Brown Cracker & Candy Co.

Opened in 1903 at 603 Munger Ave. in what is now the West End market district. They were in business until at least the early 1940s.

Thank you to the anonymous reader who mentioned Clyde Barrow may have worked here. I found a reference in Jeff Guinn's book, "Go Down Together", which says Clyde worked at the Brown Cracker Company around 1925-1926 when he was 15 or 16 years old, for a dollar a day. Not for long, though; he moved on to another factory that paid 30 cents an hour, more than twice as much for an 8 hour day. Guinn's book on Bonnie and Clyde was a pretty good read, though quibbler that I am, I have some doubts about his grasp of Dallas geography.

Big Tex

above photo by Stryker

"Howdy folks! Welcome to the State Fair of Texas!" A couple of 1950-1960s era pics of Big Tex. Is it me, or does he look like he's counting the seconds until his next bathroom break in that second photo?

I don't know when his shirt went from red to yellow, as shown in this recent photo by
Randy A. Carlisle (Randy has lots of great Dallas stuff on his photostream) but somebody made a major fashion faux pax, in my opinion. Tex looks like he's on medication, too, nowadays.

More on Big Tex

The song "Big Tex's Girl" by the Lounge Lizards is a lovely ode to the big guy.

Little America

Two scenes of the "Little America" exhibit at the State Fair. Top one is from 1936; bottom one may be 1936 or 1937. I'm not sure what this exhibit was all about. The building looked like mounds of snow and it was decorated with penguins. I remember seeing at least one similar construction, probably in Wyoming, in the 1960s. We may have stopped there for gas, but that's about all I remember about it. It may be my faulty memory, but I thought there were several of these in remote locations in the West.

addenda: Little America, WY, is the location of the gas station I was thinking of. This exhibit may be a Sinclair Gas promotion (they owned the Little America Refinery), or as someone suggested, it may be related to Admiral Byrd's encampment in Antarctica.

Fair Park

Announcement: The Twenty-Fifth Annual Fair Exposition and Race Meet, of the State Fair of Texas, will be held in the Fair Grounds Park, Dallas, Texas, October Fifteenth-Thirtieth, Nineteen Ten. - Edwin J. Kiest, President

Cliffites should recognize the Kiest name.

In 1910 the Main Entrance included a stop for the Interurban. It only took 99 years to get another trainstop at Fair Park (the newly opened Green Line).

The New Coliseum, 1910

Exposition Building

Textile and Fine Arts Building

State Fair of Texas

Entrance to State Fair - circa 1910

Unnamed avenue in Fair Park - card postmarked 1908.

Bird's eye view of the Amusement Park - card postmarked 1906.

Larry's Dining

Located at 5315 E. Grand, right where R.L. Thornton crosses Grand nowadays. The name on the matchbook says "Larry Walker's Dining Room", but I could only find references to "Larry's Dining", owned by Larry Walker, and only from 1938 to 1940. In 1940 the No. 1 Dinner at Larry's included a Fancy T-bone steak, fried potatoes and salad for 45 cents. The restaurant was slated for a complete remodel in early 1940 and after that I found no more references to the place.

Larry Walker also ran Dallas' largest Christmas tree business at 4005 Oak Lawn Ave. from 1932 to at least 1946. In 1946 the site also hosted Weber's Root Beer Stand, which was listed as Larry's Root Beer in 1948. In 1954 the Christmas tree business was run by someone else, and Larry's Root Beer had morphed back to Weber's Root Beer.

Shamburger's Select Business College

Circa 1928. "The School of Efficiency" taught the following subjects: Shorthand, Touch Typewriting, English, Spelling, Court Reporting, Legal Forms, Business Correspondence, Punctuation, Secretarial Duties, Office Training, Tabulating, Care of Machines, Bookkeeping, Commercial Law, Business Writing, Finger Drills, Comptometer, Dictaphone, Multigraph, and Two weeks in Office. Day and Night School.

Yeah, I guess you'd have to attend day and night to get all that. Looks like you'd be a lawyer and a C.P.A. as well as a secretary. I'll have to find out what a comptometer is. I wonder what the difference was between business correspondence and business writing?

The building located at 5101 Columbia Avenue was built in 1925 and is still standing. The two-story 6400 square foot structure currently functions as a 20-unit motel, is valued at $275,000 on the tax rolls, and according to this image from Google Maps, it may be for sale.