This is a blog for old timers, plus their friends and families, who are linked by memories of Sugar Land and its schools or have an avid interest in the history of Sugar Land.
(UPDATE) I got a note from Bettye Anhaiser recently giving some information on the girls in this picture. Here's what she said, "The Sugar Land Express picture I have seen, and two of the girls are Phelps sisters, Alice and Roma. I knew them in DAR, and they were sweet as can be."
This photo shows four girls and a dog sitting in a cart near the narrow-gauge railway that served the cane fields west of Sugar Land. Life must have moved pretty slow back then if this is an express mode of transportation.
This photo comes from the Fort Bend Museum Collection.
(UPDATE) I got a note from Jackie James a few days ago. She pointed out something I realized when I found this picture on the Internet, but failed to note when I posted this entry. This picture shows honored employees of the Imperial Sugar Company and Sugarland Industries. I realized this when I read the caption because I saw names of people I knew worked for SL Industries: Gus Stabler (Sugar Land Motors), Otis Enquist (Residential Maintenance), and Paul Schumann (General Mercantile Store).
I also want to point out that these are employees who were honored for significant anniversaries; for example, 5 years of employment, 10 years, 15 years, etc. If any of them were celebrating anniversaries of 40 years or longer, they were employees 'before the beginning.' (I mean they must have worked for Kempner & Eldridge when they owned the Sartaria operation before they bought out Cunningham in 1908.)
(I wonder where they held the banquet. Maybe it was an outside event?)
The photograph below shows employees of the Imperial Sugar Company taken at their employee appreciation dinner in November of 1947. The group includes 46 men and two women (front row). They are posing in front of the old Imperial Offices in front of the Refinery.
Employees are identified beginning with the front row left to right: Gus Stabler, W. L. Friend, Mabel Dunkerly Woolley, Myrtle Friend Stabler, J. E. "Daddy" Blair, Claude Douglas, Homer Johnson, R. B. "Bob" Sheppard, Frank Schultz, Luke Thompson, J. Q. Boyer, H. R. Rushing, Louie Dreier, Vic Krehmeier, Willie Reese.
Second Row: J. B. Fowler, Eluterio Cervantez, Juan Cervantez, J. F. "Jim" Guyer, R. A. Prikryl, M. M. McBride, Henry A. "Buck" Herder, A. M. Horn, W. L. Scarborough, E.O. Guenther, S. V. "Sid" Loper, J. M. "Jim" Sheppard, J.H. "Jinx" Hobbs, Paul Schumann, I.H. Kempner Sr, Harry G. Thompson, E.E. Saeger.
Top Row: C. A. Dierks, Frank Tallas, W. T. "Bill" Matlage, Frank Hauerland, Ramaldo Nanez, Cosme Gonzales, Max Schumann, T. F. Freeland Smith, Arthur Rister, Frank Seitz, B. H. "Bennie" Varnau, O.W. "Otis" Enquist, Robert Harper, Frank Williams, Lee Townsend, Ted Harman.
This pictures comes from the Fort Bend Museum Collection.
Randy Kozlovsky (DHS '66) took photographs at the most recent SLHS reunion at The Swinging Door. Here's a link. (Move your cursor over the corporal's stripes in the lower right-hand corner and a control panel will appear. You can use it to move through the slides manually or to adjust the speed of the automatic display.)
Some of you may remember Sid Lasher, the popular weatherman on KHOU in the 1960s. In the summer of 1964 he and his family moved to Sugar Land. This was big news back in those days, so The Fort Bend Mirror used it to promote local businesses. Here are the photos printed in the July 30th edition of the paper.
The captions explain the pictures, so no need for me to explain anything. However, I want to say three things. First, notice W. T. Allen in the Sugar Land Motors pictures. I think the look on his face says, "What a waste of time .... I'll never sell this high-roller a used Chevrolet." Second is the photo of Sid at Preston's check-out counter. Looks to me like he suspects Preston's inventory may be a little stale, and there could be some mouse droppings in that box of cereal.
I also noticed Sid is holding a cigarette in a couple of pictures. I wonder if that's why Mr. Womack brought up the issue of cancer insurance when they met.
Here's a clip from the Laird Family home movies Tommy posted on YouTube. It shows several things, which Tommy explains in the comments on the YouTube Web site. Good stuff.
I'd forgotten that Tommy Laird (DHS '67) had posted some his family's home movies on YouTube. Here's a clip of riding with Santa ('Soapy' Borowski) and his helper (Albert Grohman) around the Sugar Land Shopping Center at Christmas time.
I fixed this so the clip would play on YouTube because Tommy has made some comments on the site. You may want to read them.
I'm sure everyone remembers this Sugar Land institution: riding through the shopping center parking lot in the old fire truck with Santa during the Christmas holidays. Here are a couple of polaroid pictures from the Seitz-Plokuda family collection. The first one shows Santa ('Soapy' Borowski) with his helper (Albert Grohman) driving some kids through the parking lot. Judging by the cars, I'd say this picture was taken in the early 1970s.
Here's a picture of Santa and his helpers taking a break. (They probably had to stop so Santa could replenish his bag of candy.)
Tommy Laird has told me that he, Danny Borowski (Update: Duane Riggs, not Danny), and Johnny Armstrong tried to throw Albert in the creek when they worked at Imperial one summer as student employees. He said they had a heck of a time wrestling him into the water even though he was 'an old man.' I wish I could have seen that. Here's an article from The Crown (Imperial bulletin) published in June, 1971.
I scanned this from the June, 1969 issue of The Crown, Imperial Sugar's company bulletin. I wonder if anyone ever called Lupe 'Loopy'. I doubt it judging by his expression in this picture. (Lupe is a graduate of Dulles High School's Class of '63.)
Bruce found a batch of pictures our grandmother clipped from the Fort Bend Mirror. This was one of them. The clipping doesn't show the date, but I think this is from the 1960/61 school year. Regardless, I'm happy to know they learned how to be creative with beans and rice.
This is the first Sugar Land High School Gator. The school took pictures of students, teachers, groups, and activities before 1947, but they never collected them in a bound year book until 1947.
I don't know if anyone else watches the program 'Postcards from Texas' on Channel 55 here in Houston. They have some good stories. Here's one about the San Jacinto Inn. It was a real treat when I got to go there on family outings.
I wish I had the exact date on this. It's sometime between 1962 and '64. I think Janice Jenkins Girard (DHS '68) gave me these images. Regardless, I have a video of the dress rehearsal. Bill Little filmed it with his Super 8 movie camera. I've lent it to the City. When it comes back, I'll post it here. Meanwhile, you have the program.
I remember seeing the production in the old auditorium.
Does anyone else remember these beer ads? I do. I think Hamm's was a late-comer to our market. It seems like I first saw these ads in the early 1960s. Lone Star, Falstaff, Schlitz, and Jax owned the market back in the '50s.
Speaking of Jax Beer, here's a commercial I remember pretty well. Mike Nichols and Elaine May wrote and performed it. They used the same skit for other regional beers. As I recall, they did several different animated commercials for Jax.
This photo shows the commercial district in front of the refinery. Highway 90A is on the right. It's not paved yet, so this photo was taken before 1927 or '28, but after 1925 since the Char House is there.
I'm amazed at the number of cars in the picture. Maybe there were a lot of out-of-town shoppers that day!
Linda Hagler Mosk lent me these pictures several years ago. They were taken on the playground in the second circle in front of the gym. Apparently, my 4th grade class went on a field trip that day to the San Jacinto Monument. Linda took several pictures before we got on the buses.
The first one shows Mrs. Drew with (from left to right) Bob Munson, Pat Bowker, and Henry Mendoza.
The next one shows my 4th grade teacher, Rita Drabek. I think that is Yolanda Flores in the background. I can't tell who the boys are way in the background.
The next photo shows Janice Jenkins Girard and Marsha Krause Smith. I think they are flashing an ancient gang sign.
You can see our destination, the San Jacinto Monument with Daniel Stavinoha's back.
Here's another gang: Penny Morton, Joan Maresh Hansen, Kathy Louviere, and Yolanda Flores.
We have a few knuckleheads in this final picture. Who knows what they were up to: Sam McJunkin is choking a smiling Alec Horn, while Mitchell Hall is making an ugly face, and John Frierson chokes himself.
Bruce received this picture from Ida Marie Seitz Plokuda. She and her brother are pictured with a large catfish caught in Oyster Creek behind their house on Main Street. I'll bet their father caught it on a trot line or hook and line. If the latter, I'll bet it gave him a terrific fight.
I figured I should post a current fishing picture. Bruce caught this Bull Red over at Crystal Beach a couple of years ago. I think they caught several this size.
I don't know if any of you have been noodling, but my family is a bunch of noodlers from way back. I'm talking about catching giant catfish by hand. PBS has a great documentary about noodlers in Oklahoma. I thought it was well worth seeing. Noodlers wade in rivers searching for holes in in river banks and river beds, where large catfish hide. You put your bare fist in the hole and wait till the catfish bites it and then wrestle it out of the hole. You've got to have tungsten &%$!#s to fish like that IMHO.
Anyway, the branches of my mother's family (Rachuig & Schulz) that live near the Bosque River in Clifton, Texas have noodled catfish since they moved there in the late 1800s.
The first picture was taken sometime in the 1930s. The man on the far right is my great-grandfather, Julius Herman Rachuig. The other men are his sons, sons-in-law, and brother-in-law. There's another picture of the same group with more fish, so that's not all they caught.
This second picture was taken in the '40s. The third man from the left is my grandfather, Herbert Albert Rachuig. I'm not certain who the others are except for the man on the far right. He's my grandfather's oldest brother, Walter Alfred Rachuig, Sr. My aunt says they filleted these fish, covered them in corn meal, and fried them in a cauldron of oil. She says they were delicious.
I remember watching a local afternoon television show on KPRC back in the mid to late 50s. It was called "Matinee" and Dick Gottlieb was its host. They had local talent, which included Johnny Nash, who was just a teenager at the time.
I recall another pair of artists featured on the show, Curly Fox and Texas Ruby. They had a C&W band. Curly played the fiddle and sang. Ruby sang and played guitar. I found some of their work on YouTube and liked it.
Pat Schiller Bono (DHS '65) told me she and Linda Goerlitz Tamburri (DHS '66) were related to Curly and Ruby. Of course, I never knew that.
I'm going to see if Jerry Naill is on YouTube. (Update: I've found a newsreel clip of the Houston premiere of "Tomboy And The Champ" in 1961. See above.)
