Leisure | Flashback : Dallas

December 15, 2014

Back When Bookstore Fixtures Were a Thing of Beauty! — 1940s

Ervay & Pacific — “Book Corner” (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

In July of 1941 the Baptist Building opened at Ervay and Pacific. Part of the ground floor (“the Book Corner”) was occupied by the Baptist Book Store, which sold mostly religious material, but which also stocked dictionaries (“and other items of similar nature”) and children’s books (“We have books for every type and age of juvenile from the Picture Books of Children from three to five to the vigorous youth wanting stories of the romantic west”). The ad below appeared in a booklet put together to welcome newcomers to the city, about 1946:

(click for larger image of bookstore interior)
*

Having grown up in a family-run bookstore (and having worked in various other bookstores for a large chunk of my life), I’m always fascinated by old photos of bookstore interiors, and this one is just great. (Click the image above to see the photo of the store much larger.) I’m particularly fascinated by the fixtures encircling the pillars — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the problem handled in such a sophisticated way. And is that recessed lighting shining down on the slatwalls? This is a really wonderful-looking bookstore. The only thing that looks out of place is what appears to be an old-fashioned chunky cash register, center left. Everything else in this photo makes the bookseller in me practically giddy with nostalgia.

baptist-book-store_dmn_092847-det

***

Ad is from a publication called “So This is Dallas” published by “The Welcome Wagon.” It is undated but is probably from immediately after the war. This slim booklet was printed for several years in slightly different editions for people who were considering a move to Dallas or for people who had just moved here. These booklets are wonderful snapshots of the time, with everything the prospective Dallasite would need: facts, photos, and ads.

Bottom image is a detail from a 1947 ad.

I am fascinated by photographs of vintage bookstore interiors — especially Dallas bookstore interiors, of which there are precious few to be found. I would love to see any photos of Dallas bookstores before, say, 1970. If you have any, please send them my way! My contact info is in the “About/Contact” tab at the top of the page. Thanks!

2 Comments

December 8, 2014

The Peruna Monument — 1937

Michael Owen’s Peruna monument today, SMU campus (photo by David Steele)

by Paula Bosse

When Peruna — SMU’s beloved Shetland pony that served as the Mustangs’ first live mascot — died in 1934, there was an immediate call to erect a memorial monument over the little horse’s grave, but it wasn’t until 1937 that a serious push for the erection began. Money was raised by the student council, which asked every student to contribute at least ten cents to the fund, and the search was on for the right sculptor.

The commission went to young Michael G. Owen, Jr., who, at only 21, was the same age as many of the students who were hiring him. (It has been erroneously reported that Owen attended SMU, but he did not.) Michael Owen was well-known within the Dallas art community and had made a mark for himself as something of an artistic prodigy — as a teenager, he had been on the periphery of the movement that spawned the Dallas Nine group of Regionalist artists, and he had been mentored by many of the older artists, most notably Jerry Bywaters.

SMU Semi-Weekly Campus, May 5, 1937 (click for larger image)

Owen worked quickly and completed the memorial — which was six feet long and four feet high and carved from 2,800 pounds of hard limestone — in time for the unveiling just outside Ownby Stadium on May 19, 1937.

The result was a quietly emotional — and even a very sweet — monument depicting the small slumbering horse atop a stone slab, with an inscription reading “Peruna I.” Jerry Bywaters wrote a glowing review of the piece, even though he seems a bit taken aback to find what he called “a memorial to a midget horse” on a college campus to be “one of the best pieces of memorial sculpture in the State.”

“Accustomed to seeing rather bad sculptured monuments erected to Confederate soldiers, Texas Rangers, political dignitaries or such abstract ideas as justice, plenty, or beauty, it is slightly confusing to find a very good piece of sculpture set up as a memorial to a midget horse. […] Whatever the paradox of the situation, this monument is surely one of the best pieces of memorial sculpture in the State.” (Jerry Bywaters in The Dallas Morning News, May 23, 1937)

1937 (SMU Archives)

When Ownby Stadium was demolished and the new Ford Stadium built, the Peruna I monument was moved to the new stadium where it has become a memorial to all the Perunas.

With Peruna III, during WWII (Wikipedia)

1950 (DeGolyer Library, SMU)

***

Sources & Notes

Top photo by David Steele, from Flickr, here.

Article from SMU’s The Semi-Weekly Campus (May 5, 1937, p. 3), here.

Photo of Peruna III with sailors from the Peruna page on Wikipedia, here.

Bottom photo (cropped) of the Peruna monument from the DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, here.

Previous Flashback Dallas posts on Mike Owen:

“Give a 15-Year Old 8,400 Pounds of Soap and He’ll Carve You a Radio Transmitter — 1930” is here.
“Michael G. Owen, Jr. — Dallas Sculptor of Lead Belly” — is here.

UPDATE: Read about a recently discovered large painting by Owen up for auction in Dallas in 2019 here.

The previous post on the untimely demise of Peruna is here.

6 Comments

December 7, 2014

Little Peruna: He Died With His Mustang Bridle On — 1934

Peruna, waiting for the Mustangs to score (photo: SMU)

by Paula Bosse

On October 30, 1934, shortly before midnight, Peruna, the 28-inch-tall little black Shetland pony mascot of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, somehow liberated himself from his stable and wandered across campus and out into the intersection of Mockingbird and Airline where he was, sadly, struck by a hit-and-run driver and died soon after. As the newspaper account noted the next day, when the tragic accident occurred, “He was wearing a bridle of Red and Blue, the Mustang colors.”

Peruna had been the football team’s mascot for only two years, but he was an immensely popular attraction, and he was treated as something of a celebrity wherever he appeared, both at home and when traveling with the football team and the Mustang band. He did things most horses didn’t do, like ride in taxi cabs and sashay though hotel lobbies. Crowds at football games loved watching the little horse race across the field — even the ardent supporters of the opposing teams were charmed by him. And he was, of course, much loved at SMU; his death was a hard blow to the student body.

When he was buried at Ownby Stadium, the band played the usually rousing fight song as a mournful dirge, and the flags on campus flew at half mast.

I’m an animal lover, and stories about the demise of animals are not things I normally find entertaining, especially when phrases like “the midget pony,” “the wee mascot,” “the stout-hearted little mascot,” and “the midget wonder horse” are constantly (and effectively) used by journalists to tug at the readers’ heart-strings. But the Peruna obituary/funeral coverage that was printed in The Dallas Morning News is so wonderfully and ridiculously over-the-top that that one yearns to know who wrote the uncredited story. I have created a little scenario in my head in which the writer had been (and I apologize…) “saddled” with writing a story about a horse’s funeral, but instead of handing it in the pedestrian short-and-vaguely-moving report that was expected, he decided — to hell with it — that he would just go full-throttle and produce the most outrageously grief-stricken story ever written about the untimely death of a college mascot. After what one assumes was the downing of much whiskey and much chuckling to himself (I suspect this was written by a sportswriter), a 500-word obit ran on Nov. 1, 1934:

CO-EDS AND GRID STARS SOB AS PERUNA IS BURIED
(The Dallas Morning News, Nov. 1, 1934)

In sight of the very gridiron on which he pranced to lasting fame, Peruna, stout-hearted little mascot of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, was laid to rest Wednesday afternoon.

As co-eds sobbed openly and hardened football heroes found difficulty in brushing back the tears, the body of the diminutive pony was lowered into its grave in the shadow of Ownby Oval. His coffin was draped in red and blue, the school colors, and a huge M, the Mustang emblem, graced the top of the casket.

Across the way, on the campus of the big university itself, the flag fluttered at half mast. The school band, looking noticeably bare without Peruna prancing about, playing “Peruna,” the varsity song, in the tempo of a dirge. Hundreds of heads were bowed when the strains of the alma mater, “Varsity,” offered a final tribute to the wee mascot.

Peruna’s career was as colorful as that of the team he represented. Given to the school in November, 1932, by T. R. Jones, loyal Mustang supporter, the midget horse immediately became the constant companion of the team on its journeys from one side of the continent to the other.

Only last week Peruna was feted in New York, parading through the lobbies of the city’s swankiest hotels, whose clerks sniff haughtily at the thought of a dog or a cat entering the sacred portals of their hostelries….

In was in Shreveport where he slipped and cut his leg as he started to Centenary Stadium in a taxicab. His wound was stitched, and the faithful little animal pranced proudly with the band during the between-halves parade.

But Peruna prances no more. And if the music of Bob Goodrich and his Mustang band at Austin Saturday fails by a scant margin of being at its peppiest, it will be because the band has dedicated every tune on that day to the memory of its best friend.

That must have been fun to write.

The year following Peruna’s demise, the Rotunda — SMU’s yearbook — featured a two-page illustrated spread “Dedicated to the famous Mascot of the Mustangs … ‘Peruna.'”

See Peruna’s very, very sweet memorial statue on the SMU campus here.

The loss of Peruna left the Mustangs without a mascot. Peruna’s son was proffered as a replacement, but even though “Little Peruna had been dressed in its father’s blanket and was prepared to give its all for SMU,” the school declined to bring Peruna fils on board. A successor — Peruna II — was eventually appointed, the first of many over the past eighty years. We’re now up to, I believe, Peruna IX, and the little stallion is still as popular as ever. May the “stout-hearted little mascot” continue to prance proudly for the SMU Mustangs.

peruna_smu-rotunda_1939 1939 Peruna (SMU Rotunda)

peruna_varsity-shop_cully-culwell_culwell-ranch_1960-SMU-rotunda 1960 Peruna (SMU Rotunda)

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Sources & Notes

Top photo from the 1933 SMU yearbook, The Rotunda. The two-page spread is from the 1935 Rotunda.

For an idea of what the area looked like at the time of Peruna’s terrible midnight accident — large open fields to the north and east of the campus, and, to the south, a probably dimly-lit Mockingbird Lane — here is a detail from a 1930 aerial map from the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library at Southern Methodist University (the full map can be seen here):

(click for larger image)

Check out these articles in the Dallas Morning News archives:

“Car Kills Peruna Back From Victory Over New Yorkers; SMU Mascot Known To Over Half Nation, Dies With Bridle On” (DMN, Oct. 31, 1934)
“Co-Eds and Grid Stars Sob As Peruna Is Buried” (DMN, Nov. 1, 1934)
“Grieving Mustangs Won’t Take Son of Peruna for Mascot” (DMN, Nov. 11, 1934)

Peruna on Wikipedia, here.

If you really want to know about Peruna, though, you need to go to the horse’s mouth — his page on the SMU website, here.

Read about the Peruna monument by Dallas artist Michael G. Owen, Jr. which was dedicated on the SMU campus in 1937, here.

5 Comments

November 27, 2014

The Dallas Cowboys’ Horrible Inaugural Year — 1960

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:

Head coach: Tom Landry.
Home field: Cotton Bowl.
Results: 0 wins, 11 losses, 1 tie.
They were ranked last in the Western Conference.
They had the worst record of any team in the NFL that season.

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.

***

Yep, Wikipedia. Read it and weep, sports fans.

3 Comments

November 24, 2014

David Wade, Gourmet: Have Ascot, Will Travel

david-wade_dining-with_cover

by Paula Bosse

A few years ago, when I was a bookseller, I posted the following on a personal blog — it turned out to be the most commented-on and most clicked-on post I’d ever written. I wrote it a bit snarky, but I was amazed by the response it elicited: people (both in Texas and beyond) apparently have a strong affection for — and a seemingly deeply personal attachment to — local TV gourmand David Wade. Here’s what I wrote.

I just received an order for a David Wade cookbook I’ve had listed for four years:

DAVID WADE’S KITCHEN CLASSICS (Dallas: David Wade Industries, 1969). 300pp. Photographs, index. The ascot-clad TV gourmet presents recipes as well as photos of himself with celebrities such as Mickey Mantle (page 99, opposite the recipe for Crabmeat Tetrazzini). A couple of small splotches to fore-edge; one rubbed spot on cover. No dust jacket. Inscribed by Wade. $12.50

I don’t know if people outside of Texas (and maybe outside of Dallas) would be familiar with David Wade, described, tellingly, not as a “chef” but as a “food demonstrator.” He had a local TV show that must have started in the ’50s or ’60s, but I saw him in the ’70s and into the ’80s. And, yes, he DID wear an ascot, and a blazer, as seen above, from the front cover of another cookbook from the David Wade oeuvre.

He had a catchy theme song (which compared him to Rembrandt and Edison) and he had his very own coat of arms, which I have vivid, rather frightening memories of from my childhood (I always imagined that poor pig being whacked over the head with the rolling pin and then hacked apart by the cleaver — Bon Appetit, little piggie!):

david-wade-show_logo

I was just a kid, but I remember cringing a bit at his deep-voiced cheesiness. I don’t actually remember much about the food or the actual program, but I can still hear that unnaturally calm, deep voice oozing around inside my head. But what did I know? He was an incredibly popular local TV personality. Yeah, he might have used an over-abundance of big words (…words like “over-abundance”), but, to be fair, he also had a folksy charm and was pleasantly inoffensive.

I’m not sure the same can be said for his food, however. Here are a few of the recipes which some lucky lady in South Carolina who bought the cookbook might be whipping up in a few days:

Squash Loaf
Citrus Surprise Steak
Liver Yucatan (featuring grated American cheese (can you actually grate American cheese?), macaroni, canned mushrooms, and sugar)
Baked Stuffed Fish with Pecan Grape Sauce
Deep Sea Loaf (made with canned tuna, gelatin, sweet pickle juice, avocado, and three tablespoons of sugar … among other equally distressing ingredients)
Salmon & Green Olive Casserole (with cream and “salmon liquid” straight from the can)
Apple & Banana Soup (these are the ingredients: chicken stock, apple, banana, potato, onion, cream, curry powder, chives)
Kidney Bean Tuna Salad
Meat Loaf Pizza
Pineapple Mint Cake
Quick Clove Jelly Cake
Sahib Eight Boy Chicken Curry (…I have no idea…)
Yam Peanut Puffs

Bon Appetit!

After I wrote that post, I was inundated by people looking for information on where to find all sorts of much-loved David Wade recipes (especially his famed “Turkey in a Sack”) and where they could find his apparently quite popular Worcestershire Powder. There were also many, many comments from people who just wanted to share personal memories of David Wade, invariably describing him as a warm and gracious, down-to-earth, gentle man. “Classy, but not pretentious.”

Wade began his TV career in Dallas at WFAA in 1949, hosting a 15-minute show about dogs (?!) called “Canine Comments” — it became so popular that it was syndicated around the country. He won awards for that show. It was VERY popular. In 1952, Wade was also appearing on WFAA radio as “The Hymn Singer,” singing religious songs and talking about each song’s history and composer. Along the line he made the switch to food.

He was “demonstrating” food preparation at personal appearances and on local television by 1957, and in the early 1960s he became a nationally known figure when he commuted to New York from Dallas to tape regular spots for a show called “Flair” in which he frequently appeared with celebrities, guiding them through the preparation of a dish.

With Gregory Peck, 1960s

Eventually, his Dallas-based TV shows were syndicated all over the U.S., and he was so popular locally that he decided to run for mayor in 1971 (he lost to Wes Wise). He continued in his role as a cooking instructor and media figure until his retirement.

David Wade, a much-beloved man who lived and worked in Dallas for the bulk of his career — died in Tyler in March of 2001 at the age of 77. He had been a fixture on Texas television and had published numerous cookbooks. And in between rhapsodizing on good food and wine, he even taught untold thousands how to cook fish in the dishwasher and how to roast a turkey in a paper sack.

***

Sources & Notes

David Wade’s obituary is here.

A warm and fuzzy nostalgic look back at Wade can be read at CraveDFW, here; a super-snarky (and kind of amusing) LA Weekly post critiquing Wade’s recipes can be read here.

Regarding Wade’s run for Mayor of Dallas, check out the Dallas Morning News interview with him conducted by Carolyn Barta, in which he expounds on his vision for the future of Dallas, in the article “Wade Feels Need to Communicate” (March 21, 1971).

Next: The little-known devastating and traumatic childhood event that resulted in David Wade becoming an orphan at the age of 5. Read “David Wade: Overcoming Childhood Trauma” here.

11 Comments

November 16, 2014

Babe Didrikson, Oak Cliff Typist

Babe Didrikson at a desk she was probably pretty unfamiliar with, 1932

by Paula Bosse

Mildred “Babe” Didrikson has been called the greatest athlete of the 20th century — male or female. She was an All-American basketball player, she set a number of world records in a wide variety of track and field events (she was so good at all of the individual sports that she was entered at least once as an entire TEAM — a team of one!), she won two gold medals and one silver (which should have been three gold medals…) at the 1932 Olympics, and she was, perhaps most famously, a champion golfer who was a founder of the LPGA. She was also highly proficient in softball, bowling, diving, swimming, roller skating, and tennis, and she dabbled in hockey, skeet-shooting, billiards, and even football. There was no sport she didn’t try — and even if she had never tried it before, she was probably pretty good at it. And she spent an important period of her life in Dallas.

1931

Babe Didrikson was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1911 and grew up in nearby Beaumont. She excelled in sports in school, especially basketball. In the late-’20s, a man named Col. M. J. McCombs, who was the head of the women’s athletic program for an insurance company, saw Babe in action and recruited her to play for his company’s basketball team in Dallas. She was offered a job to do vague secretarial work for the Employers’ Casualty Company (which had offices in the old Interurban Building downtown), with the understanding that she was really being taken on in order to play on the company team. With the blessing of her Norwegian immigrant parents, she interrupted her high school education in Beaumont to accept the $75-a-month job and was moved into a Haines Avenue rooming house in Oak Cliff.

Babe soon became the star of the Golden Cyclones, her company’s championship-winning team which participated in an “industrial” league governed by the national Amateur Athletic Union (the AAU). In the off-season she was introduced to track and field events by McCombs, and she quickly mastered them all.

babe_emp-cas-co Flying the company colors

She soon began breaking world records. Watch her compete at an AAU meet at SMU in July 1930, where one of the records she broke was for the javelin throw, here.

didrikson-babe_070730_track-meet_SMU_javelin_critical-past_screenshot-crop July 1930, Dallas

Before she knew it, it was the summer of 1932, and the Olympics were being held in Los Angeles — the 21-year old won three medals, emerged as the star of the games (she was frequently referred to as “the wonder girl from Dallas”) and began her climb up the ladder of celebrity.

After the Olympics, the city of Dallas gave her a victory homecoming, with a parade, a luncheon, and various presentations, all covered widely in the local press. The Dallas Morning News described it as “a demonstration the magnitude of which has never before been accorded a son or daughter of this city” (DMN, Aug. 12, 1932), bigger even, they said, than the reception that had greeted Charles Lindbergh on his Dallas visit.

Babe’s post-Olympics parade through downtown Dallas — Aug. 11, 1932

After the celebrations had settled down, Babe Didrikson, sports superstar, was back at “work” — at least long enough to have photographs of her taken at the most uncluttered desk imaginable. (Though to be fair, Babe did claim to have been a typing champion in high school. Even if that were true — and she was known to be something of an exaggerator — it’s still almost impossible to imagine this world champion athlete typing up an afternoon’s dictation on insurance matters.)

babe_insurance Employers’ Casualty Co.’s casual employee — Oct. 21, 1932

Babe eventually turned pro, left Dallas, married wrestler George Zaharias, and became an incredibly successful golfer. She died from cancer in 1956 at the early age of 45, but her legacy lives on as one of the greatest and most versatile athletes of all time (…who, for a few short years, also happened to do a bit of light secretarial work for an insurance company in Dallas).

Below are a few of my favorite random Babe-related tidbits.

babe_hat_dmn_071232 1932

Babe was often ridiculed by male sportswriters for her bearing and physique, which they thought were not feminine enough for their tastes. This criticism — ridiculous though it was — must have stung, because she occasionally made efforts to placate them, some of which seemed very awkward, such as this. The caption of the above photo: “Mildred (Babe) Didrikson (left) and her chaperon, Mrs. Henry Wood, are pictured above as they appeared Monday afternoon just before boarding a train for Chicago, Ill. for the national AAU track and field championships in which Babe […] hopes to carry off high honors and win a berth on the American Olympic team. This is the first picture ever taken of Babe with a hat on. She has never worn one before.”

Aug. 11, 1932

Aug. 11, 1932 — ad inset

Above, an ad taken out by the Dallas company Babe worked for, welcoming her back home from her Olympic triumph. Drawing by Jack Patton. (Even though Babe had buckled to pressure with the whole hat thing, I can’t quite picture her wearing gloves.)

babe-and-babe_081247

Babe and the other Babe, August 12, 1947. I love this photo.

babe_vanity-fair_1933

Fantastic photo of Babe in her prime by Lusha Nelson, from the January, 1933 issue of Vanity Fair.

***

Sources & Notes

The two photos of Babe Didrikson at her desk, the photo of the parade in Dallas, and the photo with Babe Ruth are from the huge selection of photographs of Babe at CorbisImages. See a lot of photos of her throughout her career, here. The photos of her training and in action are exhilarating, but it’s nice seeing her looking so happy and relaxed in her later golfing days. She definitely smiled a lot more after she started making more than the measly $75 a month she was making in Dallas.

An interesting article from 1975 about Babe in which former co-workers and teammates from Employers Casualty remembered their time with her can be found in the Dallas News archives: “Friends Recall Babe’s Prowess” by Temple Pouncey (DMN, Oct. 26, 1975).

For more on Babe’s time in Dallas and Oak Cliff, she writes about it in her autobiography, This Life I’ve Led (1955), here. (The entire book can be read for free at the link.) Also, check out this article by Gayla Brooks that appeared in the Oak Cliff Advocate.

A really well done, comprehensive overview of Babe Didrikson Zaharias’ career (with lots of great photos), can be found at Pop History Dig, here.

One of my favorite weird Babe things is the record she made with her “golf protege” Betty Dodd. Betty sings (not very well) and is accompanied by Babe on harmonica, an instrument she loved all of her life and which she taught herself to play as a child. The song — and a bit of backstory on Babe and Betty’s relationship — is here (click the arrow at the left of the strip beneath the record label to hear the song “I Felt a Little Teardrop”). Babe’s solo starts at about the 1:06 mark.

And, lastly, newsreel footage of Babe over the years, from the early track meets and the Olympics, to her later career as a golf superstar can be watched here and here.

15 Comments

November 14, 2014

Theater Row Block Party! — 1948

Dallas premiere, “Red River” — Aug. 26, 1948 (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

On a rainy night in August, 1948, United Artists premiered the movie “Red River” in Dallas at the Majestic Theatre. The now-classic Western about a Chisholm Trail cattle drive, directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne and newcomer Montgomery Clift, was actually “premiered” simultaneously on August 26, 1948 in 250 theaters in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, the four southwestern states most closely associated with the Chisholm Trail.

(Aug. 26, 1948)

In Dallas, the publicity machine was seriously cranked up. The main attraction was a free-to-the-public street party in which the 1900 block of Elm Street was closed to traffic for a slate of western-themed festivities. The “jamboree” included square dancing, a musical set by cowboy singer Jim Boyd and his band, “cowboys and cowgirls from the Pleasant Mound Rodeo,” the Dallas Mounted Quadrille, and the Sheriff’s Posse. Or, as the ad said more succinctly, “Cowboys! Horses! Lights! Music!”

Great ad! Click to see it bigger! (Aug. 26, 1948)

No Hollywood celebrities were there, but the big Western Jamboree was apparently well-attended, even in the rain and despite rain, people gathered for square dancing.

(Wow. Square dancing in the rain. That’s dedication.)

The movie was a huge hit, so much so that the Majestic added showings, including one at 9:30 in the morning (!). It had a record week in Dallas, and, nationally, by the end of that first week it was reported to be the biggest-grossing picture in the history of United Artists.

The “world premiere” is interesting and all, but that photo of a brightly lit-up Theater Row is even better!

***

Sources & Notes

The original source of the photograph is not known, but I stumbled across it on a Preservation Dallas page, here.

“Red River” is a great movie. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. Even if you think you don’t like Westerns. Roger Ebert’s review/analysis is here.

2 Comments

November 3, 2014

Dallas’ Ford Dealerships in the 1920s: Authorized for Your Protection

Authorized Ford dealers, 1922

by Paula Bosse

Dallas has always been a big car town, getting its first look at a “horseless carriage” way back in 1899 when E.H.R. Green sped into town at 15 m.p.h. and startled the citizenry. By 1903, The Dallas Morning News was bragging that Dallas had more privately owned cars than any other city its size in the South (“over 40”). By 1909, the Ford Motor Company had a Model T service center in the city, and in 1914, Ford opened an important regional assembly plant downtown (which later moved to more spacious digs on East Grand).

For many years, there were six — and only six — authorized Ford dealers in town. In several ads of the period, “automobilists” were stringently warned to avoid “bogus” agents offering counterfeit Ford parts. (Accept no knock-offs!) Below, the six authorized Ford dealers operating in Dallas in the 1920s. (All photos are larger when clicked.)

Above, Fishburn Motor Company, 101 N. Houston St. Long gone, Dealey Plaza now occupies this site. Behind the building, at the right, is the Southern Rock Island Plow Company building, better known today as the School Book Depository.

The Flippen Auto Company, 1917 Ross Ave. The building took up part of the block now occupied by the Dallas Museum of Art.

Lamberth Motor Company, 3800 Main St. This building, not far from Fair Park, is at Main and S. Washington and later became part of the Fritos factory. With the building’s renovations over the years, it’s a little difficult to tell, but I think this building is still standing (and is the only one of these six buildings that has survived). To see what this building has looked like over the years, see my previous post, “3800 Main: Fritos Central,” here.

The John E. Morriss Company, 132 North Lancaster Ave., Oak Cliff. I’m not positive, but I think this may have been where Hector P. Garcia Middle School now stands.

Rose-Wilson Company, 1218 South Ervay St. In the Cedars, one block north of the Ambassador Hotel.

J. H. Shelton & Company, 2311 Main St., at the very edge of Deep Ellum. The buildings seen here were right about where Central Expressway crosses over Main.

ford-logo_1922 1922

10 Comments

October 31, 2014

Halloween Isn’t Only About the Candy

halloween_e-m-kahn_dmn_102525 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!

halloween_reynolds-penland_dmn_102729 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

3 Comments

October 29, 2014

Simulcasting the World Series In Dallas In the Days Before Radio, Via Telegraph

The later version, for radio listeners, 1922…

by Paula Bosse

It’s 1912. You’re a huge baseball fan, and the World Series is about to begin — New York vs. Boston! But you live in Dallas, a million miles away from the action. You can’t wait for the results in the paper the next day because you’re an impatient S.O.B., and radio won’t be introduced for another ten years. Do you panic? No! Because you live in a big city with a taste for new technology, and the Dallas Opera House is going to present a sort of early simulcast of the games on a “mammoth automatic score board.” Your sports prayers have been answered!

DMN, Oct. 6, 1912

You lean back in your comfy theater seat and smoke your smokes in plush and civilized surroundings as each play is sent by telegraph to Dallas from the ballpark back East where the game is being played RIGHT NOW, hundreds of miles away. The telegraph operator in Dallas will relay the play-by-play information to personnel in the theater who will somehow do something to some sort of “automatic electric board.” And, according to promoters of these “reproductions” of baseball games, you’ll feel like you’re right there in the thick of the action. You’ll “see” the game played before your eyes!

I’ve read several articles about these boards and these reproductions, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how it worked. I assume there was a large traditional scoreboard on stage that lit up, keeping track of the score, runs, outs, etc. But apparently there’s more, and I just can’t picture it. Here’s a somewhat confusing description of what happened during these productions:

WORLD SERIES WILL BE SHOWN AT THE OLD MILL

Manager Buddy Stewart of the Old Mill Theater announced that he secured the New Wonder Marvel Baseball Player Board to reproduce the World Series baseball games. This board is declared the greatest board ever invented for reproducing baseball games. It is not a mechanical board and no mechanical devices are used, and very little electrical appliances are necessary. The games are reproduced by a crew of six experienced baseball players who are carefully rehearsed and each has a part or position to play. No other board is so complete as this. The board does not require sign cards to denote players as in other boards. You see the ball going and do not have to look in any other direction to see what it means.

Spectators will see each play reproduced in less than two minutes after it is made on the playing fields of the World Series as the board is connected with a direct wire to the baseball field, and as fast as the telegraph operator receives the play it is reproduced with as much realism as on the field. The players are seen to run bases, the ball is seen bouncing or soaring to the infield or outfield, and anyone who is familiar with baseball will know just exactly what is happening on the field by the plays made on the board with very little left for imagination.

Every hit, run, error, strike or ball, the number of strikeouts, or balls made by pitchers, or the number of hits, runs or errors made by the players is always prominently shown on the board which makes it [un]necessary for individual scoring during the progress of the game. (DMN, Oct. 3, 1920)

Doesn’t really help much. It sounds as if people are on the stage acting out each play. That would be weird. These “reproductions” of World Series games were quite popular in Texas (and probably elsewhere) for at least 15 years. If anyone reading this has a photo or diagram of one of these vaunted Marvel scoreboards, I’d love to see it!

An earlier description of the 1912 Opera House reproduction sounds more like an audience watching a baseball game on a giant Lite-Brite “score board.”

DMN, Oct. 8, 1912

The trick to keeping the telegraph operators calm and on-their-toes during a lengthy baseball game? Make sure they have no interest in the game.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 14, 1915

Fort Worth was also getting in on the action. And they had celebrities — people like Clarence (Big Boy) Kraft and Ziggy Sears (who I’m going to assume have something to do with baseball). I’m not sure what these celebrities were doing exactly, but whatever it was, they were there doing it.

FWST, Oct. 2, 1921

These theater programs weren’t for everyone, though. If you couldn’t take the time out of a busy work day to swan over to a theater to leisurely witness one of the early “reproductions” (or if the admission price was too steep for your budget), you could always ring up the operator to have her tell you the current score:

automatic_dmn_101112-world-series
DMN, Oct. 11, 1912

These things seemed to be a popular annual event, but in 1922, something more technologically advanced than the Marvel board appeared on the scene: radio! WFAA and WBAP began broadcasting in 1922, and, suddenly, following sports became a whole lot easier. In something of a transitional technology, there was the outdoor board as described below. The games were not only broadcast live on WFAA, but The Dallas Morning News (WFAA’s parent company) also erected one of those old-fangled “electric boards” out on the street so that passersby could keep up with the scores. (Portable transistor radios were decades and decades away.)

DMN, Oct. 10, 1923

It was surprising to see that the “Marvel score boards” were still being used as late as 1926 (Yankees vs. Cardinals, at the Capitol Theater). Every baseball fan worth his salt should have had his own radio by then so he could listen to the World Series in the comfort of his own home and curse and cheer as loudly as the vicissitudes of the game demanded. Eat my dust, Marvel board! Radio changed everything, and radio was here to stay.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin’s link in the comments below, I can share this GREAT article from Uni-Watch.com about another of these boards called the Play-o-Graph: “Photography of Playography“ by Paul Lukas — it answers all my questions, and it even has photos (and links to photos) of crowds watching the boards. He also links to a 1912 article, “The Automatic Baseball Playograph” by J. Hunt, in the Yale Scientific Monthly which describes how the board works and has this photo:

The “Play-o-Graph,” 1912 (click for larger image)

And, for completists, here’s an ad for the Play-O-Graph, from 1913:

Billboard, Mar. 22, 1913

Makes a bit more sense now! Thanks, Kevin!

***

Sources & Notes

The top image is the “G.E. Radio Baseball Player Board” — a sort of home version of the big scoreboards used in theaters, printed for WFAA listeners in The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 4, 1922. The instructions are in a PDF, here. And feel free to print one out and use it while you watch the Series this year. Still works in the 21st century!

For an article on listener response to the successful first broadcast of the World Series by WFAA radio (listeners picked up the signal in England!), see the DMN article from Oct. 6, 1922 in a PDF, here.

And because they have such great names, you might want to know who Clarence “Big Boy” Kraft and Ziggy Sears were. If you’ve read this far, you owe it to yourself. “Big Boy,” here; Ziggy, here.

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