10/31 Halloween Trick or Treating

Astroworld at Halloween, circa 1975, Roeders to the left!

The rest of the Halloween stuff I've collected from the Leader

Note the caption above: The South Belt Optimist Club and Memorial Hospital Southeast will be operating free x-ray screenings of candies for foreign objects.

I haven't found any caption or paper carrying the photo below, but methinks it's precisely why x-raying treats became the norm.  

This photo really interests me in terms of its back-story,  because growing up, it felt as though danger lurked around every corner, with children dying left and right from poisoned candy.

I remember hearing about all kinds of crazy things -- razor blades in apples, heroin-laced candy, you name it, someone would swear it actually happened to someone they knew. The media wasn't much help. They'd print incendiary headlines and bury the retraction when the investigations revealed the hoaxes and cover-ups.

In fact, only one child in the entire United States has ever been killed eating any poisoned Halloween candy, and that was slipped into his stash by his own father.

It happened in the neighboring community of Deer Park, 40 years ago today and the legend of the Candy Man pretty much killed the carefree nature of trick or treating after that. You'd only go to the houses you knew, or school festivals, or go to the mall or some other "safe" place to get your haul and still have to get your candy x-rayed.

I'll be curious to see if any of the Houston media revisit the Candy Man case today, in light of the 40th anniversary.

KRDO's piece on the 39th from 2013 (a bit strangely, out of Colorado Springs)
The Statesman's piece on the 35th from 2009
The Chronicle's piece on the 30th, from 2004

Halloween Week Pt. 4: Haunted Houses

Yesterday's post was a roundup of the elementary kids' version of Halloween fun.

I also ended up with the one photo above that I haven't been able to match up to a newspaper yet of what's either a little spook house in an elementary school library or possibly Bracewell.

But the South Belt would also typically host several more mature haunted houses, one annually put on by the Jaycees at Almeda Mall and another by the Dobie Choir:

Updated to add a couple of photos posted by Patricia Croley Overby on the "You Know You're From Clear Lake if You Remember...: page which she generously shared:

Halloween Week Pt. 3: Elementary School Festivals

Over the years, The Leader featured a photo during Halloween week from one of the elementary school festivals. I came across Atkinson, Frazier, and Moore, but none from Stutchberry, Burnett, or Meador. 

Scary Monster Walk at Atkinson, 1976

Frazier Festival, 1978

Atkinson, 1981

Frazier and Moore, 1985

Halloween Week Part II The Atkinson Clown Lunch Ladies

In keeping with the Halloween theme this week, here's a little gem from the front page of the 1976 South Belt Press.

I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea. 

I very much appreciate Lunch Lady Laura who doesn't appear to want to play along, but dons a lone party hat for the photo.

"Much to the delight of the Atkinson youngsters"???

If I'm a first grader at Atkinson elementary, whatever these lunch ladies served me that day could evoke PTSD for the rest of my life. Meatloaf might elicit this response thereafter:

Seriously, a couple of those ladies are terrifying. 

(Ok, maybe not American-Horror-Story-Twisty terrifying, but creepy enough for the majority of children who are frightened by clowns.)

Happy Halloween Week!

Red Carpet Realtors Halloween Pumpkin Patch (Safeway@Hughes Parking Lot)

Each Halloween in the mid-70s Red Carpet Realty would sponsor an annual pumpkin patch, which sprung up in the Safeway/Eckerds/Vaudeville parking lot at Hughes and South Belt.

The realty staff would dress up and hand out more than a thousand pumpkins, as well as candy. 

Ron's Krispy Fried Chicken in Sagemont

I did not spot this photo in any of the papers I went through, but when I went to sharpen it up in Photoshop, I spotted the two ladies wearing the Ron's aprons. So, if I ever track down the real story, I'll be sure to update, but in the meantime, Ron's!

I only came across one ad for Ron's in the Leader in 1978, and it appears to be a different location than the one I remember on Hughes near the 7-11 and across from the Sagemont Pool.

But later in '78, both locations are listed, so perhaps Ron's only moved in that year

You can see Ron's (if you squint or make the photo full screen) in the background here:

They sold to Church's in 1983, as did a number of smaller fried chicken operations around Texas, but most folks who grew up in the area remember Ron's very fondly, especially that smell whenever you were anywhere around that end of Hughes.

The newest thing at the end of their run as Ron's would be the new-fangled chicken nugget:

Ron's Krispy Fried Chicken / KPRC Ernest Xmas... by weatherguru76

Inside Pipe Organ Pizza, Monroe & I-45

Another one on my list for some time has been Pipe Organ Pizza. I tried to dig up what I could find online back in March and came up mostly empty handed -- but here is the original "wish" post. 

Here is the HAIF discussion where it appears there was another on the other side of town, as well. But no interior photos.

Now, thanks again to Michelle Roeder and her parents who took their camera everywhere except apparently the Foley's Kids' Shoe Ship, I have a few photos from inside!

I've lightened these up as clearly as possible -- it was pretty dark inside and the little square flash bulb on the top of an instamatic wasn't great at catching backgrounds -- so they're a bit grainy, but still clear. This one, in particular, was almost skipped in the album. We had to squint a bit to realize, while Dad was trying to catch Scooby and the Pink Panther together in one shot, he also managed to get the organ player, a smidge of the organ itself on the right, and that bell that I had completely forgotten about! (And the tip jar.) They'd ring the bell right before the organist would start playing, and sometimes when someone made a request and left a tip. 

At the far right you can see the hallway, lined with Hollywood photos. You'd walk in the door and be funneled down this hallway into the line to pay. The long rows of family style seating made this a popular big group setting. You could get a round red tray, a couple of pitchers of soda, and be good to go without having to refill everyone's glass over and over. I remember coming here for both birthday parties, once on a school field trip (Easthaven), and with the Sagemont church youth group.

Scooby was not originally part of Pipe Organ Pizza that I remember, but at some point they must've either merged with a company who owned the rights or contracted them out. Later on, it would be known as Scooby's Pipe Organ Pizza and sometimes just Scooby's Pizza.

Still on the hunt for photos of the arcade, with was in the far back left side of the place when you walked in, near the restrooms, as well as pictures of the organ itself. If memory serves, those were hard to take, because the giant thing was laid up against the front wall and took up a ton of space. There was never a great angle or room enough to back up and get a full shot. But hope abides.

Almeda Mall Vintage 1969 photos

The photo above was purchased earlier this year, in February, from the Houston Public Library. 

But I kept thinking about the others that I'd left on the light tray. 

These have only existed in negative form for decades -- the old square negatives before strips and 3x5 film came along, hidden away in HPL archives. To find them, I'd submitted search terms and these had come up, along with a few others marked "Almeda Mall". I pulled on the medical gloves and stared down into the little magnifying glass looking at negatives, reminding myself everything black would be white and visa versa. After I received the one above, so crisp and amazing in its detail, I decided I needed to invest in the others.

These were ordered originally by the Houston Post, requested by Department 322, which I can only guess was advertising. They were sending these over to the library right away, as you can see, because the "canary" copy is marked "To Library Attach to Negs." It was Tuesday February 11, 1969. (The other order some 7 years later will be featured on the blog as we near Christmas.)

Although the order says 4 shots, there were in fact a six in all, two duplicates of each end of the mall. Since I'd chosen the "Penney's" end last time, the only work to do was decide which of the two "Foley's" end shots I wanted. I finally went with the shot with the people. All females, no pants. It felt more alive than the empty hallway shot.

those nostalgic shafts of light

The other two were of the center fountain area:

The first, looking towards the Foley's hall is a bit off. You can just make out the lighted marquee type signs that graced each store in the mall's first years. I doubt it was ever used or printed.

(the object in the left foreground is a mystery to me)

But it's the last shot that turned out to be my favorite. Staring through the magnifying glass in inverted b/w all I knew was there was someone sitting on the bench. I was delighted to see the girl, looking like the epitome of 1969, just down from the ashcan, the circle lights and mannequin in the store to the right under the striped awning her only company. The water detail wasn't something I could see in the negative either. So, so perfect.

You can read more about the history of the mall in this post.

Inside The Skate Ranch, Blackhawk near Hall Rd.

Pictures of the older skate rink on Almeda near the old post office with the wooden floor are still on my list of "must-finds" but thanks to Michelle Roeder, I can cross off the more popular Skate Ranch, with its newfangled not-wooden rink!(And now that I think about it, what was that floor made of? just concrete? It was so much quieter than the Almeda wood floor!)

check out all the elementary school shirts in one photo!

the concession stand is just visible at the back -- I'd love to see those prices!

In the DJ booth!

I'd forgotten about the blue carpet on the walls and that corner where, if you were coordinated enough, you could hop up and sit on people skated by, at least until the skate workers yelled at you to get down.

speaking of carpet . . . 

one of the disco balls visible in this one, as well as a pretty confusing sign . . .  "Announcing Buddy Nite Discontinued" . . . what?

The Skate Ranch was often a kid's first independent outing -- Mom and Dad would drop you and your friends off and tell you when to be in the front area watching for them to return. (If you didn't, you'd spot your Mom coming inside to find you, usually with her arms crossed, ready to kill you for losing track of time.) 

Once inside, you'd get up to the carpeted counter to ask for your skate size, and they were usually plopped in front of your face by a teenager who never even looked at you. Remember the cubbies you'd stow your shoes and other stuff in? No locks or security whatsoever, and yet rarely did anything go missing. You'd plop on a bench and lace up the brown skates, cursing if you ended up with ones with really frayed laces. And then, you'd have to scan the crowd already on the rink to see who you knew. You'd lean on the wall watching the skaters, all in a line. Just like this, at .16 seconds in:

It was the thrill of being asked to hold hands during the couples' skate; the inevitable limbo and hokey pokey games and age races that brought out the fiercely competitive in all of us; the feel of the wind through your hair as you skated to a favorite song; avoiding (usually, anyway) spectacular wipe-outs around other fallen skaters; racing off the rink, grabbing on to the sides, and feeling the carpet slow your wheels down so the world felt like it was suddenly spinning in slow motion. And that weird feeling, after you got your skates off, that you were somehow walking and still skating at the same time. 

Good memories.

I have to imagine that so many people had birthdays at the skating rinks, there are lots of photos hiding out in old albums waiting to be found (and . . .  maybe . . . shared? please?)

The Stop N Go Bust, December 1986

The photo below was just a snapshot among the thousands in drawers and boxes at The Leader that I scanned last spring.

I had posted it on FB months back, asking if anyone spotted themselves or remembered the circumstances and date. It ended up with almost 60 comments, people tagging one another, guessing at a year, but nothing substantial. No one copped to getting busted. 

Today, I am finishing up a week in Houston, kind of the anniversary since the start of the blog one year ago, and look to be coming back with over 1800 scans this time around. Since I don't plan to be back for a good while, hopefully this will be fuel for the blog for a long time.

I'd gone back through the stacks and worked on scanning all of the Brio articles from the early 90s. At the same time, I pulled out the older stacks again and managed to scan my way back through a decade of Leader newspapers (1976 to 1986).

This afternoon, in the 1986 pile, on almost the last newspaper of the year, there was the Stop N Go photo (actually a different one that the surviving snapshot above), but only just the bottom half. Hopefully the statute of limitations on juvenile anonymity has long since expired.

December 18, 1986

Mystery Photo: Hurricane Claudette

1978 Sagemont Recreation Club Swim Team

Updated 10/22/14:

published July 12, 1978

Mystery Photo: Santa and Sleigh

Mystery Photo