Flashback : Dallas

All hail the Highland Park Cafeteria…

by Paula Bosse

2023 is over! Years end, people put things in lists. Like this! These are the most popular posts of the past year, as determined by page views, clicks, likes, shares, and comments. There are a couple of surprises, and fully half of the top 10 are food/drink-related. As always, thank you for spending some of your time stopping by Flashback Dallas, and I wish everyone a Happy 2024!

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These are the most-read (or at least most looked-at!) Flashback Dallas posts of 2023, starting with the most popular. To see each full post, click on the title; to see larger images of the thumbnails, click on the picture.

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1.  “HIGHLAND PARK CAFETERIA AND THE KNOX STREET BUSINESS DISTRICT”  (August)

I know people loved the Highland Park Cafeteria, but I was pretty surprised by the sheer number of hits this post got and continues to get. There’s not much to it, really — a photo and a map. It’s hard to believe the HPC powers-that-be could just let a place as popular as this close down. Perhaps it will rise again one day.

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2.  “AUNT STELLE’S SNO CONE”  (September)

I knew this would be a popular post, even though I had never heard of Aunt Stelle or her sno cones. I became aware of this Oak Cliff institution only after having seen several ads for it in Sunset High School yearbooks. I enjoyed reading people’s memories of the place on the Flashback Dallas Facebook page (where it received an unbelievable number of likes, comments, and shares). Oak Cliff people are pretty hardcore.

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3.  “EX-SLAVES IN DALLAS — 1937”  (June)

This is perhaps the biggest surprise on this list. The photographs and oral histories of Dallas residents who had lived some of their lives as enslaved people (not necessarily in Texas) was part of a WPA project. When I grew up, it never entered my mind that there had been slaves in Dallas — either people living as slaves in Dallas during the time of slavery, or people who had been slaves living in Dallas up through the 1940s and 1950s. One of the most sobering posts I’ve ever written is a collection of ads about slaves in Dallas from the 1850s and 1860s — it’s linked at the bottom of this post.

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4.  “DR PEPPER BOTTLING PLANT, SECOND AVE. & HICKORY — ca. 1938”  (August)

Before it relocated to its beautiful Art Deco headquarters on Mockingbird, Dr Pepper’s HQ was in a building that is still standing between Fair Park and Deep Ellum. See photos of what it looked like inside.

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5.  “GRITTY DALLAS — 1969”  (July)

Thank you, SMU theology students for making this odd little documentary featuring footage of parts of the city not often captured on film. I hope SMU has a cleaner, sharper copy of this film somewhere. It’s worth a watch (but keep that finger at the ready on the fast-forward button during the slower bits!).

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6.  “EL CHICO FOODS / CUELLAR FOODS”  (February)

Dallas loves its Tex-Mex. I had no idea the Cuellars had expanded so far into retail food manufacturing. My greatest discovery while researching this was that canned tortillas ever existed. They did. Think how much better we have things now, at least in matters tortilla-related.

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7.  “DALLAS FIRE STATIONS — 1951”  (May)

I loved this. So many photos! And several of these buildings are still standing. If there’s one thing Dallas loves as much as Oak Cliff and Tex-Mex, it’s firehouses.

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8.  “ST. MARK’S FROM THE AIR”  (April)

I love aerial photos of Dallas before choking sprawl clogged up everything. When these photos were taken in the early 1960s, there was still a lot of open land in areas that are now completely developed.

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9.  “OAK CLIFF SCHOOLS — 1916”  (December)

Oak Cliff, back again. A lot of the schools seen in this post are still around. For a lot of places, it’s not a big deal when buildings cross the century mark. But it is for Dallas. Dallas likes new, new, new! I always appreciate buildings that have somehow survived and feel like I should give them a little pep talk to encourage them to keep on keeping on.

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10.  “TEX-MEX IN A CAN (WITH BONUS CHILI-BURGER RECIPE) — 1953/1954”  (February)

You must read the excerpts from this recipe booklet which was prepared to teach customers not familiar with Tex-Mex what various dishes were. Mexican food was not as widely available in the 1950s as it is now. Adventurous people in non-Southwestern states buying a can of refried beans might have had no idea what to do with it (imagine seeing your first can of refried beans in, say, Minnesota). The recipe for the Chili Burger (tantalizingly, no beef patties are involved…) is worth the price of admission. I’m so glad this one squeaked into the year’s Top 10.

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UNSTOPPABLE: The most popular Flashback Dallas post ever is “BONNIE PARKER: ‘BURIED IN AN ICE-BLUE NEGLIGEE’ — 1934” (from April 2016). It’s actually the most popular post of 2023, but the Year-End Top 10 is for new posts only. Otherwise, just assume this will be the most popular post of every year.

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HONORABLE MENTION: A post I wrote back in 2018 had a sudden huge surge in hits this year: “‘DR. DANTE’ DODGES BULLETS IN DALLAS — 1970,” about a stage hypnotist who was also a conman and an ex-husband of Lana Turner. While in Dallas for a show, he claimed to have been shot at by Frank Sinatra’s “people.” This is one of my all-time favorite posts, but I couldn’t figure out why there was suddenly so much interest in it, seemingly out of nowhere. It wasn’t until a person commented and said she had found my post after listening to a new true-crime podcast, “Chameleon: Gallery of Lies, Dr. Dante.” There’s been a short documentary about Dante, but there really needs to be a full-length bio-pic. I’m sure someone’s working on it. (This post also ranked higher than any in the 2023 Top 10, but being almost 6 years old, it is out of the running for 2023 glory.)

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And, with that, the final post of 2023 can be laid to rest (in an ice-blue negligee). Thanks to everyone who stops by! Let’s all have a happy 2024!

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

If you would like to support me on Patreon, please check out my page here. I post exclusive short Dallas history posts there every day.

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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

Volleyball in suits and fedoras…

by Paula Bosse

2023 is finally pulling to a close. Personally, I’m happy to see it fade into the distance. 2023 is kind of a blur, filled with “challenges” (those “challenges” seem to increase every year!). But we’ve made it through. One of the highlights of this past year is creating a Patreon page. I appreciate the patrons who support me there — it’s been 9 months now, and I’m amazed that I’ve gotten into the habit of posting something there every day. The financial help has been something of a lifesaver! Thank you, patrons!

And thank you to everyone who reads posts here. I love reading about, writing about, and researching Dallas history. It’s hard to believe, but I will have been doing this for TEN SOLID YEARS come February. When I last checked, there were something like 1,400 posts here. That might be too many! I’ve loved every minute of it, and I look forward to 2024 and embarking on Year Eleven.

Below are some of my personal favorite posts of 2023. The first one is probably my favorite, and the rest are in chronological order. Click titles to see the original post.

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1.  “DAD’S DAY AT HOCKADAY — 1947”  (June)

Whenever I imagine living in another era, I seem to gravitate to the post-war 1940s. Always. And the photographs in this post really fan the flames of pure escapist, rose-colored-glasses nostalgia for a time I never lived in. The photos (by Cornell Capa) are from a LIFE magazine article about a day in which fathers spent time with their daughters at the Hockaday campus and escorted them to a fancy dinner that night at the Baker Hotel. I love all of the photos, including the wonderful ones above (on the Lower Greenville campus) and below (at the Baker Hotel).

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2.  “THE BULLEN STORE, EXPOSITION AVENUE — 1896-1936”  (January)

I really enjoyed looking into the history of this little (still-standing) building in Exposition Park, a too-often overlooked part of town.

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3.  “EL CHICO FOODS/CUELLAR FOODS”  and  “TEX-MEX IN A CAN (WITH BONUS CHILI-BURGER RECIPE) — 1953/1954”  (both posts from February)

I wrote these two posts at the same time. I knew about the El Chico frozen dinners of my childhood, but I never knew about the line of canned foods — and I certainly never knew about canned tortillas! This was a lot of fun to write. (And if you are an enterprising state-fair-food-developer, I highly encourage you to “borrow” the excellently weird “Chili Burger” (no burger patty involved!), the recipe of which is in the second post above.

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4.  “BLACK WOMEN’S EQUESTRIAN COMPANY K (AMERICAN WOODMEN) — 1920s”  (March)

A lot of what I write about is spurred by seeing a photo and wondering what it is I’m looking at. Like this one. Almost everything I wrote about in this post was new information to me. It was really interesting to write.

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5.  “MUHAMMAD ALI VISITS GRAHAM’S BARBER SHOP — ca. 1967”  (April)

While browsing through a 1967 Lincoln High School yearbook, I was surprised to stumble across an ad featuring a photo of Muhammad Ali sitting in a barber chair (below). It was so unexpected. I loved it! I looked into why he might have been in town and found an interesting story about an appearance he made at a mosque near Booker T. Washington High School on Easter Sunday (I later — somewhat serendipitously — came across photos of that appearance and included them in the post). So, basically, what I’m saying here is: always take the time to flip through the advertising pages in old high school yearbooks — there’s a lot of good stuff hiding there.

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6.  “TABLETOP JUKEBOXES — 1940”  (May)

I don’t even know how I came across these photos, but this was a topic I ended up learning about because I needed to pad out the post with more than just photos!

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7.  “LOVE FIELD AVIATION CAMP, WORLD WAR I”  (May)

I’m a sucker for photos of World War I-era Love Field. There are some great ones in this post.

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8.  “GRITTY DALLAS — 1969”  (July)

Who would expect to find cool footage of the “grittier” areas of Dallas in a film produced by students attending SMU’s Perkins School of Theology? I leave no stone unturned! I’m glad those theology students made this film, because it’s full of shots of Dallas you just don’t see on postcards.

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9.  “DR PEPPER BOTTLING PLANT, SECOND AVE. & HICKORY — ca. 1938”  (August)

Lots of photos from inside the DP bottling plant before it moved to the better-known location on Mockingbird. My favorite photo was the “sugar storage” room.

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10.  “SOME-CONTEXT CHANNEL 8 SCREENSHOTS: 1971”  (December)

I just wrote this a couple of days ago, but there are so many things in here that really make me laugh that I’m adding it to the “best of” list. 2023 (or even 1971) wasn’t a total loss! Below, Roger Staubach hard at work, training the low-tech way.

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Those are my Top 10 personal favorite posts for 2023. Coming next… the most popular (clicked, linked, shared, etc.) posts of the year. Stay tuned….

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists (as they’re posted) here.

See all Flashback Dallas Year-End lists — past and present — here.

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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.

And the winner is…

by Paula Bosse

Another year is coming to an end. Time for a list! I’ve looked back through this year’s posts and have picked my favorite images — photos, postcards, artwork, etc. They’re in no order, except for the one at the top, which is my tip-top fave of ’23. To see the posts these images originally appeared in, click the titles; image sources will be at the end of each post, under “Sources & Notes.” (All images are larger when clicked.)

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I love the postcard above. LOVE it. The night scene, which shows a “luminous fountain” in Fair Park, is from about 1912. It appeared in the post “Fair Park at Night — ca. 1912.”

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Below, a close runner-up is this fantastic color photo of the Elm-Ervay-Live Oak intersection, made exponentially better because of the presence of the completely unexpected billboard for the Colony Club, featuring stripper Chris Colt, “the girl with the 45s.” I try to avoid posting photos with watermarks — and this one has a big one! — but this is just such a great period snapshot of staid-and-conservative, edgy-and-naughty Dallas. From the post “Colony Club Billboard in Beautiful Kodachrome — Early 1960s.” (Somebody bought this color slide on eBay right after I posted this — I hope it was a Flashback Dallas reader!)

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One of the truly beautiful, instantly recognizable buildings in Dallas is the Mercantile. This Squire Haskins photo (which I’ve cropped) (sorry, Squire…) is pretty stunning. From the post “The Mercantile Bank Building — 1951.”

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Another landmark, the Old Red Courthouse, is seen in this photo when it was still the “New” Red Courthouse. This is very dreamlike. From the post “Courthouse in the Mist/Smoke/Murk — 1901.”

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Moving to Lower Greenville, this is the best aerial photo I’ve found showing the old Hockaday campus at Belmont and Greenville. Squire Haskins, the photographer, should be more well-known than he is. (There are more of his photos in this list than I realized! Thank you, UTA, for the incredible collection of his photos!) This was from the catch-all post “A Few Photo Additions to Past Posts — #21.”

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While we’re on Squire Haskins’ aerials, I was pretty excited to stumble across this early-1960s view of North Dallas around the St. Mark’s campus (it shows the wide-open land west of Preston Road at Royal Lane). From the post “St. Mark’s From the Air.”

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This early photo of Dallas Hall at SMU is great. From the post “Dallas Hall, The Early Days.”

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I saw this photo in a WFAA/WBAP/KGKO booklet 10 or 15 years, and I’ve loved it ever since. Every time I see it, it makes me smile. I think I love it even more now than the first time I saw it. I finally used it in a post this year, in “Uncle Scooter Reads the Funnies: 1940-41.”

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Okay. How did anyone think a stagecoach ride at Six Flags was a good idea? (Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to ride it myself….) From the post “The Stagecoach Ride at Six Flags: 1961-1967” (you can probably guess the reason it was discontinued).

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Who doesn’t love a good carnival sideshow banner? Perhaps the apex of advertising. 73 years later, I kinda want to see what was inside that State Fair midway tent. From the post “The ‘Shadow’ Flashback.”

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This one isn’t a great photograph, per se, but it shows something I’ve never seen: the Jefferson Theater (1517 Elm, between Akard & Stone) with this odd (temporary?) facade. From the post “A Few Photo Additions to Past Posts — #19.”

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Feast your eyes on “Pig Stand No. 2, Oak Cliff” — 1301 N. Zang, taken about 1928. This might be the first people-in-a-rumble-seat photo I’ve ever posted!

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I can’t tell you exactly why I love this photo of a cafe at McKinney & Lamar so much. But I do. From the post “Crescent Cafe: Warehouse District — 1944-1952.”

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One of my favorite photos of a restaurant interior is this one: the Copper Cow, at 1519 Commerce, from about 1960. Wow. From the post “The ‘Other’ Flashback Dallas….”

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This photo of the training camp at Love Field is great — and so are the others in the post “Love Field Aviation Camp, World War I.”

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I could look at old photos of downtown Dallas all day long. And I have. This one, by Frank Rogers (another ace local photographer that every self-respecting student of Dallas history should know!) shows a lively street scene in the “1500 Block of Elm — 1920s” (click the link to see a second photo by Rogers which shows the next part of the block).

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This photo of the Majestic Theatre under construction is wonderful. From the post “Flashback Dallas Side Hustle.”

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I haven’t posted a lot of advertisements this year, which is a shame, because I love ads, especially those that feature historic photos you might not find anyplace else. Like this one. It is an ad for a paving material company, but it features a photo I’ve never seen showing St. Mary’s College in East Dallas at Garrett & Ross. From the ad-packed post “Ads, Ads, Ads, Ads, and a Few More Ads — 1916.”

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I love finding a photo of a somewhat non-descript building and diving in to learn about its history. It’s even better when you find that the really-old-for-Dallas building is still standing. Like this one, which is made even more interesting because it’s in Exposition Park, an area I’m fascinated with, partly because it has been overshadowed by its sexier neighbors, Deep Ellum and Fair Park. So… great photo. Check the post “The Bullen Store, Exposition Avenue — 1896-1936” to see what this building looks like now (I haven’t been to Expo Park recently — I hope it’s still there!).

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And, finally, last but not least, art! I have posted so little art this year. I need to rectify that in 2024. I suppose art is my real passion, and Dallas has produced some wonderful artists. One of the best-known Dallas artists is Jerry Bywaters. I found this undated Bywaters watercolor while I was looking for something unrelated. It shows the old Farmers Branch depot. I love this. From “Jerry Bywaters: A Quick Trip to Farmers Branch.”

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And there they are, my top 20 favorite images of 2023!

Coming soon: my personal favorite posts and the most popular posts of the year. Check back!

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Sources & Notes

See all three 2023 Year-End “best of” lists (as they’re posted) here.

See all Flashback Dallas “Year-End” lists — past and present — here.

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Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.