by Paula Bosse
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas — I only hope Santa brought you what YOU wanted!
Dallas Morning News, Dec. 24, 1899
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Top image from a WBAP Christmas mailing to radio fans of The Light Crust Doughboys of the Burrus Mill, 1932.
To read more letters from Dallas-area children printed in “Santa’s Letter Box” (Dallas Morning News, Dec. 24, 1899), click here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Santa considers a test-drive, 1953 (photo: Roy Addis)
by Paula Bosse
Back in 2010, Robert Wilonsky (now a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, but back then a reporter for The Dallas Observer) posted a 1950s-era photo of a giant Santa Claus sitting on the roof of a Dallas car dealership. Robert had found the photo on eBay and wondered what the story behind the promotional stunt might have been. The thing that sparked my interest (other than it being a giant Santa Claus — holding a full-size car in his lap!) was the fact that the dealership, Porter Chevrolet (which I’d never heard of), had been just around the corner from where I grew up — it was in the 5500 block of E. Mockingbird, right across from the old Dr Pepper plant, about where the Campisi’s parking lot is now. I, too, really wanted to know more about that huge Santa Claus that had once been hanging out so ostentatiously in my neighborhood.
At about the time when Robert’s post appeared in 2010, I had only recently discovered that the Dallas Morning News archives were available online. For free. All the way back to 1885! (All you need is a current library card from the Dallas Public Library, and you’re on your way to losing absolute days while reading about one fascinating thing after another.) I had just begun to dabble with searches in the archives, so this seemed like a great opportunity to test my research skills and see if there was more to the story. And there was! I sent Robert what I’d found, and he wrote a great follow-up, here (which has yet another photo of the giant Santa). And a year later he did another follow-up, this one including the color photo seen above, sent in by a reader.
This is just such a great and weird holiday-related bit of Dallas’ past, that I thought I’d revisit the story, especially since some of the links in the original Observer posts no longer work.
First, a quick re-cap (but, please, read Robert’s story, because you’ll enjoy it, and it’s much more colorful than my quick overview here). During the 1953 Christmas season, Porter Chevrolet (5526 Mockingbird) commissioned Jack Bridges (the man who had previously made Big Tex (who was himself originally a giant Santa Claus)) to construct an 85-foot-tall steel-and-papier-mâché Santa Claus (he’d be that tall if he were standing) to sit on the dealership building and hold an actual 1954 Chevy in his lap. It was definitely a promotion that would grab people’s attention. The day the giant Santa was put in place, using a crane, a man whose company had done the installing (as they had with Big Tex), thought it would be a great opportunity to get a Christmas card photo of himself dangling from the crane next to Santa. The man, Roy V. Davis, was recovering from heart-related health problems, and, as it turned out, he experienced a “myocardial rupture” while hoisted 35 feet above the concrete parking lot. He lost his grip and fell to his death. This tragic news made the front page of local papers and was picked up by the Associated Press, but, oddly, it was never spoken of again. Giant Santa apparently remained at his perch throughout the holidays, but as far as I can tell, there was no further mention of Mr. Davis’ death — until Robert Wilonsky stumbled across the photo and wrote about it 57 years later.
Below is the AP photo and blurb which ran nationally, showing Mrs. John Ashmore and her 4-year old daughter Ruth Ann looking up at the towering Santa Claus.
Photo: Collection of Paula Bosse
The caption (click for larger image):
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UPDATE: Okay this is VERY EXCITING — and also kind of chilling: there is WBAP-Channel 5 television news footage of the Giant Santa as well as the on-the-scene tragic aftermath of Mr. Davis’ accident. The Dec. 10, 1953 footage is without sound (the script the anchor read on the air as the film played during the newscast can be found here). The video starts off with children marveling at the giant Santa Claus but suddenly turns dark with shots of the bloody Mr. Davis being loaded onto a stretcher (helped by Jack Bridges, the man who built the giant Santa, seen wearing a beret and white coveralls). The one-minute clip titled “Worker Dies at Santa’s Statue” can be viewed on the Portal to Texas History site here.
Below are a few screen captures:
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Denison Press, Dec. 25, 1953
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dec. 11, 1953
Lubbock Avalanche, Dec. 11, 1953
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Top color photo (which I’ve cropped) is by Roy Addis. It appeared in the Dallas Observer blog Unfair Park in Robert Wilonsky’s 2011 update to the previous year’s story — it was sent in by a reader who discovered it in his personal collection. To read that story, click here.
Wilonsky’s original Unfair Park post — which contained the photo he found on eBay — is here. And, again, his post containing “the rest of the story” is here. (Robert Wilonsky continues to write enthusiastically about Dallas — its past as well as its present — and his Dallas Morning News pieces are, quite frankly, where I get most of my news about what’s going on in the city. Thanks for the opportunity to be part of the unearthing of this story, Robert!)
The news photo of Mrs. Ashmore and her daughter is from the author’s personal collection.
The video is from the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection, University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections, accessible on the Portal to Texas History site. The main page of the video is here (click picture to watch video in a new window).
Dallas Morning News articles on the giant Santa and the tragic accident:
UPDATE: Robert Wilonsky has written on the giant Santa in a new Dallas Morning News article, with some interesting new tidbits about Porter Chevrolet’s proposal to the City Council requesting permission to put this huge structure on top of the building. Read his 2017 update here. Robert keeps telling me we should write a book about this — or make a documentary. Which, of course, we should! After all these years now of visions of the giant Santa and sober thoughts of Roy Davis — more “real” now, having seen film footage of him bloody on that stretcher — I really do feel this is all part of some personal family Christmas lore, recounted every year around the table.
Pictures and clippings are larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
A bit of color and giddy enthusiasm on a gray day.
(click for MUCH larger image)
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Top image is a Texas Centennial poster from the Ephemera Collection of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. I would provide a link, but I am unable to find it now. It was online a few months ago!
Source of bottom image is unknown. Probably eBay. A long, long time ago.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Thanksgiving means different things to different people. For some it’s about spending time with family, for some it’s about ingesting an unimaginable amount of good food, and for others it’s all about watching the Cowboys game.
Here’s a look back at the inaugural season of the Dallas Cowboys, 1960:
The team got better, but as far as the Cowboys, there was absolutely nothing for Dallas to be thankful for that year — except that they’d never have to re-live Season 1 again.
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Yep, Wikipedia. Read it and weep, sports fans.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
After the Civil War (and even before) many (if not all) Southern states refused to celebrate Thanksgiving, as many felt it was nothing more than a politicized “Yankee abolitionist holiday.” But by 1874, Southerners — and Texans — were finally willing to give it a go.
A letter to the editor of the Dallas Daily Herald that year encouraged the people of Dallas to observe the holiday — suggesting that it was a patriotic (rather than a political) thing to do:
Our southern people have not been in the habit of observing [Thanksgiving] since the late war, for causes known to themselves and the nation. But now […] it becomes us to specially observe this day long set apart by our people for feasting, thanksgiving and prayer. By so doing we will give evidence of our faith in permanent government, and rebuke the idea of disloyalty to the union of the states.
Dallas Daily Herald, Nov. 26, 1874 (click for larger image)
Richard Coke, the governor of Texas, proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1874 as a day of thanksgiving, noting that “Neither plague, pestilence nor famine has visited our beloved State,” and that, hey, things were actually going pretty well:
Dallas Daily Herald, Nov. 21, 1874
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Downtown parade for returning troops — June, 1919 (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
Dallas found out that the Great War had finally ended at around 3:00 in the morning of November 11, 1918 when the siren atop the Adolphus Hotel sounded with “maniacal shrieks.” People poured into the streets to celebrate.
The crackle of revolver reports began to sound. Sleep was murdered, even had one been so disposed, and many residents from all parts of the city foregathered in the downtown district to jubilate and exult in various ways until daylight came. (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 12, 1918)
Giddy celebrations and impromptu parades were the order of the day, and the joyous spirit that erupted throughout the city is reflected in this Dallas Morning News report of “the first day of world peace since August, 1914” (click to see larger image):
DMN, Nov. 12, 1918
Local businesses got in on the action by placing heart-felt patriotic advertisements (some of which also quietly reminded readers that Christmas was just around the corner).
When World War I officially ended on November 11, 1918, the military and civilian deaths and casualties totaled more than 37 million. All everyone wanted was for their loved ones to return home safely and for life to return to normal as quickly as possible. There was a lot to be thankful for that Thanksgiving.
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Photo of the 111th Engineers from the Tarrant County College Northeast, Heritage Room, via the Portal to Texas History, here. It shows the 1500 block of Main Street, looking west toward Akard. See the same view today here (the short white building at 1520 Main is currently occupied by the Iron Cactus; in the 1919 photo, that address is occupied by Thompson’s in what looks like the same building). (See another parade photo of the same block here. The detail is much, much better!)
Ads from the Dallas Morning News, Nov. 12 and 13, 1918.
The Wikipedia entry for World War One casualties is here.
Click pictures for larger images.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Dallas used to have some pretty bad Halloweens. Way more “trick” than “treat.” The word “riot” was used frequently to describe the typical Halloween night goings-on, when thousands of people clustered downtown and did unsavory things (such as drinking, fighting, pick-pocketing, mugging, and being generally obnoxious), while out in the “suburbs” (meaning far-flung locales such as East Dallas and Oak Lawn), marauding bands of young “pranksters” were keeping themselves busy breaking things and setting things on fire. Like kids do. Each Halloween, every policeman was called in for duty — only those in their sickbeds were exempt.
The worst of these Halloweens seemed to happen in the 1930s. Elm, Main, and Commerce, between Lamar and Harwood, were cordoned off from traffic. This is where upwards of 25,000 revelers would slowly cruise up and down the streets, causing mayhem and inflicting occasional bodily injury (much like the notorious Texas-OU weekends of later years). Even though the area was off-limits to automobile traffic, the streetcars still ran, and the poor drivers must have dreaded that night each year and steeled themselves for the worst, as if heading into battle.
Apparently Dallas revelers had a signature tradition, and it was to carry large wooden paddles — sometimes as large as canoe oars — and to swat people in the crowd on their backsides, usually women. At some point women also began to carry paddles, and they did their fair share of swatting, too. It was a paddling free-for-all.
1935 was a particularly noteworthy year, as it was the first Halloween after the state of Texas had voted to repeal Prohibition. Yes, people were drinking. And paddling. Sounds like a bad combination.
Below is a list of just a few of the reported instances of vandalism and “high-spiritedness” which routinely plagued the city every Halloween:
In 1939, an intoxicated man who was “playfully threatening people with a knife” was playfully arrested.
In 1935, there was a huge mud-fight in Oak Lawn at Newton and Throckmorton which involved over 100 boys. Like greased pigs, an adrenaline-fueled, mud-encased 10-year old running from beleaguered and hopelessly out-numbered policemen — who, quite frankly, had bigger fish to fry that night — were almost impossible to catch. Spectators and passersby did not escape unscathed. Except for the dry cleaners the next day, Oak Lawn was not amused.
And in 1936, during the Texas Centennial, a policeman was suspended and demoted after an incident of “horseplay” at Parry and Exposition in which he had been shocking passing pedestrians by poking them with the end of a walking stick that had been hooked up to the battery of a police motorcycle. He got into trouble because one of his victims was a young woman who had been standing on wet pavement when the electrified stick touched her, resulting in a more-powerful-than-expected shock. She lost consciousness, fell to the ground, and hit her head on the sidewalk. Luckily, she recovered quickly and even requested that the officer not be punished, but the police chief was not so forgiving. He was understandably livid, especially when he discovered that a number of motorcycle cops had been doing the same thing. One imagines there were several new orifices opened up amongst the force in the days that followed.
But the pièce de résistance was in 1920 when several boys “anchored a block and tackle around a two-story house in Cockrell Hill and hoisted a wagon and a team of terrified mules up in the air” (DMN, Oct. 27, 1963). That right there required impressive organizational planning and a certain amount of entry-level engineering skill.
Eventually things settled down. By 1949 officials had finally put an end to the swarming, surging masses downtown. People began to celebrate Halloween with candy and costumes and haunted houses and parties. In 1966, a policeman was asked if things had improved from those earlier dark days:
There’s been an extensive change for the better in recent years. Police almost never get a call to let a cow out of a school house anymore. (DMN, Oct. 27, 1966)
And Halloween became more “treat” than “trick.” Good news for the City of Dallas. And for its mules. Bad news for the makers of Ivory soap and thick wooden paddles.
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Selected tidbits gleaned from the frenzied coverage in The Dallas Morning News archives:
Other Flashback Dallas posts on Halloween can be found here and here.
Happy Halloween!
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
E. M. Kahn ad, 1925
by Paula Bosse
A few Halloween ads from the 1920s. The top ad for a snazzy “Halloween suit” is something of a whimsical departure for the legendary men’s clothing store, E. M. Kahn (est. 1872): it was an advertisement for children’s Halloween costumes — “printed in orange and black, the proper colors.” (I’d snap it up, kid — for two bucks, it’s the cheapest thing you’re ever going to find at E. M. Kahn.) “Suit includes pointed hat.”
But Halloween isn’t just for kids. Below, a Reynolds Penland ad for adult costumes, which include skeleton, devil, and “whoopee” suits. No pointed hats, but there are accessories — just look at those shoes!
Reynolds Penland Co., 1929
And lastly, an ad for glass cleaner. Dallas had a MAJOR problem with unruly “goblins” soaping windows — especially downtown — and this product probably came in pretty handy on “the morning after.” I bet this was the busiest time of the year for the C-It Liquid Glass Cleaner company — their make-it or break-it sales period. Halloween might well have been their Black Friday. …Or rather their Orange and Black Friday (because those are the “proper colors”).
1929
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
“The Pike” — 1909
by Paula Bosse
Hey, y’all — guess what ends this weekend? Hurry!
One doesn’t really need an excuse to post a bunch of photos of the Great State Fair of Texas, but it IS the closing weekend, so why not enjoy a few images from the past few decades.
Above, a view of the Midway in 1909 (then called “The Pike”), with the Log Ride-like “Chute” and its ramp, a roller coaster, and a loaded tram festooned with shoe ads (including one for Volk’s).
Below, the Fair Park entrance in 1919:
A nice little newspaper ad from 1924:
Two women enjoying ice cream in 1930 — State Fair food has always been one of the main joys of visiting the fair.
Ad from 1946: “So sorry, Bill, but Albert is taking me to the State Fair of Texas.” The grown-up entertainment that year was provided by Tommy Dorsey, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Jackie Gleason.
In 1958, Fair Park had a monorail (the only one then operating in the United States) and a paddle-wheeler in the lagoon:
And then there’s this guy, who spans the decades:
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1958 photo featuring the monorail by Squire Haskins, from a Dallas Morning News online article featuring TONS of cool photos of the fair over the years, here.
Big Tex photo (undated) from the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
Another post of random images of the SFOT through the decades — “The Fair Is In the Air — Let’s Go!” — is here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Centennial Exposition, 1936 — photo by Lewis D. Fox (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
An amateur photographer named Lewis D. Fox took a lot of photos at the State Fair of Texas — from the Texas Centennial in 1936 through 1940. The Centennial photos are particularly interesting, because they show what the “Exposition” was like to the average visitor — there was more going on than just the spectacular extravaganza we usually see — there are also shots of people doing un-spectacular things like just walking around or enjoying a quiet, late-afternoon cup of coffee. There are also photos of the people who do the heavy-lifting at a state fair — the men and women who work the Midway shows and the concession stands (a link to a larger collection of Mr. Fox’s State Fair photos — almost a hundred snapshots — is below).
Enjoy this look at a time when going to the fair meant dressing up and, apparently, often leaving the children at home! (Click photos to see larger images.)
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All photos taken by Lewis D. Fox, from the Fox Photograph Collection in the Fort Worth Public Library Archives, courtesy of the Genealogy, History and Archives Unit, Fort Worth Public Library. Mr. Fox took a lot of snapshots at the fair — see more here.
On a personal note, I’m mesmerized by “The Waffle Man.” He looks just like a young Lefty Frizzell! Lefty was from nearby Corsicana and he spent a lot of time in Dallas, but he wasn’t born until 1928, so it can’t be him — but check out this photo of Lefty as a teenager and see the remarkable resemblance! Not only did the (no doubt syrup-scented) young man above look like one of my favorite singers, but he also had ready access to waffles. What’s not to love? Oh, Waffle Man….
All images larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 