even though there is now a chain of restaurants with the name “Kirby’s” — they even built a new one a couple of blocks down from the original location — there’s no way it could ever be the same.
Looking around for the history of the original “Kirby’s Charcoal Steaks,” I was surprised to discover that the man who owned Kirby’s — B. J. Kirby — was the son of the man who founded the Pig Stand chain of drive-ins. The Pig Stand started in Dallas, and it was the first drive-in restaurant EVER. They had the first carhops. The first onion rings. The first Texas toast. The Kirby’s steakhouse location — 3715 Greenville — had actually been a Pig Stand! B. J. Kirby had grown up working at his father’s restaurants, and when his father died, he sold all the Pig Stands except for the Greenville Avenue location (i.e. Pig Stand No. 4). In 1954 he turned the pig-sandwich-serving drive-in into a nice sit-down steakhouse which remained popular until the restaurant closed in 1987 when Mr. Kirby retired.
Watch Ch. 5 news footage of B. J. Kirby and the auction of the restaurant fixtures at UNT’s Portal to Texas History site, here.
I could really go for a bacon-wrapped filet mignon right about now. And one of those Shirley Temples would even hit the spot.
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“Something to Crow About!” card from the author’s collection.
Color photo of the Kirby’s sign is a screenshot from the Channel 5 news coverage of the auction of the Kirby’s fixtures, which aired April 14, 1987, viewable here; from the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection, UNT Libraries, via the Portal to Texas History.
First ad from 1958; bottom ad from 1951.
Watch the 14-minute documentary “Carhops,” in which B. J. Kirby remembers life working as a kid for his father, here (also interviewed are other drive-in Dallas icons, J. D. Sivils and Jack Keller).
An entertaining history of the Pig Stand No. 4 and its transformation into Kirby’s Charcoal Steaks can be found here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Think you’re up on your “movies-shot-in-Dallas” trivia? I thought I was. Until I happened across a strange little movie in the wee hours of the morning a couple of years ago. The movie is called Gas-s-s-s! Or sometimes Gas–Or–It Became Necessary to Destroy the World In Order to Save It. And it’s directed and produced by the great schlockmeister (and I use that word lovingly), Roger Corman.
For my purposes here, I’m not going to try to describe the meandering plot of this vaguely post-apocalyptic screwball hippie groove-fest, but other than the fact that it has early appearances on film by Bud Cort, Cindy Williams, Ben Vereen, and Talia Shire (billed here as “Tally Coppola”), the only thing that really matters is that a good ten minutes of this really bad movie take place in Dallas — a good chunk of it shot on the SMU campus (?!). (I wonder if there was some guerrilla film-making going on here because it seems unlikely that the powers-that-be at SMU would have allowed Corman to film one of his typical counter-culture movies in the heart of the Park Cities.) (ETA: Well, I’ve recently come across an article from the SMU Daily Campus, which appeared during filming (read it at the bottom of this post). It mentions previous Corman movies, so I guess the Hilltop decision-maker knew of Corman’s oeuvre and was fine with everything. Either that, or that person was lazy and didn’t bother investigating. The working title, by the way, was “Arrowfeather.”)
The Dallas scenes are conveniently right at the beginning of the movie (following a short animated sequence of plot exposition and titles). Corman’s opening montage of the streets of Dallas is only 30-seconds long, but it’s really great! Not that he meant it to be, but it’s like a little valentine to downtown Dallas as it was embarking on a new decade. Look at all those buildings! Look at all those people! Later on you see an eerie, deserted downtown, Dealey Plaza, SMU fraternity row, and a mod, weird-looking church which I’ve never seen (where is that, anyway?). Here’s the opening couple of minutes of the movie:
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The entire movie is occasionally on YouTube, but it seems to go up and get pulled off with some frequency. By the time you read this it may no longer be available, but you can watch the trailer here. (If you can find the full movie, the Dallas bits start at about the 3:30 mark and last until about the 13:00 mark.)
I watched the whole thing, and I can’t say I enjoyed it. I DID really like Cindy Williams as an excitable music geek, here in her first movie — three years before American Graffiti and longer still before Laverne & Shirley — but I’m not sure that’s enough of a reason to recommend sitting all the way through it. (And don’t get excited about Bud Cort, because his participation is minimal.)
Watch the whole thing if you must. But, remember: you’ve been warned!
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SMU Daily Campus, Nov. 4, 1970
This article appeared in the SMU newspaper — The Daily Campus — while the movie was being filmed in Dallas. (Click for larger image.)
SMU Daily Campus, Nov. 26, 1969
The photos accompanying the article are, sadly, not the greatest resolution, but here’s one:
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SMU Daily Campus article (Nov. 26, 1969) is from the Southern Methodist University Student Newspapers collection, DeGolyer Library — see the scanned issue here.
The IMDb listing for the movie is here. Who knows? You might know people in it! …Heck, you might be in it.
If you’ve arrived at this post by searching on “schlockmeister,” I invite you to peruse these other Flashback Dallas posts about Dallas’ own Roger Corman, Larry Buchanan:
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
The Texan Visits New York City … “New York CITY?!”
by Paula Bosse
A few years ago, I came across the cartoon above in Joe E. Cooper’s chili bible, With or Without Beans, and I was delighted to see that the cartoonist was Ned Riddle, who, though having begun his career as a staff artist for the Dallas Morning News, is known primarily for his syndicated comic panel “Mr. Tweedy,” which I loved as a kid.
A couple of interesting tidbits about Mr. Riddle, who was a Dallas resident until his death in 2003: during WWII, he served on a submarine with the unspeakably perfect name, the USS Piranha, and — unlikely as it seems — while studying art at Washington University in St. Louis, he apparently studied under the great Expressionist artist Max Beckmann.
I loved “Mr. Tweedy” — the look of it, the simple one-panel jokes, and the fact that (as I recall) the somewhat optimistic-though-beleaguered Mr. Tweedy rarely actually spoke. Sort of Mr. Bean-like. I also knew that the cartoonist was from Dallas, and I was always trying to spot any sort of hidden homage to the city (as far as I know that never happened, but it SHOULD have!). “Mr. Tweedy” began in 1954 and ended in 1988. That’s a good run.
Here are a few Mr. Tweedy panels.
1959
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1959
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1969
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And some photos of Ned Riddle at his drawing board over the years.
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Oct. 15, 1988, the final panel….
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“The Texan Visits New York” cartoon appeared in With or Without Beans, An Informal Biography of Chili by Joe E. Cooper (Dallas: William S. Henson, Inc., 1952). Find (pricey) out-of-print copies for sale here.
First two “Mr. Tweedy” panels from Mr. Tweedy by Ned Riddle (NY: Fleet Publishing Corporation, 1960; reprinted in 1977).
Later photo of Ned Riddle found on Flickr here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
My family had two favorite neighborhood restaurants: Kirby’s Charcoal Steakhouse on Lower Greenville for birthdays and special occasions, and Roscoe White’s Corral on Mockingbird for every other occasion. Conveniently, both were only a short walk from our house. When I came across this ad, I was surprised to see that the Corral had started out as a drive-in, with car-hops. My memories of the place are from the 1970s after it had been rebuilt. in the same block, in a new-ish shopping strip (about where Premiere Video is now), facing the old Dr Pepper plant. It had a diner-like, fairly utilitarian decor, with a slightly fancier banquet room at the back. There was an attached (very dark) bar with a separate entrance. I remember the gleaming cigarette machine. Roscoe must have loved the place, because he was there all the time.
My mother and I always had the chicken-fried steak and a salad with blue cheese dressing. My father and brother tended to go for the still-bubbling cheese enchiladas on a hot metal dish, swimming in a healthy amount of grease (my father’s favorite part). I swear we always had the same waitress — I can’t remember her name, but it was one of those perfect names for a waitress. “Maxine” maybe? (I think my parents had both been customers since their days at SMU in the ’50s, and for all I know, she had been there back then and had been serving them for over twenty years.)
When the Corral closed in the late-’70s or early-’80s, my family was distraught. Loyal patrons that we were, we began making the trek through the Park Cities to Roscoe’s other restaurant, The Easy Way, over on Lovers Lane, by the toll road — the atmosphere was different (it was darker, for one thing), but the food was EXACTLY THE SAME! And, as I recall, even our regular waitress was there — she had also made the move across town. It was almost as if nothing had changed. …Almost.
I loved the Corral My family had so many nice times there. And I miss it. I especially miss that wonderful chicken-fried steak, the yardstick by which I continue to judge all others.
Roscoe White died in 1995 and was remembered in D Magazine:
He moved around, but Roscoe White always had a place for Dallas to eat. He opened his first restaurant in 1939, the Kings Way Grill on Knox and Travis streets. It had an upstairs casino, and the beer was stored in the icehouse next door. Later he opened the Corral on Mockingbird Lane, a drive-in that became a haven for SMU law students. White also owned the Easy Way Grill on Lovers Lane and then Roscoe’s Easy Way on Lemmon Avenue. He died of a stroke at 88.
Thanks for all the great meals, Roscoe!
Roscoe White at the Easy Way (D Magazine, Oct. 1985)
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An early ad from 1947. Fried chicken gizzards, only 55 cents — “It’s a Pleasure”!
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A couple of help-wanted ads for waitresses and a “lady cashier” (Dallas Morning News, 1948). I can only hope that Roscoe’s car-hops were referred to as “White Girls.”
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There had been a fire in the summer of 1950 that caused $4,500 worth of damage, the reason, I’m assuming, for the redecoration and re-opening. I’m not sure when the Corral moved into the location I was familiar with, but by mid-1969, ads were appearing with the new address of 5422 Mockingbird.
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A matchbook from the Easy Way Grill, sadly, with the wrong address on it! The Easy Way was at 5806 Lovers Lane, part of the Miracle Mile, where Dr. Delphinium is now.
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A 1951 ad for the Kings Way Grill and Easy Way Grill.
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The top ad touting “SMU’s Favorite Drive-In” is from a 1951 SMU-Rice football game souvenir program.
A fond farewell to the Easy Way — “It’s Hard To Say Goodbye to The Easy Way Cafe” — from D Magazine is here. (Above photo of Roscoe accompanied the print article.)
Red matchbook covers from Flickr.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 