Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

I came across this aerial photo by Basil Clemons of Breckenridge, Tx in 1921. It must have been something to have a well in your front yard.

[Shakey Jake]

Another fine picture from the UTA digital library. Here's a picture of some B-29 Superfortress flying over Fort Worth in the 1940's. I can only image that they were stationed at Carswell AFB after final modification at the Lockheed Martin plant.

[Shakey Jake]

My, oh, my.... this must have been one of the earliest drive throughs. Dated 1926 in Breckinridge, TX. I wonder what made the root beer Triple X?
I bet the food was good as well. This is another photo from the Basil Clemons collection at the UTA digital library.

[Shakey Jake]

Here's a fine picture of kids on a scrap metal drive in Hunt County, Tx dated September 1942. It also comes from the UTA digital library. It has the description: Scrap metal drive. Left to right, Billy Joe Kilman, 6; Camille Few, 12; and Bonnie Dove Jones, 10; shown with pile of scrap metal. The detail is amazing.

[Shakey Jake]

From Traces of Tx Facebook :
"A ride at Luna Park in Houston, 1922. Is it just me or does the apparent construction of this ride look pretty flimsy? Maybe I'm just a wussy but those supporting cables look kind of skinny and the tower/derrick they are affixed to doesn't look like anything I'd necessarily trust.
Luna Park was an amusement park that was operated from 1924 until about 1934. The 36-acre "Coney Island of Texas" was built at a cost of $325,000 and featured a carousel, picnic areas, live entertainment (including diving horses), a dance hall with spring-supported floors, and various mechanical rides, including the Giant Skyrocket roller coaster. At night the park (located near 2200 Houston Avenue) was bathed in the light emitted from 50,000 light bulbs. While it was a trolley park, Houston's Luna Park was one of the first amusement parks to offer free automobile parking to its patrons.
I retrieved this from one of the most obscure internet places I've been to, the David Fried Coney Island Collection at Columbia University. But hey .... no digital distance too great to please the readers of this page."

As an addendum there were three deaths in the park in 1924. Two people died falling from the "Skyrocket" and the third by a professional parachutist, Montie LeMay, when his parachute failed to open. The following August (1925) a local barber was stabbed. A few years later in 1930 a corpse was found on the property and in 1932 a man was hijacked while sitting in his car on the property. Shortly after a Sherriff's deputy was assaulted in the park. The park closed permanently in 1934.

[Hatchdog]

My, oh, my.... this must have been one of the earliest drive throughs. Dated 1926 in Breckinridge, TX. I wonder what made the root beer Triple X?
I bet the food was good as well. This is another photo from the Basil Clemons collection at the UTA digital library.

Not sure if you’re joking or not but here is the history of XXX root beer. It started up here in the Pacific Northwest and as a kid there was a Rutherford XXX Rootbeer burger joint out in the Spokane valley. I don’t know when it closed but it was there for decades. Ate there a few times but it was quite a distance from where I grew up as a kid so it wasn’t high on our list of burger joints.

http://www.triplexrootbeer.com/history.htm

[Shakey Jake]

My, oh, my.... this must have been one of the earliest drive throughs. Dated 1926 in Breckinridge, TX. I wonder what made the root beer Triple X?
I bet the food was good as well. This is another photo from the Basil Clemons collection at the UTA digital library.

Not sure if you’re joking or not but here is the history of XXX root beer. It started up here in the Pacific Northwest and as a kid there was a Rutherford XXX Rootbeer burger joint out in the Spokane valley. I don’t know when it closed but it was there for decades. Ate there a few times but it was quite a distance from where I grew up as a kid so it wasn’t high on our list of burger joints.

http://www.triplexrootbeer.com/history.htm

Thanks, I was wondering if it had any alcohol content to make it Triple X. I looked at the menu and the food looks delicious.
Jake

[Shakey Jake]

From TSHA Texas Day by Day:
On this day in 1896, colorful lawman Roy Bean staged a heavyweight championship fight on a sandbar just below Langtry, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Bean, known as the "Law West of the Pecos," was appointed justice of the peace for Pecos County in 1882. He settled at Eagle's Nest Springs, which acquired a post office and a new name, Langtry, in honor of the English actress Lillie Langtry, whom Bean greatly admired. Bean soon became known as an eccentric and original interpreter of the law. When a man killed a Chinese laborer, for example, Bean ruled that his law book did not make it illegal to kill a Chinese. And when a man carrying forty dollars and a pistol fell off a bridge, Bean fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed weapon, thereby providing funeral expenses. He intimidated and cheated people, but he never hanged anybody. He reached his peak of notoriety with his staging of the match between Peter Maher of Ireland and Bob Fitzsimmons of Australia. The fight was opposed by civic and religious leaders such as Baptist missionary Leander Millican, and both the Mexican and the U.S. governments had prohibited it. Bean arranged to hold it on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, knowing the Mexican authorities could not conveniently reach the site, and that Woodford H. Mabry's Texas Rangers would have no jurisdiction. The spectators arrived aboard a chartered train; after a profitable delay contrived by Bean, the crowd witnessed Fitzsimmons's defeat of Maher in less than two minutes. Among the spectators was another somewhat disreputable lawman and boxing promoter, Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson.

[Shakey Jake]

I came across this picture on the UTA digital website and it just got to me a bit. The photo's description tells it all:
Description: Private Milford Hawkins is back home with his wife and two children at 112 N. Riverside Drive after five months in a Nazi prison camp. Hawkins said he had really been wined and dined by his friends and relatives and with any number of delicious dishes since his return home, but his favorite of favorites is still Mrs. Roseland Hawkins' cocoanut cream pie. But we can't get the cocoanut so the next best thing is her lemon pie, which Mrs. Hawkins insists is an "ice box pie". She makes it by crumbling up about 20 or 25 vanilla wafers with a rolling pin, adding two tablespoons of melted butter and mixing well. That is put into a pie plate and pressed all around into an even crust. Then she takes a can of sweetened condensed milk, the juice of two lemons and two egg yolks, beat the lemon juice and eggs together, adds the milk and then pours the finished mixture into the crust. She says she makes the meringue out of the whites of two eggs and a teaspoon of sugar. The pie is browned in the oven and then chilled in the ice box before it is ready to be served. In this picture is Mrs. Hawkins making her pie in her kitchen. Published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram evening edition, August 9, 1945.

[Shakey Jake]

Per TSHA on this day Nepomuceno Navarro changed sides and joined the Texas militia. Nepomuceno Navarro, a member of Juan N. Seguin's company of Tejanos who fought at the battle of San Jacinto, was a private in the Bexar Presidio in 1831. Apparently dissatisfied with military life, he deserted his post on two occasions. As a disciplinary measure, he was transferred to the Álamo de Parras Company, stationed at Fort Tenoxtitlán, a remote garrison near the Brazos River. When he arrived there, he found the conditions no better and, in many ways, worse than at his previous post. This prompted a series of regular troop desertions from that location as well. The frequency of these and the small size of the garrison usually resulted in Navarro's being returned to duty with little more than a reprimand. After the company returned to Bexar in 1832, the political turmoil that ensued prompted Navarro's permanent departure from the Mexican army. On February 22, 1836, he enlisted in Juan N. Seguín's company of Tejanos. He served with Seguín at San Jacinto and remained in the army until July 15, 1836. By 1840 he had married María de Jesús Urón and become the father of at least one child. For his participation in the Texas Revolution he received donation and bounty land grants including 320 acres in 1852 for military service from February 22 to July 15, 1836, and a pension. He was a member of the Texas Veterans Association until his death, in San Antonio on April 8, 1877.