Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Gilley's in Pasadena. It was an establishment the locals frequented and became more infamous after the filming of Urban Cowboy. The old building burned down in 1990. It started when club owner, Sherwood Cryer, invited country music legend, Mickey Gilley, to join him as a partner in reopening a club he owned that had previously been named Shelley’s. Gilley’s opened its doors seven days a week, from 10 A.M. to 2 A.M. It lived to its motto, “We Doze but We Never Close.” Loretta Lynn, Roseanne Cash, Ernest Tubb, and Emmylou Harris all played at Gilley’s and several other famous country artists. Most of the performances were recorded live and archived. The nightly shows were then broadcasted weekly on the radio from 1977 to 1989, and was called “Live from Gilley’s.” It was carried nationally by more than 500 stations. The show was even broadcasted around the globe, thanks to Armed Forces Radio. However, in the late ’80s, Mickey Gilley and Sherwood Cryer had a falling out. Gilley became frustrated because he believed that Cryer has failed to maintain the place and present quality acts. Cryer also refused to make any significant renovations over the years. The crowd had constantly been complaining about dirty restrooms, a bad parking lot, and several other problems.

The contentious feud between the owners led to the club being closed and, eventually, a lengthy court battle. In 1988, Gilley sued to gain control of the club. He claimed that Cryer had been keeping profits. Cryer lost a $17 million lawsuit to singer Gilley when a jury found out that he had siphoned off big amounts of cash from businesses owned by the two men. Gilley continued operating the 70,000-square-foot club until the judge ordered Gilley’s to close down in 1989 due to loss of profits. Sadly, on July 5, 1990, an arson fire attack destroyed the main building. The fire fiercely burned in the all-wood structure, reaching the rodeo arena and recording studio. It prevented firefighters from entering the building, which is spread out over 140,000 square feet. Several fingers pointed to Cryer, but he denied involvement.

[Shakey Jake]

Stevie was invited to play the national anthem at the Houston Astros season opener, against the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Houston Astrodome in April 1985.
Stevie and Lenny Vaughan were hastily flown to Houston, where he confessed to his wife that he didn’t know how to play “The Star Spangled Banner”..
She hummed it to him in the limo on the way to the game.
Watching her husband play the national anthem there to a packed house in the cavernous Astrodome, Lenora turned to the guy standing next to her and said, “You know, he didn’t know how that went – I had to hum it to him on the way here.”
The man replied, “Yeah, it’s a hard song.”
When Lenora asked the man if he know her husband, he nodded and said, “No, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of him.
My name’s Mickey Mantle.”
Mantle was at the game to throw the first pitch; it was pure chance that Lenora found herself standing next to one of the greatest baseball players in history.
When Stevie joined her minutes later, she introduced the two men.
“I don’t know how to play that song,” Vaughan confided to Mantle, to which the Yankees great replied reassuringly, “Nobody can play that song.”
Lenora then sheepishly asked for Mantle’s autograph, upon which Mantle asked where here baseball bat was. “Oh… oh… am I supposed to have a bat?” she stammered. Mantle explained that most autograph seekers bring a bat.
Lenora remembers that “I was looking around for a piece of paper of something, and Stevie said, ‘Well I’ve got this bat right here – her name’s Lenny.’ And he took it out and said, “Why don’t you sign this?’
And Mickey said, ‘It’d be my pleasure..”
Source: The Best of SRV

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1758, Luís Antonio Menchaca and Andrés Hernández resolved a title dispute involving Menchaca's San Francisco ranch. Their compromise resulted in the oldest recorded private land grant in Texas. The grant, recorded in the General Land Office, consisted of a total of fifteen leagues and seven labores in present-day Karnes and Wilson counties, of which eleven leagues and two labores went to Menchaca and four leagues and five labores to Hernández. More is known of Menchaca's life than of Hernández's. Menchaca was born in 1713, the son of a career soldier, and died in 1793. He was a captain in the Spanish military and also served as justicia mayor of the villa of San Fernando. The census of 1779 showed him to be the richest man in the province of Texas. The dates of Hernández's birth and death are unknown, but he was for many years a soldier at San Antonio de Béxar Presidio. At the time of the grant, he made sworn statements to the effect that he had been living on the site for more than five years by virtue of a grant of four sitios and eight caballerías of land which had been made to his deceased father more than twenty-two years previously. It is possible that this was the site of the first ranch in Texas. Hernández's ranch headquarters was in the same locale as Fuerte de Santa Cruz del Cíbolo.
Source: TSHA online
ed: A league or sitio is (4428.4) acres of grazing land and a labor, labores (177.1 acres)

[Shakey Jake]

Charlie’s first preseason game as a Cowboy was against the Packers. He was a quarterback in college and absolutely idolized Bart Starr, Green Bay’s Hall of Fame quarterback.
With a third-and-nine situation, Starr dropped back and looked downfield for an open receiver. A few seconds into the play he raised the ball to throw but changed his mind and tucked it under his arm, electing to scramble for the first down. Bart crossed the line of scrimmage and began to veer toward the sideline as Charlie closed in on the veteran quarterback. Waters and Starr collided, and the play ended two yards short of the first-down marker.
Starr looked at Charlie and said, “Nice hit!” Charlie was so excited that he replied in a childlike manner, “Could I have your autograph?” Bart laughed and replied with, “Maybe after the game.”
Source: Memories of Texas Football

[markiver54]

Great player. I remember watching him play. I was a huge Cowboy fan back then.

[Redthies]

Best of SRV.

My biggest regret in life is missing my ride to get the 2 hours from where I lived in the mountains down to “the big city” to see Stevie Ray play live. They guy was an absolute legend! He finally had his chit more or less together and then some bad luck did him in. Such a shame! I have however since been to Texas, and seen Don Henley play live a couple of times. Not the same thing, but Don is still a good Texan.

That’s Don below playing with Joe Walsh. During the guitar solo on Hotel California.

[Shakey Jake]

GROCE’S CROSSING
It is this date in April 1836, that Houston moved the retreating Texas Army from San Felipe, up the Brazos River to Groce’s Crossing. Houston was aware that the little steamship Yellowstone was moored at the Benardo Plantation, loading cotton, so he sent a note by runner to the Captain of the boat, to wait, and help Houston move the Texas Army across the Brazos River to the east side.
This historical event is recorded in detail in Texas History but very few people know anything about the little steamboat, Yellowstone, which was commissioned in New Orleans in 1832, for work on the Yellowstone River in Montana.
Source: Marshall E Kuykendall

[Shakey Jake]

The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of the notorious outlaw-turned-rancher King Fisher, who was apparently quite the dandy in his day:
"King Fisher and his followers stole the settlers' livestock; robbed their corn cribs; and murdered those who opposed them.
Fisher was then [the late 1870s] about twenty-five years old, and a perfect specimen of frontier dandy. He was tall and exceedingly handsome. He wore the finest clothes procurable, and of the picturesque, dime-novel type. His white, broad-brimmed sombrero was ornamented with gold and silver lace and had a golden snake for a band. His Mexican short jacket of fine buckskin was heavily embroidered with gold. His sheer, expensive shirt was worn open at the throat, with a silk handkerchief knotted about its wide collar. A crimson silk sash was wound about his waist. His chaperejos, or "chaps," were made of a royal Bengal tiger, ornamented down the seams with gold fringe. The tiger's skin had been procured at a circus in Northern Texas. He and some of his fellows had literally captured the circus, killed the tiger and skinned it, just because the desperado chief fancied he'd like to have a pair of tiger skin "chaps." He wore high-heel boots of costly leather, and silver spurs ornamented with little silver bells. He rode the best horses he could steal in Texas and Mexico."
----- N.W. Jennings, "A Texas Ranger," 1930
Source: Traces of Texas Facebook group

[Shakey Jake]

Mrs. M. E. Reed’s City Hotel on North Street, across the street from the Houston and Central Texas Railroad, Elgin, 1880s.

[Shakey Jake]

Today's entry comes from All Things Texas:
The photo you see has been floating around different Texas history pages and many of them are wondering what was on this man's mind at the time it was taken?
The photo was taken by a photographer from Life Magazine in 1937.
The town is Freer, Texas in Duvall County. The history of Freer is quite extensive, but for us at All Things Texas we believe that we can give a little more context to this photo.
The single most important event in the history of Freer occurred in 1928. Three wildcatters drilling on the W. P. Norton property just southwest of what is now the Freer townsite struck one of the nation's largest oil reserves.
The discovery of oil soon turned Freer into what Life magazine called "the last of the tough frontier oil towns."
Those who had seen Freer grow into a town they called home soon realized that the oil boom was changing their way of life and not for the good to those who lived there.
The onset of the "Great Depression" soon saw a little bit of normalcy come to the town of Freer.
But, the 1930s were a decade of phenomenal growth in Freer. The town had two businesses in 1931, but by the spring of 1933, when a fire that started in the Bluebonnet Cafe on Main Street came close to destroying the town. The fire merely provided the citizens of Freer with an opportunity to display their resilience.
By 1936, when the community's population was estimated at 1,200, Freer had sixty businesses and was incorporated for a time. Two years later both the population and the number of businesses had doubled. The town quickly attracted a colorful cast of prostitutes, gamblers, drifters, and drunks, and a certain type of boomtown trash one could say.
So, we believe that this is a photo of an older gentleman just making sure that things on the streets of Freer, Texas remains calm.
Today the population of Freer, Texas is around 2,400.