Victorian Christmas Art Walk

Every third Friday Winnsboro has what's know as the "Art Walk".  It's a promotional weekend event for the merchants but on the Friday evening a themed walk takes place.  It starts at the Keyring Art Gallery and then the participating folks stroll down the streets and visit the downtown shops and restaurants.  Last month it was Renaissance and the month before was Steampunk!  There's also western and Thirty's, and Fifty's, etc. This month it was Victorian Christmas and carolers came along too.  Some stops are just a visit to the merchant and a customer or two, some are a bit bigger as we parade through a restaurant full of folks having dinner.  It's a lot of fun!  Then we gather at A&E for refreshments afterwards.  Michael Alford took the picture above just before we left the gallery last evening..  

Pancho - the early times!

Nostalgia overload!!

This little place used to be the library.  I went here a lot! 

So we've driven through Irving several times in the last few years but yesterday Glynda attended a Dulcimer festival that was in, of all places, the First Methodist Church in Irving which is where I went to VBS when I was a kid - they didn't have things like that at the Christian Science Church.  So yesterday I spent a couple hours walking around old downtown Irving and our old neighborhood.  Overload!  Anyway - here's some pictures I took - with captions. 

Irving Shoe Repair - It was just a couple doors down from dads' "Ray Willis Paint Store" in the early 1950's and it's still there now and a guy took in a pair of shoes while I was there.  Who repairs shoes anymore?  Back then you always re-soled shoes at least once!

Not at all as it was then so I just took a photo of the number - 120 S. Main Street.  Used to be dads' store.  Now it's a florist that looks sorta like a head shop once you're inside. 

Big State Drug store - opened in 1948.  Glynda had lunch at their soda fountain and later in the day I had coffee there.  Lots of old folks eating there - looks like their clientele will die off in a few years.  I also took a picture of a shelf of old prescriptions - looks like they have them all from the beginning!

306 High School Lane - Dad had it built while we were living next door at 704 E. Third Street - a house that he had built using concrete blocks.  Both are still there.

704 East Third Street.  I was probably 4 or 5 when we moved here.

On the right - Griff's Hamburgers - they were 5 for a dollar.  Straight ahead - the Irving Theater - movies for a quarter.  And to the right a convenience store - nickle candy bars and nickle cokes.  For $1.00 Linda and I could go to the movies and have a hamburger and coke afterwards.  (No sales tax then either.)

One of my favorite stores was the Army & Navy store.  It's still there only it's now called the Army & Navy Pawn Shop.  I bought my back pack for school there - army surplus - and they still have them and they are close to the same place in the store!

Different building and even a different denomination now - but it used to be the Presbyterian church.  My Cub Scout pack and Boy Scout troop met there and Suzie and I got married there.

A community building - it's where I went to take my tests to get my drivers license.

Around the corner was the fire station

The little white building was a barber shop and was where I got my hair cuts.  The house on the right faced one street and the little building faced another street.  It was just a few blocks from our house on High School Lane.

519 Union Bower Road - Herb and Meree sold it to us when they moved and it's where we lived when Bambi was born.

Dads' lodge - the same sign was there then.

I know I'm sounding like an old guy here but that's the way it is! 
And now I'm learning why old guys act like old guys and don't even care!

La Madeleine - then and now

I had a La Madeleine breakfast for lunch today - was in Dallas for a Dr. appt. and was in the area.  The next step of degradation was there and I'm beginning to wonder how low they can go.

If you go back to the founder who's name was Patrick Esquerré, was French, who supported the local community, and wanted to create a French dining experience you'd find it quite different than it is now.  The "American Breakfast" is what we ate there every Friday morning.  The meal included a big, flaky croissant, two big and tasty sausages, and scrambled eggs.  The table had a little vase with a fresh flower.  Jam was served in a little white china dish.  The paper napkins were big and fluffy and were printed with a nice logo picture.  Coffee was made by the pot and was fresh and hot.  the food was brought to your table by a friendly wait person and for many years, where we went, it was a guy named Gerber that became a friend.  The manager and other staff became friends too.  It cost $4.99.

Then the business was sold and became a business - the kind where profit was the driver.  You could tell from the beginning that middle managers were looking for little ways to pull a few more pennies into the profit column by cutting down on what was being provided.  The cut flowers were the first to go.  Then the napkins became tiny little things that made you pick up 3-4 to take the place of the one (false economy there). And they  were plain - no more pictures on them.  We noticed each of these as they came along and joked/cryed about them to the manager.  Prices started going up too.  Then the little china dishes of jam went away in favor of a little plastic container with its snap-on top and they were half full. Again we found it necessary to take 2-3 to make up for the one that was taken away.  The sausages became smaller and then smaller again.  Now they're crusty little half-dollar size things. Then, after a bit, they started using the blinking-vibrating things that told you when you were suppose to pickup your own food. No more Gerber bringing it to your table he buses tables.  Today I experienced two more cost cutting devices.  The croissants that were once so excellent are now little more then crescent shaped bread - not worth the name croissant!  And the final (the restaurant we visited was one of the last to make this change) the coffee is now served in a very large thermos - and was barely warm!  The eggs?  They are about the only thing that I haven't noticed changing for the worse.  I paid  $6.39  for my breakfast today.

Of course we're retired and living in the country now and only make the breakfast trip a few times a year.  But there's really no longer any reason to go back.  Nothing special there any more. We've got a couple friends that we have lunch with every Wednesday at a local east Texas coffee shop.  We discovered a short while back that during the time we were having our Friday breakfasts at La Madeleine, they were having Saturday breakfasts there.  As we compared notes we found that we were all noticing the same changes as they took place.  So it comes under the category of nostalgia now.  But it was once very nice!

Another old report card

A few weeks ago I posted a few school report cards of a couple ancestors. I discovered this one today and decided to post it.  It is my own second grade report card from 1948 - thanks mom! 

The top part is the front and back (it folds).  Notice that the handwritten part says that I had a "grade equivalent of 4.2"  - at the end of my second grade year.  I was pretty smart way back then!  Also - we were graded on nine traits of "Citizenship" - and, of course, I got the top mark in all of those.

In the other section the grading is interesting.  It shows how many kids in the class, how many got A's, how many got B's, etc. Then your own grade was circled in red.  That really gives some good information! (And you'll see all A's circled - but from the looks of things that really meant that I was not in the bottom quarter or so.)  The "Explanation of Marks" isn't exactly accurate - "C" was not "Average", in actuality, "C" (in most cases) was the lowest 5-10%!

The other interesting thing to me are the subjects - Arithmetic, Drawing, and then "Language & Grammar", "Reading", "Spelling & Phonics", and "Writing".  Also "Music" for which we were not graded.

This is where I went to school in grades 3-6.  The 2nd grade building was behind this one and in the 7th grade I moved to the building visible to the right.  In the 8th grade we moved to a new campus.

Do you know what this is?

I just occurred to me to check this out this morning.  It's "The Spread"!  And it's a little different.  It looks like the barn we built for the horses is gone. I think the "museum" is still there but not sure.  There's a swimming pool and I think that's probably an in-ground job.  It appears that the house has a new roof and that there's a new structure or two between the house and the barn. (click to make it bigger)

Street View doesn't go down Fenoglio Road.  This is the turn-off from Highway 59 coming from Montague.

An unexpected project!!

We came home a few days ago and found Missy.  She'd been taking tin off of the part of the old barn roof that had fallen down.

Two days later this is what the barn looks like

This is where the barn was

T

This is the first load of junk leaving.  He got over $300 for it!

This is the camper leaving!  There are three more trailers to haul away.

There's still quite a bit of clean-up to do but it's good to be at this stage.

Found this on the internet - gotta post it!

Facebook and the page "Irving Texas, Hey I grew up there" has brought back some old memories recently, a few contacts with old friends, and a link to this picture (and others). It's my fourth grade class - Mrs. Powell's class. I'm second row from the back on the far right side and I'm sitting next to Lois Copeland which was an envied place to be at the time. However, my true love was Pat Rogers! She's the one on the second row with her arms folded - towards the center of the picture. "Her hair hung down in ringlets" - but then you probably don't remember the song that had that in the lyrics. Pat lived in the neighborhood a couple blocks away and for several years she was my partner in the square dance group that met at our house on Third Street. A few years later she was adopted by her new father, her last name changed to Robinson, and she moved away and out of my life forever! The guy sitting on the other side of Lois was named Forrest Weaver and we called him "Woody". There's a pharmacy in Tyler named "Woody Weaver's Pharmacy". I keep telling myself to stop in there someday - it's not a common name.

(Just a warning - I've been thinking about documenting some of that early life in the 40's and 50's in Irving so you might see some more posts like this before too long.)

One more thing under the category of "how do they do that?". It's about an hour since I published this post. I've been doing a few Google searches on things that appear in the post. In this short time, in the Google searches I'm getting hits on my post. In less than an hour Google has found my post and has it indexed in many ways and is returning it in searches. How do they do that?