Morning in Tyler, Texas

I drove through Tyler, Texas, last weekend, and went back again this Saturday morning. It was worth the return trip.




Southern Maid has been around since the 1950s


The recently opened Sky Vue Drive-In Theater sign


a church near downtown


Once a Phillips 66

I found this former Humble Oil gas station, looking identical to the ones I'd seen in Houston. Those were Art Deco from the 1930s, so I'd bet this one is too.


The Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall




Looking east, down Erwin St.


The Smith County Courthouse, c. 1955


The Liberty Theatre


The porthole windows on this mean it's Streamline


The former car dealership right across the street appeared to also be Streamline:


This business is still opened.



For a former motor court-style of motel. Probably from the '30s or '40s.



This is lit at night. I'll need to get back one evening.


Masonic Lodge neon sign


This Art Deco building has been around for at least 50 years, according to a commenter at the Flickr page.


Fuller's Fine Foods, open for business



Stanley's Pit Bar B-Q, in business since 1959

"American Patrol"

The Wikipedia entry:

"American Patrol" is a popular march written by F.W. Meacham in 1885. Written originally for piano, it was then arranged for wind band and published by Carl Fischer in 1891. Meacham's widow renewed the copyright in 1912. It was later arranged for Glenn Miller's swing band by Jerry Gray, and was also arranged by composer Morton Gould. It incorporates melodies from other patriotic American songs of the era such as "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" and "Dixie".

"American Patrol" was popular in both the Great War and World War II.

Glenn Miller made it swing baby, yeah:

"Chattanooga Choo Choo"

From the Wikipedia entry:

"Chattanooga Choo Choo" was a big-band/swing song featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade, which starred amongst others Sonja Henie, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, the Modernaires, Milton Berle, and Joan Davis. It was performed in the film as an extended production number, featuring vocals by Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, and the Modernaires.

Captain Glenn Miller
The 78-rpm commercial version of the song was recorded on May 7th, 1941 for RCA Victor's Bluebird label and became the first to be certified a gold disc on February 10, 1942, for sales of 1,200,000.

The song was written by the team of Mack Gordon and Harry Warren while traveling on the Southern Railway's "Birmingham Special" train. The song tells the story of travelling from New York City to Chattanooga. The Chattanooga Choo Choo did not refer to any particular train, though some have incorrectly asserted that it referred to Louisville and Nashville's Dixie Flyer or the Southern Railway's Crescent Limited.

Here is that performance from the movie Sun Valley Serenade. The singer is Tex Beneke, accompanied by Paula Kelly and the Modernaires, with of course, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra:


This person videoed his Wurlitzer 1015 78rpm jukebox as it played the original Bluebird label recording. It's so cool someone would share this with everybody in Internetland:


"You leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner
Nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham an' eggs in Carolina"
All the verses are good, but that one is particularly nice. Great meter. Rappers would call it flow. Know what I'm sayin'?

20 Men I Admire

Keith at The Dino Lounge has come up with a pretty cool meme. Says Keith:

This is called the 20 Men I Admire Meme. The title pretty much says it all. I decided to pick entertainers of the past (some of these men are still living), but other bloggers could pick men of any era.

Make sure you post these rules when you participate in this meme. Here are the rules:

A. Link back to the blog that tagged you.

B. Link back to the originator of this meme, which is The Dino Lounge.

C. Create your own list of 20 men that you admire and post them on your blog.

D. Tag 5 other people to particpate in this meme.

E. If you like, please let The Dino Lounge know that you've participated in this meme so he can check out your posting and comment on it. Thanks.

I'll tag the following individuals, all of whom will meet with varying degrees of bad luck should they break the chain choose to not participate. Actually, I'm tagging a few sites that don't do this type of post, so I do not expect them to follow up.

1. He who tagged me, the hardest working pop culture blogger in show business, Gilligan at Retrospace. Little buddy has done some of the most original posts in existence. If you think you have a unique idea for a post, forget about - he's already done it!

2. Mr. Dante Fontana at PCL LinkDump, an inspiration to pop culture bloggers around the world, and one of the first.

3. Rich at fourfour. He is a talented writer with an amazing work ethic, who is also maddeningly creative and funny as hell. He was an early inspiration for me to try my hand at doing a blog, and one of the first "big blogs" to link to me.

4. Cathy at cityrag. Again, an inspiration to begin a blog of my own. My original "vision" for this blog was an East Texas cityrag. I just couldn't live up to it. Two of the greatest experiences I've had being a blogger occurred on two separate occasions when she linked to my Ocean's 11 and Tony Rome posts. I was surprised I could fit my head through the door the morning after those days.

5. Finally, Gunnar and Sherry at Eccentric Roadside, who share my love of "the road," and all the cool things awaiting discovery out there, upon it.

And now, the 20 Men I Admire, not so much ordered as they are categorized:

My Father
Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Jefferson
Raymond Chandler
Philip Roth
John Steinbeck
Kurt Vonnegut
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
William Christenberry
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
Oscar Peterson
Duke Ellington
Dave Brubeck
Prince
James Dean
Peter Sellers
Prison Mike, a.k.a., Steve Carell
Francis Albert Sinatra

"The Devil's Gallop"

I received Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life as a Christmas gift, and despite having read a couple of other Lennon biographies (as well as numerous books on the Beatles, including Norman's own Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation), I am enjoying it thus far. And I'm learning new things about a topic I thought I'd already exhausted. Chapter three includes the following passage:

From John's earliest childhood, his response to music was instant and visceral. In 1946, just before his sixth birthday, the BBC Light Programme started the nightly fifteen-minute adventures of Dick Barton, Special Agent, and Austerity forerunner to James Bond, introduced by a melodramatic theme tune called "The Devil's Gallop." Mimi recalled how deathly white John's face always went each evening at 6:45 as its frantic strains echoed through the house. (Norman, p. 42)

John posing outside 251 Menlove Avenue (Mendips)
So, here is an early musical imprint (as played by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain) on John Winston Lennon (and therefore, the world):


John and Mimi