Cruising out of the hood

We were happy to stay in our homes and neighborhood and play, but we did get out and into the surrounding areas and occasionally across the city.  Gasoline was extremely cheap, even considering the lower cost of living and the lower wages.  My mother could fill up the family car for less than twenty cents a gallon.   Driving around was affordable and entertaining. The old Plymouth had been replaced with a beautiful blue and white Buick special, bought on time of course.  My parents really had no business purchasing that car, but they did it anyway.   We drove around a lot, most of it completely pointless, but we enjoyed it anyway, like dogs hanging out the car window.  When it came time to gas up the Buick, I begged to go to the filling station with the flying red horse.  This filling station has since become a San Antonio icon.  It sits at the corner of Broadway and the beginning of the Austin Highway.  Earlier in the century, it had been a great destination for families traveling by Model-T to Austin.  It had a great restroom where the ladies could freshen up and adjust their motoring veils and bonnets.  Still handsome in 1950 with its Spanish architecture, the station was still pumping gas and there was that huge red horse flying on top of the roof.

Very close by, extremely convenient, and family oriented was the Alamo Drive In on the Austin Highway.  If there had been a back door, we could have walked there.  It bordered Sumner Drive on the North end.  Many summer evenings we would be coming home on Olney and could see that night's movie flickering on the big screen.  We went there often as a family, especially during the summers.  Wes and I would don our pajamas and pile into the car.  If the movie lasted past 9:00 p.m. we were usually asleep.  There was a cinderblock restaurant which served up hot dogs, and a play area with swings and teeter totters for children who might have grown bored with the movie.  The playground was right under the big screen, so parents could keep one eye on the movie, and one eye on their kids.  Families would drive in, hook up the speakers to the car window and swat mosquitoes for the next hour or so during the feature film.  Occasionally, someone would forget themselves and drive away with a speaker still hooked to the car window.  Either the speaker or the stand got destroyed.  

We spent a lot of time looking at local real estate and going into any open house we came across.  Our home had been tiny to begin with, and we were already outgrowing it.  My mother’s dream was to get a bigger and better house, but we could never afford it.  So, we contented ourselves with looking, and it was cheap entertainment  to walk into empty houses for sale, looking around and imagining ourselves living there.

In San Antonio, we had ice houses on many corners and in many neighborhoods.  Ice houses date from the days of no refrigeration and were run by ice merchants who provided ice to the neighborhood households.  Later, they diversified into "pre" convenience stores and did a huge business in cold beer.  Many ice houses still had their ice chamber, now stacked with cases of beer rather than ice blocks.  Ice houses still sold ice, but also cold drinks including root beer floats, ice cream, a few basic groceries, and the best of all:  homemade tamales.  Locals visited the Ize House at Broadway and the beginning of the Austin Highway for sodas and slices of ice cold watermelon.  Another ice house stood on Harry Wurzbach, just south of Rittiman Road.  Here, they kept a steamer full of hot tamales, probably homemade, which were the best in the area, even better than what the local El Rancho served.  It was a quick and easy snack, or family meal when combined with a pot of beans and some rice.  The Harry Wurzbach ice house even had its original cooler.  Ice houses appear to be a Texas and particularly San Antonio peculiarity.  Everyone who lived in San Antonio knows what an ice house is, but many others are unfamiliar with the term.  

A huge Handy Andy grocery store was soon built on Harry Wurzbach and the Austin Highway.  It was considerably more uptown than Piggly Wiggly, and my mother transferred her grocery shopping to that store.  Going to Handy Andy was a huge treat.  At that store, we were NOT allowed to ride the grocery cart like garbage men.  There was a mechanical horse to ride just inside the door and she often indulged us on that.  Rides were about ten cents.  The next stop was the rack of Little Golden Books, which cost a quarter.  She could usually spare the money for that as well.  Also near the door was a bakery, where she often purchased bear claws, a delicious pastry which did indeed resemble a bear paw with claws.   While she did her shopping, we would prowl the store.  Unsupervised children today are a huge no-no, but we got away with it in the 50s.  What really helped is that we had been trained in how to behave in public.  We would not have even dreamed of running up and down the aisles or annoying anyone.  Like any normal children, we had tried it once or twice and been thrashed.  That was the end of that behavior.  We were always mindful of the other customers and went about our business quietly and unobtrusively.  Our first stop was the huge conveyer belt in the middle of the store that carried boxes of merchandise up from the basement storage to be stocked on the shelves.  You could look down the belt and see into the dark basement of the store, with shadowy stockers walking among the stacked boxes.  Handy Andy had a huge house wares section worthy of a department store and that always kept our interest.  That included a wine selection area decorated with an arbor draped with fake plastic grapes.  I always enjoyed visiting there and marveling at all those grapes.  My parents were strict Baptists and never visited the wine section.   Very close by was the lobster tank.  It was spot-on eye level for a child and we loved coming face to face with the lobsters and watching the bubbles.   We had usually hooked back up with our mother by then, and were ready to check out and return to the homestead.  Our groceries were sacked in sturdy paper bags, or cardboard boxes on request.  Grocery boys stood by ready with two-wheelers to cart our purchases out to the car and even load it up for us.  Tips were welcome, but not expected.  Around Halloween, Handy Andy printed up cut-out faces on their grocery bags which could be used as Halloween masks.  The faces were of Handy Andy himself, with his Ben Franklin square cut glasses and crew cut.  

My mother often did her shopping at Wednesdays, because that was "double stamps" day.  Trading stamps were an important part of a frugal housewife's life.  Handy Andy gave out S&H green stamps.  My job was to paste them in the stamp books to be piled up and traded in for small housewares and other items at the S&H green stamps store.  As every page filled with stamps, the little book would swell up like it had been flooded.  When we had around five books of stamps, out came the stamp catalog and we would select something simple but special such as a clock, or a new set of spatulas or knives for the kitchen.  If you were a church or other organization and could amass thousands of stamp books, you could even trade for a car! 

Just across the parking lot was a great store, Winn’s, part of a state-wide chain.  Winn’s had everything: clothes, toys, parakeets, make-up, house wares, fabric, yarn.  When I had tired of Handy Andy, I would check in with my mother and dash across the parking lot to cruise through Winn’s and see if there was anything new while she finished her shopping.  As an older child, I discovered a little paperback pamphlet on knitting and just had to master it.  I bought the pamphlet and yarn, and with the help of Mrs. Rhodes (my kindly Sunday School teacher) learned to knit.  My creations were primitive, misshapen with dropped stitches, but I was proud anyway.

Kiddie Park, at the corner of Broadway and Mulberry, right as you turn into Brackenridge Park, is a San Antonio icon and supposedly the oldest children’s amusement park in the country.  All we knew is that we loved the place and we went there often as it was close to home.  We rode the boats, the roller coaster, the mini-ferris wheel, and my personal favorite: the ponies.  Kiddie Park was OLD when we were children!  It was established in 1925, but its glory was that the owners always preserved its original rides while adding more modern facilities.  The carousel was a hand-carved Herschell Spillman creation.  It was a fairly small place and easily manageable for children.  Many afternoons were spent there going on the same rides, which never bored us.  And the place is STILL THERE.

Sometimes we drove on up the street and took in the zoo, starting with those stinking flamingos.  Close by were the gorillas and bears.  The bears had been trained to beg for treats and would sit up and lace their huge claws together for vending machine bear treats which we would toss over their embankment.  The gorillas were more irascible.  My mother once witnessed a San Antonio zoo gorilla chuck an orange he had been munching straight at an unfortunate viewer.  His aim was good.  He hit her right in the face.

The best zoo activity was the elephant rides!  Did they really let us do that?   They would saddle the beasts up and stuff four or five of us in a hunting style box for a short walk around the enclosure.  How docile they were and well behaved, long before the first zoo or circus elephant flipped out one day and killed its keeper or stampeded away with a bunch of screaming children on its back.  It really was unsafe.  Another favorite site, now gone, was Monkey Island, full of baboons and goats.  It was very large, rocky and heavily populated.  There were always young baboons and goats who scampered and played like kittens with each other.  We would sit on benches or hang over the railing and watch for a long time.

Every trip to the zoo had to conclude with a ride on the Brackenridge Eagle.  We always made for the very last car.  Many times there were some local urchins hiding out in the brush of the park, waiting for the train.  Brackenridge Park really was a densely forested place.  You could walk 50 yards down a path and feel like you were in the Amazon.   When the train came by, the urchins would chase behind it and leap on the back for a free ride.  We would twist around, glaring at them indignantly.  They would ride with us through the brush until we got to Mulberry before leaping off and scampering back off into the brush to catch a ride on the next one.   We indignantly reported them to the train conductor, who would nod sympathetically, and then forget all about us.

Playland Park was more of an older kid thing, though we did visit as youngsters.   First up were the bumper cars.   Those were the best!  What better place to get all those reptilian killer instincts out of your system?  We climbed into those things, listened for the electrical hum that signaled we were “energized”, shoved the pedal down and went for it, chasing each other madly.  The hapless staff  with their waving arms  tried to get us all to drive around in the same general  direction, but it was hopeless.  A mere rear ending was not nearly dramatic enough. We were going for the jugular:  the front end collision, hopefully with one end of the car going airborne.  We went far beyond driving.  We were in attack mode, with the intent to damage.  It is a wonder we didn’t get thrown out of the cars with some of the impacts we took. 

With that fun behind us, we usually made for the wooden roller coaster, the Rocket, for multiple rides.  This roller coaster was no match for what the kids (and some adults) do now, but that didn’t bother us.  That first long, slow climb and plummet brought screams from everyone.  We twisted and turned, did a couple more plummets and it was over with.  Off we clambered to run back to the end of the line for another one. 

The last time I drove by the Playland Park location, you could still see the rusted, faded entrance gate and façade.  It was in pretty bad shape and the entire lot was still vacant and overgrown with weeds.    I googled it and learned that  the park closed down in 1980 but  that the owner still hung around the property and would give people tours through the ruins if you asked.  The “Rocket,” the old roller coaster was dismantled and resurrected in its entirety somewhere  in Pennsylvania.

Every Spring, San Antonio exploded with color and gala when the Fiesta Season arrived.  There were parades both on the street and in the San Antonio River.  Charming La Villita transformed itself into Night in Old San Antonio.  The court of King Antonio was formed, and in session.  When not being worn at Fiesta, the beautiful and ornate Fiesta costumes worn by the ladies of the court were on display at the Witte Museum.  Most families attended the Battle of Flowers Parade and the Fiesta Flambeau night parade.  The Night in old San Antonio rapidly became a favorite of high school students.  A huge street party where underage drinking was running rampant!  How could it get any better than that?  Wes and his smart aleck high school friends were there on a nightly basis for the run of the festivities.  One of his buddies and a huge prankster was Greg. Greg had been taking a class in French at MacArthur and decided to play a prank on one of the policemen patrolling the grounds. Greg walked up to the officer with some degree of desperation on his face and started babbling at the poor fellow in French. The officer was at a complete loss until Greg finally bent over double and started crying "Le Bathroom, Le Bathroom...". The officer realized the meaning and quickly gestured to the closest facilities. As the boys ambled off in that direction they were barely able to wait before busting out laughing. A few moments later the officer caught up to them and said "Guess you think that's pretty ***dam funny... Well you're going to think it's funny when I kick your asses out of here!!!". All the way to the exit Greg kept crying out in a pidgin French accent "Diplomatic Immunity, Diplomatic Immunity..."