My Hometown
"Every man's memory is his private literature." - Aldous Huxley
What do you remember about the Dallas neighborhood in which you grew up? We want to hear your story.
The Dallas Historical Society invites you to participate in our new project called "My Home Town". Our goal is to piece together a Dallas encyclopedia one ice cream stand at a time. Record your home town memories in a 250 - 600 word essay.
or mail to: Dallas Historical Society
My Home Town
P. O. Box 150038
Dallas, TX 75315-0038
Pending approval (our criteria are few), your essay will later be published on the web.
We are moving toward the next generation of web services, a generation marked by user collaboration and sharing. Ultimately, much of our writing and activity on Facebook will be incorporated into a new Dallas Historical Website - a website built in part by its visitors, a website that allows virtual access to significant parts of DHS archives and museum collections. Let's get started!
posted by DHS at 3:48 PM
7 Comments:
This submission came today:
Life in Dallas in the 1920s and 1930’s by Jay Freeman
We lived in the 4500 block of Garland Avenue between Carroll and Banks Street - "we" included all but one of my grandparents family of eight.
Yep, we lived at 4525, my grandparents at 4527, my Uncle Gene and his family at 4529, and so on both sides of the street.
My grandparents and children moved to Dallas after World War I from Groesbeck, Texas. It probably resembled a mass exodus from Groesbeck for that many family members to depart at one time.
Being an only child, I was so fortunate to have all my cousins within playing distance, to have family up and down the street watching out for everyone.
My father worked in a printing company, my mother was employed by the Dallas Community Chest (forerunner of the present United Way) so my older cousins and grandparents and various aunts saw to it that I was cared for and spoiled rotten.
Three of my uncles were employed by Dallas Power and Light Company, another in Insurance sales, another in a plumbing business, another in the wallpaper and painting business along with my grandfather and his bachelor older brother.
Back then, to wallpaper you first had to put up a light canvas with tacks and a hammer. I recall my grandfather would take a mouthful of tacks then release one to the magnetic head of the tack hammer as he spread the canvas. I still don’t see how he did it, but it was a speedy operation. Then, spreading the wallpaper, wetting it down with the sticky glue to make it adhere to the canvas, it was quite an art to attach it to the wood walls of a house.
There was much love, warmth and great Christmas memories. Then came depression time, and my grandparents moved to a farm near Grapevine (in fact the lake covers where their farm was, as I remember it), my uncles and aunts and their families moved to find employment, and we moved to my other grandmother’s house in Junius Heights.
Being about a mile away from the State Fair Grounds I have such fond memories of our skipping and running what, in our minds then, was just a short distance and making great memories that would follow us through life regardless of where we were.
One extra thought: I still remember the poem ‘Perils of Little Nell’, how often when we got together we acted it out, each of us taking some part. It always started with "It was a dark and storm night when my Nellie went away".
16/8/07 3:51 PM
Born at Baylor Hospital in Dallas December 5,1923, my earliest recollection is living at 3302 So. Harwood (a dirt street) across from Colonial Hill Elementary School. The school kindergarten was a free-standing 1-story building across the street from our home. Our phone number was 4-7070.
In the summer there were free outdoor movies on the school grounds in the evening. My favorite was a cartoon where a little character jumped out of an ink bottle at the beginning and returned to the bottle at the end. Also , during election times , political campaigners would hold rallies on the school grounds and give out free watermelon or ice cream.
A railroad was right in our back yard ( now known as Central Expressway). Kids entertained themselves sliding on the railroad’s embankment on flattened cardboard boxes.
During the Great Depression the school ground was frequented by many unemployed men playing horseshoes, dominoes, and croquet.
A pleasant smell in the summer was the watering truck that drove down the dirt street sprinkling to keep down the dust. Another treat was when the iceman stopped and sawed ice from the back of the truck letting kids catch the snow from his saw. Fresh vegetables were available from a horse-drawn wagon daily.
Mrs. Kelly’s grocery store was just one block from our house at Harwood and Warren. On rare occasions when I had a penny or two I would shop at Mrs. Kelly’s for penny candy.
Our family doctor, Jay Touchstone, made calls to our house in a Model T Ford. His office was in the Medical Arts Building downtown.
We lived in a number of places around Colonial Hill School. In 1934 I delivered the Times Herald down Forest Ave. One of my customers was McKamy-Campbell Funeral Home at Forest and Central. One day in May as I delivered the newspaper there was a large gathering of people at the funeral home for Bonnie Parker’s funeral. The family decided to allow the public in to pay “respects”, so I got in line with my paper bag and proceeded past her corpse. As I recall, she was on a chaise lounge, not in a casket. I thought she was very beautiful.
My friends and I spent a lot of time in the space between the levees down on the Trinity. We skinny-dipped in the backwater ponds down there and collected pecans from the many trees in the fall.
On Colonial Ave. near Forest there was a hardware store owned by a man named Phillips. I broke the front axle on my bike in 1934 and went to Mr. Phillips who sold me a new axle for 5 cents and loaned me the tools to make my repairs on his front sidewalk. I have never forgotten his kindness.
September 1, 1939 I witnessed the biggest fire I had ever seen—the cotton compress and warehouse at Akard and Forest. This date was etched in my memory because it was the date Hitler invaded Poland.
I have many pleasant memories of my childhood in South Dallas. I graduated from Dallas Technical High School and joined the navy in 1940 serving for six years until March 1947. Five of those years were spent on the cruiser USS Honolulu in the Pacific, surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec.7 and three torpedoes later on while earning 10 battle stars.
I returned to Dallas in 1947, received an engineering degree from SMU in 1951 and worked as a professional engineer for fifty years.
By James C. Hardwick
20/9/07 2:46 PM
I have been a resident of Dallas throughout my entire life, much of which was spent in the Old and Far East Dallas. I grew up during the Depression with neighbors who worked with their hands, or drove trucks, busses or streetcars. O. M. Roberts Elementary School was nearby, where kids learned the three "R’s” and gave teachers the respect they deserved.
The Ford Assembly plant provided employment, and was probably the reason most elected to drive a Ford. The East Grand Theatre and Fair Theatre provided entertainment, but during summers, local merchants held an outdoor Amateur Show staged behind the Fire Station. Old time fiddlers, tap dancers and young vocalists provided the talent for cash or merchants’ wares. Swimming was in the park pool, dubbed the “Duck Pond ", or at nearby gravel or sand pits. Roller skating or ice skating was offered at Fair Park, miniature golf came later. For the adults, dancing at the Manhattan Club or dinning at Mirandas.
The Pig Stand and Bronnies had a steady flow of customers. I remember medicine shows from horse pulled wagons, and seeing the Ringling Bros Circus unloading animals from railcars near Fair Park. Water the elephants and get a free ticket.
Time and space limit the many memories that well up, but suffice to say East Dallas was the place to be growing up in the thirties and forties.
By Raymond Butler
20/9/07 2:49 PM
Lived in 635/Forest Lane area for over 50 years, area changed from rural to urban, permission to edit or contact
Growing up in Dallas in the fifties was a carefree time. My family lived in the apartments and duplexes on Hudnall and Hedgerow near Lemmon and Inwood.
Saturdays were spent at the Delmann Theater kid show that lasted all afternoon. I would walk alone with no fear on Lemmon towards King's Ave, where the theater was located. The now historic Prince of Hamburgers stood alone across Lemmon Avenue about midway on my walk. There was a rose garden with plaques in Braille. I would slide my fingers over the Braille and try to imagine what it would be like to only smell, not see the flowers. I never rushed nor looked over my shoulder.
Another favorite place was a small park behind Rusk Middle school. It used to have a stream that burbled over rocks and I would sit for hours with my bird caller, not another soul around.
Air conditioning and TV were novelties. We would while away summer days playing Monopoly and canasta on the front porch where there was usually a breeze.
At night we would sit with the neighbors in the back yard while a softball game went on in the field behind us. Fireflies would twinkle, and we would companionably eat ice cold watermelon.
Manor Bread Company used to deliver fresh bakery goods to the door. Bluffview Dairy truck was a regular visitor with fresh dairy products. Not all families owned two cars, and grocery store trips were only once a week to the local A&P. There were fewer grocery stores in the fifties, no strip mall shopping centers. Most of the activity was downtown.
I would take the bus from Lemmon, get off at St. Paul and Main and walk to the old Sanger-Harris department store. I might take in a movie. There were at least three theaters on Main. The streets were always crowded with shoppers. A stop at the old library on Harwood and Commerce and I was back on the bus heading for home.
My second neighborhood was the area between 635 and Forest La. When our house was built, there were only four streets with fields all around. It was considered the country. LBJ 635 was called Valley View Lane, a narrow, winding two lane street. I would ride my bike east on Valley View to a horse stable next to Lambert's Nurseries where the owner would sometimes let me ride the thoroughbreds in the ring English saddle. Across the street was a very old cemetery with locked iron gates which I believe is still there. I used to stand at the gate and wonder who was buried behind it. In my fancies, I imagined a Civil War cemetery.
It was a common sight to see horses with their riders going down our street. The clip clop of their hooves announced their approach. Much of the land that now holds mega-mansions was used as pasture and owners feeding their horses at night from a bucket over the fence was a common sight.
It was a quieter time. The background noise of traffic was practically nonexistent. Anxiety about personal safety was minimal. We rarely locked our doors!
By Tanis Ellyn Cooper Weiss
20/9/07 2:58 PM
DEVELOPING DALLAS WORK ETHICS
My work ethics may be directly tied to firecrackers. My brother and I did anything and everything we could do to scrounge up the price of the next package of fire crackers which sold at the stand on Buckner opposite from Mercer in a cotton field. For six months we saved up for the Fourth of July and for six months we saved for Christmas. After the Oklahoma bombing I told my brother that if we had known that fertilizer and motor oil would explode neither of us would have seen our 13th birthday. We would have loaded up a coffee tin with the mixture and put a cherry bomb in it, lit it and stepped back about 10 feet and that would have been the end of both of us.
We accumulated funds by collecting glass pop bottles anywhere we could find them. Our neighborhood constantly had new home construction going on as the mid 50’s recession had slowed the housing market. Workers would buy from a truck; discard the bottle to use as a deposit on tomorrows drink. We finally had to scrounge the sites for their secret hiding place once they got smart and started squirreling them away.
We would sell mistletoe on the way home from school door to door in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was pretty good money and it exposed me to door to door selling. Jimmy White had a small grocery on Garland road and published a weekly paper with specials and want ads. My mom showed me one from a Fuller Brush man who lived on Cloister about six houses from me. Mr. Evans gave me a job going a day ahead of him handing out samples and making appointments. His area was from Casa View to the spillway and back again down the RR track to Oats Road and inclusive.
We covered the area three times in the same time he could do it alone with about five times the sales. Fuller Brush had thought they had hit a gold mine, hired a bunch of other boys to do the same and it flopped. They all pitched the samples and reported that no one was home. I made enough money between April 1959 and the end of school to buy a 1948 Cushman scooter. I had three of four tickets on it before I was even old enough to get a legal driving license for it at 14, June 1959. I quit when school started in the fall of 1959.
The next summer I served watermelon at the Southern Maid donut shop in Casa View. Ms. Candy Lane, a striking redhead, about 24 with a powder blue 1959 Cadillac convertible. I was 15 and in love! I still cannot eat a donut.
Then in the spring of 1960 I got a job working at the Casa Linda Animal Clinic on Garland and Jupiter where I worked until 1965 after school and in the summers. In 1964 they asked me to live there which I did in the summers after my freshman and sophomore years at A&M.
In 1966 I got a job as a loader at Chief Freight but finally turned 21 and started driving a taxi for Yellow Cab. They had a stand at Peavy and Garland. I wish I had kept notes on the taxi job and all the nutty things that happened to me. I was able to do a three hour stand up routine that kept folks in stitches when I was younger.
By John R. Choate
20/9/07 2:59 PM
Life in Dallas in the 1920s and 1930’s
We lived in the 4500 block of Garland Avenue, between Carroll and Banks Street, and when I say we, that included all but one of my grandparents family of eight.
Yep, we lived at 4525, my grandparents at 4527, my Uncle Gene and his family at 4529, and so on both sides of the street.
My grandparents and children moved to Dallas after World War I from Groesbeck, Texas, I’m sure it resembled a mass exodus from Groesbeck for that many family members to depart at one time.
Being an only child, I was so fortunate to have all my cousins within playing distance, to have family up and down the street watching out for everyone.
My father worked in a printing company, my mother was employed by the Dallas Community Chest (forerunner of the present United Way) so my older cousins and grandparents and various aunts saw to it that I was cared for, and spoiled rotten.
Three of my uncles were employed by Dallas Power and Light Company, another in Insurance sales, another in a plumbing business, another in Wallpaper and painting business along with my grandfather and his bachelor older brother.
This was at the time, to wallpaper you first had to put up a light canvas with tacks and a tack hammer, I recall my grandfather would take a mouthful of tacks then release one to the magnetic head of the tack hammer as he spread the canvas. I still don’t see how he did it, but it was a speedy operation. Then, spreading the wallpaper, wetting it down with the sticky glue to make it adhere to the canvas, it was quite an art to attach it to the wood walls of a house.
Much love, warmth, great Christmas memories, then came depression time, my grandparents moved to a farm near Grapevine (in fact the lake covers where their farm was, as I remember it), my uncles and aunts and their families moved to find employment, and we moved to my other grandmother’s house in Junius Heights.
Being about a mile away from the State Fair Grounds I have such fond memories of our walking home at night and being kids running, skipping, what then was just a short distance in our minds, making great memories that would follow us through life regardless of where we were.
One extra thought I still remember the poem ‘Perils of Little Nell’, how often when we got together we acted it out, each of us taking some part, it always started with ‘It was a dark and storm night when my Nellie went away’.
By Jay Freeman
20/9/07 3:10 PM
My home town from 1941 until 1956 was the two blocks of Pershing St. At one time my mother counted 65 children living on the street. We had sidewalks for roller skating and hop scotch and a safe street for bicycle riding.
West of our back fence was Mill Creek, the H&TC railroad, and open grass land. It was the playground for all the children on Pershing St. Dark winter mornings we heard the whistle of the freight train running south into downtown Dallas. In the fall and winter, the field became the "wild west" with trails and tepee's made from Johnson grass. The creek was dry most of the time except in the Spring when we fished for the crawdads.
During the hot Dallas summers we played under a huge cottonwood tree. Our porches offered a good place to play house or store. Under the shrubbery we dug our holes to China. We all stayed indoors during the heat of the day, but come dusk we gathered on the corner for kick-the-can or hide-and-seek, until we were called home for the night.
We walked west on Garret St. to Bonham Elementary and took the Capital Bus to Spence Jr. High and North Dallas High.
By Suzanne Tully Lawton
20/9/07 3:12 PM
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