About This Blog

This blog features: neighborhood restaurants, nearby restaurants, downtown restaurants, Casa View Shopping Center, nearby shopping, Downtown shops.

I will first list places and my connections with them. For the spirit of completeness, I will then list other places, known to me but not visited. I choose not to list the unknown.

I like the section entitled Places I Wish I Had Visited.

My focus is places and locations which existed from 1953, when I moved to Dallas, until 1965, when I graduated from high school. This list will continue with my college years, until I turned 21. I left Dallas in 1969 and, as I did not return except to visit my parents until 1973, my memory of East Dallas ends at that time.

Some categories were easy to separate – restaurants and shopping. Some experiences are not so easy to categorize, but are still meaningful. They may be all lumped in together, and then teased out as other connections are made.

Music wise, we may have thought we were born of the “wrong generation.” I always thought the older generation (i.e. 3 to 4 years older than me) had a richer and deeper experience.

But we, the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation, had it best – stable family life, rising expectations for the middle class and parents who wanted to give so much to their children, which most did not have in their childhood. We were left to play and roam outdoors to make our own fun. We had the best toys and the best music.

And yet we lived in tumultuous times – the Cold War, Civil Rights, Integration and the Kennedy Assassination through the killings of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Hopefully we came out as loving, caring, sharing adults whose experiences made us better people and gave us the ability to show appreciation and gratitude for the neighborhood and experiences which enriched us and our loved ones.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Unique Events - Another "Catch-all" Bin



Helicopter Rides at Big Town.

Watching the Spillway crest after a big rain.

Putting pennies on the railroad track in Reinhardt.

Lady Baden-Powell visiting Casa View.

Lady of the Lake.

Rumors of the Lakewood Rats.

Billboards on the side of freight trailers all over town which read: "Thanks to all of you for helping O.L. Nelms MAKE ANOTHER MILLION."

In 1958 C. Wayne Freeland and James E. Hayes leased a 50 acre tract to develop a country club and golf course, consisting of a clubhouse with dining room and swimming pool to be called Casa View Country Club.  Never a success.  In 1961 and 1962 it was a swimming pool for the City of Mesquite.  It later became part of the land for Eastfield Community College.  The clubhouse was used as a building for the groundskeepers.

Atom Bomb drills in the 1950's - we all had to get dog tags.

Polio scare - got Polio vaccine on sugar cubes.

The Bath House - went swimming one summer, closed due to Polio scare and possible integration.

Drought during the 1950's dug a well at Northwest Highway and Buckner Boulevard.  You brought your own jar.

Free health check-up at doctor's office for summer camp.  Had to bring a urine specimen, wildly assorted bottles, get a burr haircut at beginning of summer.  By the time school starts, it grows back.

Only celebrity who lived in Casa View - Susan Powter of "Stop the Insanity" fame - small frame house off Jonquin.

Julie Bennell, David Wade, Helen Corbitt Food Personalities.

Dick Hitt, Paul Crume and Frank Tolbert Newspaper Personalities.

Duck Pin bowling at Lochwood Shopping Center.

Dimitri Vaol's full length portraits of visiting stars.

Penicillin came out in the early 1950's and I became allergic to it.  Broke out in a rash as I remember.  There are enough medicines out today that I've had no problem fining a substitute.

Fall of 1962 Leonard Bernstein conducted a series of Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic in its new home in Lincoln Center.  Should have listened.

Driver's Education Appeared in 1962 on KERA Channel 13 at 7 pm.  The instructor was Byron Hightower.  He was so dull I fell asleep in every session.

Trans Texas Airways While I was in college, I could fly TTA "Tree Top Airways" back from Austin for half-fare, student rate $8.00.  When TTA announced new service to Monterrey, they changed their name to Texas International.  From the ashes of Texas International and Muse Air came Southwest Airlines.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)