by Paula Bosse
Cattle at rest, by Dallas artist Frank Reaugh.
*
“Twilight…Rest” by Frank Reaugh (1860-1945). Pastel on cardboard; undated.
From the Frank Reaugh Art Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas; painting and info can be viewed here.
Handbook of Texas entry on Frank Reaugh (a Dallas resident for most of his life) is here.
Click picture for larger image.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Commerce St. looking east from about Akard
by Paula Bosse
In the winter of 1895-1896, a St. Louis photographer named Henry Stark traveled to Texas, photographing scenes and vistas across the state. According to The Handbook of Texas, he is believed to be “the first photographer to have made an extensive photographic record of Texas.” A collection of his photos was published under the title Views in Texas.
The photograph above shows Commerce Street looking east, with the post office and its tall clock tower dominating the scene (the clock shows that it is 9:35 in the morning). The Old Post Office was bounded by Main, Ervay, Commerce, and St. Paul.
This is a great photo, showing Dallas as I’ve never seen it before. I’ve zoomed in to see the “hidden” details. (All photos are larger when clicked.)
What is the building on the left? It’s very unusual-looking. (UPDATE: See the comments below. This appears to be the adjoining Bookhout and Middleton Buildings at Ervay and Main.)
This is my favorite detail. All that trash. And vacant lots. And a haphazard, meandering fence. Are those steps leading to rear entrances of buildings facing Main? And those utility poles! That block looks kind of squalid. Not Dallas at its best. I think this would be around Akard. (UPDATE: A reader wrote to say that this looks like a “ravine” — that the fence may be following the course of an old stream — something that might explain why that area of prime real estate hadn’t been developed yet.)
Houses just a few steps from the giant post office building. Horse-drawn buggies parked at the curb. People on the sidewalk. What looks like a man with his hands on his hips looking down at a child. Or maybe a dog.
A bustling Commerce Street at the intersection of Ervay, with trollies in the distance.
*
This photograph shows almost exactly the same view as one I posted earlier under the title “Something Like N.Y.” — check out the 1904 version here.
***
The photograph, by Henry Stark, is from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. The resolution is a bit grainy when trying to enlarge the details — to explore the photo for yourself, see it here.
What little is known of Henry Stark can be read in the brief Handbook of Texas bio, here.
For another Henry Stark photo, see the post “Oak Cliff Trolley — 1895,” here.
For other examples of photographs I’ve zoomed in on to reveal unintended vignettes, see here.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
An RFD mail carrier… (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
The man in the photo below looks like every character actor working in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s.
But he wasn’t an actor — he was a retired Dallas postal worker who began his career in 1901 as a rural mail carrier when the Rural Free Delivery (RFD) system was implemented in Dallas. (Before this, those who lived beyond the city limits — generally farmers — had to trek to a sometimes distant outpost — such as a general store — to pick up their mail.) RFD service began locally on October 1, 1901, and an 18-year old Jim Conner was one of six men hired to work the new mail routes beyond the city.
Fort Worth Register, Sept. 1, 1901
When Rural Free Delivery service began in Dallas, four rural post offices were closed: Lisbon, Wheatland, Five Mile, and Rawlins (the office at Bachman’s Branch, which Jim Conner’s route replaced).
In a 1940 interview with The Dallas Morning News, Conner talked about his early postal route (Route 5), which was 32 miles long; before the arrival of automobiles, he traveled on horseback, by horse cart, by buggy and cart, or by bicycle. The photo at the top shows what early RFD mail wagons looked like.
Jim’s route took him well beyond the city limits: out Cedar Springs to Cochran’s Chapel, to within a mile of Farmers Branch, and over to Webb’s Chapel by way of the “famous” Midway Church and School corner (which became Glad Acres Farm); he returned on Lemmon Avenue. It took him 8 hours if the weather was nice; if the weather was particularly bad, it could take 12 to 15 hours to complete his appointed rounds. He was paid $500 a year and was required to keep two horses, a cart, a buggy, and saddles. He retired in 1935.
**
So. A delightfully nostalgic walk down memory lane with an avuncular-looking guy we all kind of feel we know. I thought I’d do a quick search to see if there was an obituary for Jim — there was: he died in 1956 at the age of 73, survived by his wife, 11 children (!), 22 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren. But in addition to the obit, I found something else: a report of a shooting, an arrest, and a charge with “assault to murder.”
DMN, Jan. 2, 1918
What?!!
Though the account of the incident is described as being “somewhat vague,” on New Year’s Eve, 1918, Jim Conner shot a soldier named Jesse Clay after “words” were exchanged at the corner of Beacon and Columbia in Old East Dallas. There had been bad blood between the two in the past, and the New Year’s Eve situation apparently escalated quickly. Clay had been walking down the street with a lady-friend when Conner’s car came to a stop next to them. Clay (described as being drunk at the time) forced his way into the car, and Conner, fearful of being attacked, reached for a gun in the back seat. The two tussled and, after they were both out of the car, Conner saw that Clay also had a gun. This was when Conner shot him three times, intending, he said, to merely wound him. Clay shot back but missed. (The entire account, as it appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Jan. 1, 1918 can be read in a PDF here.)
The soldier was badly injured, with two of the three shots hitting his chest. He was not expected to live. Conner had surrendered to police at the scene and was charged with “assault to murder.” The last report on this incident that I could find was on Jan. 3, in which Clay was described as being in “very critical condition.”
So what happened? As Conner spent a full career as a postal employee, it seems unlikely he was tried for murder. I used every possible combination of search words I could think of but found nothing more on this case. The story just disappeared. I did find a 1943 obituary for a Jesse P. Clay (killed while working on an Army Air Force Instructors School runway when he was struck by the wing of an airplane coming in for a landing), and it seems likely that it was the same guy — he was about the right age, he was a career military man, he lived in Dallas most of his life, and he was born in Kentucky. I assume the soldier in question (who would have been 37 at the time of the shooting) survived his gunshot wounds and that charges against Conner were either dismissed (with Conner pleading self-defense?) or settled (perhaps the military intervened to keep the story out of the press — this was during the height of WWI). Whatever actually happened, it seems that both men were able to move on from that really, really bad New Year’s Eve, a night I’m sure neither forgot.
My favorite little detail in the story of this sordid shooting was the line in the initial newspaper report in which it was revealed that one of the (potentially deadly) bullets was “deflected by a packet of letters and a steel comb.” How appropriate that the thing that probably saved mailman Jim Conner from a murder rap was “a packet of letters.” (…And a steel comb, but that doesn’t fit in with my narrative quite so well. Although Mr. Conner does look quite well-groomed.)
DMN, Jan. 1, 1918
***
Real-photo postcard of Hillsboro, Wisconsin RFD mail wagon is from eBay.
The full DMN account of the bizarre 1918 shooting can be read in a PDF, here.
An informative site on history of Rural Free Delivery — with lots of photos — can be found here.
“RFD”? Wiki’s on it, here.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
You know how you look at some of those fantastic postcards from the ’40s that don’t look real and you wonder, “Is that from a photograph, or is that just an artistic interpretation?” Well, it’s both.
In the above “before” and the below “after,” it’s interesting to note what’s been kept in and what’s been taken out. And how a fairly ho-hum daytime view becomes a dazzling night-time scene. Either way, it’s an Elm Street I’ll — sadly — never experience.
***
Black-and-white photograph of Elm Street’s “Theater Row” from the Texas State Historical Association.
Click pictures for larger images.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Cartoon by “Jim Nasium” — 1908 (click for larger image, you sap-head)
by Paula Bosse
If you were a die-hard baseball fan in 1908, you were no doubt familiar with many of the jeers featured in the cartoon above by one Mr. “Jim Nasium,” a sportswriter and cartoonist who was given almost half a page of primo newsprint each Sunday in many newspapers around the country. Feel free to incorporate some of these exhortations into your next enthusiastic visit to the ballpark. ANY ballpark. Those kids can take it….
**
Below, a few images of the Dallas baseball scene from around the time that Mr. Nasium’s column on “roasting” appeared in the pages of The Dallas Morning News. (As always, click for large images.)
The Dallas Giants, 1908
Above, the 1908 Dallas Giants team. Bottom row–Slattery, Fletcher, Kerns, Tullos, Maloney. Middle row–Maag, Hole, Moore, Whittaker, Cooper, Loudell. Top row–Burnett, Peters, Hay, Storch, Miller.
*
Here’s where they played that week, Gaston Park. Mayor Hay threw out the first ball. Below, where the cat-calls would come from. “What’re you tryin’ to bunt for, you sap-head!”
DMN, May 5, 1908
*
DMN, May 6, 1908
***
The cartoons of “Jim Nasium” appeared in The Dallas Morning News alongside his weekly column, “Conversations With an Old Sport,” a humorous syndicated series by Edgar F. Wolfe, who would later go on to edit Sporting Life. Here is an excerpt from that week’s column about the bad sportsmanlike conduct of jeering spectators in grandstands, complete with wonderful slang you’ve probably never encountered before (click to read):
DMN, May 3, 1908
This full “Conversations With an Old Sport” column can be read in a PDF here. (You’re going to have to click that “plus” symbol at the top many, many times in order to magnify the text enough to read it!)
Photo of the Dallas Giants from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; it can be accessed here. It appeared in the pages of The Dallas Morning News on May 6, 1908, crediting photo to Clogenson.
A few more (grainy) photos of Gaston Park — site of the first Texas-OU game held in Dallas in 1912 — can be seen in another Flashback Dallas post, here.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Low-tech A/C: ice, buckets, fans
by Paula Bosse
The summer of 1951 in Texas was brutally hot. One heat-related incident that August made national headlines: more than 1,500 Southwestern Bell telephone operators (and supportive coworkers) who were working in unairconditioned conditions (!!) at the Haskell Exchange on Bryan and at the Akard Street headquarters downtown staged what news reports called a “wildcat walkout” and refused to continue working in the sweltering buildings. Management’s attempt to cool things down with electric fans blowing over buckets of ice had not worked. Operators returned the next day, having made their point, hopefully to the imminent installation of air-conditioned switchboard rooms.
The caption for the photo above:
Dallas, Tex. Aug. 10 [1951] — BEATING THE HEAT — Both ice and fans are brought into play by telephone operators at an exchange here today as the city continued to swelter under 100-degree or over temperatures. The thermometer reached a high of 102-degrees to run the consecutive days of 100-degree readings to ten. It is the longest period of such reading since 1925 when a record 11 straight days was set. High mark for the present heat wave was 107 on August 6.
Three days later, the sweat hit the fan, and the women walked out.
St. Joseph [MO] News Press, Aug. 14, 1951 (click to read)
Let’s hope your work conditions are a bit better this summer!
***
Wire service photograph from the Southern Labor Archives of the Georgia State University Library Special Collections.
See ads from 1911 and 1925 encouraging women to become telephone operators in the Flashback Dallas post “Work and Play in Telephone Land,” here.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
by Paula Bosse
Bet you didn’t know that giant Zeppelin balloons were made in Dallas (or maybe Forney…). They were. The Ryan Rubber Company’s balloon factory opened in Forney in 1946, managed by Lester G. Norris with the help of his wife, Gladys.
***
Source of Zeppelin ad unknown.
See a photo of the Norrises at work and read the accompanying article “Picture Blocks and Balloons Big Business for These Men” (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 28, 1949).
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Metzger’s milkmen on parade in Life magazine
by Paula Bosse
Something BIG happened in Dallas in 1955 — it was such an earth-shattering event that it made headlines around the country: Metzger’s milkmen in Dallas announced that Bermuda shorts would become part of their summer uniform. It must have been a slow news month, because this story was picked up by the wire services and absolutely caught fire, running in newspapers all over the country. It even climbed to the pinnacle of mass media newsworthiness and found itself in the pages of Life magazine where the above photo was accompanied by the following caption:
MILKMEN’S CALVES
Drivers for a Dallas dairy produced a new morning look by setting out in Bermuda shorts. The boss thought they would be cooler in them. The shorts were fine, but one driver was nipped by a dog of long acquaintance who didn’t recognize him. (Life, May 23, 1955)
It was also the subject of newsreel footage. Watch the 1-minute silent clip here. Below, a screenshot:
*
In 1955, Bermuda-shorts-fever had somehow gripped the nation. Some sort of marketing sadist was pushing the jacket-and-tie-and-Bermuda-shorts-and-knee-socks combo as appropriate and stylish summertime apparel for men in the boardroom — an unfortunate early version of “business casual.” Mercifully, the fad died fairly quickly.
But another more utilitarian idea for the new cool and comfortable shorts emerged here in Dallas. Jake Metzger, owner of the dairy that produced Metzger’s milk, decided to adopt the shorts as part of a new summer uniform for his milk delivery men. The Dallas Morning News suggested that this might be the first such uniform in the United States. Shorts were just not widely seen outside the gym in those days, and certainly not in the workplace. But it gets hot in Texas in the summer. Real hot. REAL hot. Metzger’s idea was a brilliant one, and I’m sure his drivers appreciated it. According to an AP article, the new uniform would consist of the following:
The shorts are the black Bermuda type, often called walking shorts, with an elasticized maroon belt. They’re matched with a short-sleeve khaki shirt, over-the-calf cotton ribbed khaki socks and low black loafers. The outfit is topped with a black cotton golfers’ cap. (AP, May 10, 1955)
If a milkman believed that the new uniform went against his “moral scruples” — or if he just didn’t like the way he looked in it — he could opt out and wear the regular uniform. But a lot of the men jumped at the chance — reports said 30 of 120 milkmen went bare-kneed. And their photos were splashed across newspapers all over the place. A publicity bonanza! Here are just a few of the photos.
Milkman Cal Hager, ogled by Mrs. Tom Grimes and Mrs. F. F. Kennedy:
UPI wire photo, May 10, 1955
Allan Adams gets the once-over by his customers:
Victoria (TX) Advocate, May 13, 1955
Herman Lancaster and a confused Mrs. Dale Spence (holding daughter Jean):
AP wire photo, May 11, 1955
Metzgers’ man Herman Malone proffers a bottle to Mrs. Maurice Schermann and her daughter Linda:
Nanaimo Daily News, British Columbia, Canada, June 10, 1955
Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 1955
*
The headlines were often better than the photos, in all their reverse sexist glory. Here are a few from every corner of the United States:
**
You know a fashion craze has gotten out of hand when you see San Antonio vice squad detectives looking like this:
Bryan (TX) Eagle, May 27, 1955
If Messrs. Jones and Lombardino are still amongst the living, I’m pretty sure they still haven’t lived that photo down. (The partner of Wilton Shaw is misidentified in this photo — he is Chesley Jones.)
**
Coshocton (OH) Tribune, May 11, 1955
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
800 block of Exposition…
by Paula Bosse
Next time you stop by the Amsterdam Bar at 831 Exposition Avenue, whip out your phone and show this photo to your drinking buddies — this is what the street looked like two doors down, just after World War II. The two-story building at 827 Exposition was home to Lief Dry Goods and the Lief Hotel, and the single-story 825 Exposition was divided into McNeill’s Tin Shop and the Fair Way Cleaners & Laundry (it currently houses the Ochre House theater space). Today the neighborhood has lost much of its grittiness (and head-in parking), but the buildings are still recognizable almost 70 years later. Below, present-day 827 and 825 Exposition Avenue.
***
Top photo from Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Texas Archives.
Bottom two images from Google Street View.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
I-35, pre-sprawl — photo by Squire Haskins (GIGANTIC when clicked)
by Paula Bosse
This is I-35. …I-35! I’m not sure what stretch of the interstate this is exactly, but I think we’re looking north toward Denton south from Denton. I might cry. No sprawl!
*
UPDATE: I’ve had several comments about this photo from all over El Internet, and it appears that this is I-35E in Denton, looking south(east) toward Lake Lewisville (then Lake Dallas). More specifically, this shows the I-35 / US-77 (Dallas Dr.) interchange, with part of the old Hwy. 77 visible at the bottom of the photo. It’s been pointed out that the water tower at the top right is at the Denton State School. I hope this is correct! If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know! (To see a 1965 road map of this area, see here.)
Here’s how it looks these days (thanks, Bill P.).
***
Another amazing aerial photograph by Squire Haskins, from the collection of the Denton Public Library (with an incorrect description!). Accessible on the Portal to Texas History, here.
Click picture for larger image. In fact, it’ll get so big that it might break whatever device you’re viewing this on; proceed with caution.
*
Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 