(Exercise, Bad tooth, Disaster)
July 2, 2008 (Wednesday)
Yesterday I wrote about 1941, so I may as well do it again today. The downtown YMCA in Houston was built in 1941. The ten-story building on Louisiana between Leeland and Pease has been purchased by its neighbor, Chevron, which occupies the Enron Building. It would cost too much to do the repairs necessary to continue its use.
My cousin, Clinton Attaway, and I used to frequent the “Y” after school several times a week. If I remember correctly, the fee was $16 per year at the time, quite a bargain (less than a nickel per day). We played basketball, wrestled, played pool, lifted weights, swam in a giant indoor pool, and probably other activities I can’t recall. I learned to swim, sort of, in that pool. We had great times together, Clinton and I, and many times we would walk from the “Y” to work at the Majestic Theater, where our 5-hour shift as ushers (at 35 cents per hour) started at 5:00 p.m. All our transportation in those days was via city bus, also a real bargain with a student card, at pennies per ride.
One day in April, 1947, I dived into the pool and immediately felt pressure and some pain in my face. I had an abscessed tooth, without knowing it, and the dive somehow caused it to get worse. I always associated the resulting pain the next day with the dive, whether it had anything to do with it or not, and to this day have never dived again. On April 16, 1947, my stepfather, Joe Heim, took me to a dentist on Harrisburg Boulevard. As I sat in the chair, I heard from the street the piercing sound of sirens and we could see through the window a steady stream of emergency vehicles headed toward Texas City, where up to 600 or more people had been killed in explosions.
My dental work resulted in a single-tooth permanent bridge. It is still in my mouth, a gold tooth with a porcelain anterior surface, dated from that eventful day, April 16, 1947. I’ve chewed a lot of food with that tooth for 61 years.
Back to the YMCA building downtown. The money from its sale will be the basis for a fund raising campaign to build a new home for the organization which encouraged me to do daily workouts and made me into the handsome specimen of manhood I am today. lol.
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Article about the 2008 sale and demolition of the Houston YMCA building: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5865081.html
Article about the 1947 Texas City disaster:
http://www.iwannagetthat.com/NewFiles/1947-texas-city-disaster.html