An old guy’s childhood memories
July 9, 2008 (Wednesday)
Recently the Houston Chronicle published a picture of a window washing crew high atop the 75-story JP Morgan Chase Tower at 600 Travis Street in downtown Houston. Just looking at the picture makes my innards hurt because I can literally feel just like I would if I were up there. Weird.
Getting back to the picture. There were the men working in the foreground, and in the background, a view of that area from 75 stories above. As I looked at the photograph, a lot of memories started flooding my mind.
The tall building itself stands on the block where the Iris Theater had stood, which always showed First Run B Movies and double features with lots of short subjects and cartoons. All this for a child admission of five cents. Hard to believe now, isn’t it? The theater appeared to be under one roof with an “L” shaped corridor from Travis Avenue to Capitol Avenue that housed a penny arcade, loaded with the old time stuff like electronic shooting galleries and a mystical mechanical woman wearing a turban in a glass cage who moved playing cards and gave you a little prize sometimes. The arcade wound around to Capitol Avenue, where it joined the Uptown Theater, which also had cheap admission (more than a nickel), right beside the booth where you could throw baseballs at stacks of bowling pins and win a kewpie doll. Nearby was a stairway that led down to a tunnel that descended steeply to a point under Capitol Avenue and then rose steeply to a large penny arcade that was really “old-timey.” It had stuff in it that dated back to the previous century. One of the attractions was a band with real instruments but no humans that performed a musical number for a coin. That penny arcade was beneath the Texan Theater, which also had bargain admission charges. I think someone told me that old tunnel was reworked and became part of the tunnel system that now spreads spider-like under the streets of downtown Houston, and houses a world of its own with shops, eating establishments, etc.
So the Chronicle photograph taken in the sky set loose thoughts in my mind of days gone by when I was running underground in an old-fashioned tunnel.
I’m thinking of starting a touring service with the slogan, “I can show you places in Houston that aren’t there anymore!” LOL. Reminiscing is OK, just as long as I don’t start living in the past. If I do that, I’m done.