ooking Back with Margaret Toal

with Margaret Toal of KOGT.com

June 5, 2008-

Few moments in life hold special childhood excitement. In Orange, the rare snow day was exciting. Of course Christmas ranked up at the top, and maybe a special birthday present. I acquired an unexpected treasure where I was about 8 or 9. Even if I won the lottery today, I don’t think I would be as excited as I was when I traded Ann Manis’s older brother four “funny books” for probably 200 funny books.

My mother, however, was quite appalled as I carried in a large stack of the wonderful paper books, followed by more friends carrying the stacks. The Manis family lived two doors down.

Today, we call those inexpensive books “comic books,” though I always called them funny books. All the discussion of the little neighborhood stores brought back the memories of the funny books. And they were all called funny books, even if it was a “classic” version of something like “Les Miserables.”

Every little neighborhood store had a rack of funny books. When I first became cognizant of them, they cost 10 cents each. Then they went up to 12 cents and 15 cents. Somehow, special big editions would be issued every so often and they would cost 25 cents, and later up to 50 cents.

A big stack of funny books was a status symbol among kids. So the trade with Mack Manis, who was about five or six years older than me, made me feel really wealth. Looking back, he was probably glad to get rid of the books and I’m sure his mother was cheering as my mother was moaning.

For a few weeks, I had the wonderful sense of discovery finding out what issues I had. The collection included lots of Superman and Action comics, which included Supergirl and Superboy. I wish I still had the issue in which Supergirl was introduced to the world and visited President and Mrs. Kennedy in the Rose Garden.

However, Mack’s collection was kind of short of Archie funny books and I don’t think there was a Millie the Model in the bunch. Do you remember all the characters from those funny books? Of course there was Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Witch. Wasn’t Baby Huey included with those two? Baby Huey was a huge baby, but I don’t remember whether he was a bird or not.

Archie, Jughead, Vernonica, and Betty were favorites of girls. Girls and boys liked the superheroes.

And I think every Disney character had his own book. I mentioned “his” because I don’t think the female characters like Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse were secondary figures. But then, Disney would also release a funny book with each movie. The funny book would tell the movie in comic book style. So of course Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty had their own books.

Funny books weren’t relegated to cartoon shows, either. Television shows and movies with real actors also would have a comic book. I remember my brother had a “Sea Hunt” comic book based on the scuba diving TV show featuring Lloyd Bridges. (I wonder if our mothers watched the show to see him in his bathing suit.)

Of course, comic books included “Classics Illustrated,” versions of famous literature like “Moby Dick,” “The Three Musketeers,” and “The Last of the Mohicans.” I wasn’t crazy about those. They seemed too long and not much fun. But I bet a bunch of high school students read the comic book versions instead of the real novels for class. The “Classics Illustrated” series appeared years before Cliff Notes.

My favorite funny book was the “Uncle Scrooge” series of the 1950s and 1960s. Donald Duck and his ultra-rich Uncle Scrooge were always out on strange world adventures and the story carried through the whole book. I was enthralled by them and couldn’t put them down.

About 10 or 15 years ago, I was reading a magazine article that referred to the writers of the Uncle Scrooge comics and the article made mention of how critically acclaimed the stories were. I guess that at a young age I knew Uncle Scrooge was more creative than classic novels in a comic book.

My mother saved a lot of stuff through the years and I still have a lot of it. But my funny books are gone. But not the memories of reading them and the excitement of a major trade still are part of me.

Did you have any favorite funny books or comic books?

One of the places I got them was at the downtown newsstand at the corner of Fifth and Front. When my dad bought me a funny book and bubble gum cigar at the newsstand, I was in heaven. Usually the purchase came when he was buying his Travis Club Senators (real cigar). I can’t recall if he would buy a magazine or newspaper there, too, though we got three daily newspapers and a bunch of magazines at home.

I have been writing about old-fashioned neighborhood stores, including Veteran’s Grocery on DuPont Drive in the Cove area. Tony Caillier started the store and ran it for at least 50 years. His family still operates it.

Letty Gomez from Houston wrote about the kindness and consideration of the Cailliers. Gomez grew up in the Cove neighborhood and her mother would help make the sandwiches in the store during the morning rush as workers were going to the DuPont plant. She remembers “Mr. Caillier,” Tony’s father, getting her candy, usually peanut butter logs. Tony had a horn over the register that he would honk to scare her dog.

When her mother was dying of cancer in St. Elizabeth Hospital, she had a request of one of Tony’s “baloney” sandwiches on Sunbeam bread with French’s mustard. After her mother’s death, Mr. Tony watched out for Gomez and her grandmother, giving them credit when needed and delivering their groceries because they didn’t have a car.

“Much love and gratitude to Tony and Merle from Letty, Betty’s daughter,” she wrote.

Charlie Siller lived in the Brownwood addition and frequented Sanchez’s Grocery, owned by Joseph Savas Sanchez. The neighborhood called him “Savas” and he was a disabled veteran from World War II. The store sold staples, along with Mobil gas. Siller remembers that during the earth-moving days from the Interstate 10 construction (now that was a while back), some of the workers could be seen “drinking their lunches behind the meat counter” “if you know what I mean,” Siller wrote.

A drinking bulldozer operator. Now that might not be pretty.

Let me know your memories at mtoal@gt.rr.com

May 26, 2008-

Everything old is new again. And that goes for mosquito coils, too. Only now, they are dressed up inside terra cotta holders. No more bare-naked Pics sitting on the dashboard or floorboard of a car at the drive-in theater. Pic was the mosquito repellant in a burning coil that was sold at the MacArthur Drive-In movie theater in Orange and in others across the country. Susan Landry pointed out that the old-fashioned Pic is the same, minus the “little clay pot” as newer brands now sold in big stores.

Oh, but Pic, too, now has a terra cotta holder, including one in purple. Woody Bishop let me know that Pic is still made and referred me to the company’s website. That’s where I discovered the Pic holders.

Pic is made from pyrethrum, a natural insecticide made from crushed flowers. The concession stand at the drive-in sold Pic and many families, or teenagers, bought the mosquito coils to light inside their cars.

Today, I have a mosquito coil made by Off! and Cutter also makes one. They come with the terra cotta holders, which, I guess, look better on the designer tables in an “outdoor living space.” It’s passé now to have a group of people sitting on a simple wooden picnic bench or plastic-webbed folding chairs. “Designer” yard furniture once was the rusting metal chairs, usually in red, that bounced a bit on their bent-leg frames. Now the similar chairs are “retro.”

Mike Louviere said one of the “girls” at a recent Stark High Reunion from the 1950s, mentioned that her mother always knew when she went to the drive-in when she wasn’t supposed to go. Later, she found out her mother could smell the Pic on her clothes.

A lot of people remember the cartoon mosquitoes used in the Pic commercial shown at the drive-in before the feature started. A mosquito would tell the audience “Don’t believe it, it don’t work.”

The first Pic drive-in commercial is on the company’s website. Other cartoon versions were made through the 1960s.

Rene Smith Willis, who now lives in Nome, grew up on the Old Beaumont Highway near Lindenwood. Her mother and father would pack up the four kids to go to the drive-in the old Chevrolet station wagon. (It was an inexpensive way for a family to see a movie.) Her mother would pop corn at home and take it in a big Tupperware container with a top. She’d also make Koolaid for the family.

The kids would take their baths before the show and wear their “jammies” in the car. Usually, they fell asleep during the movie and had to be carried inside when they got home.

You know, one of the most secure feelings of a kid was to be asleep in dreamland and be vaguely conscious of your mom or dad carrying you in and placing you in your bed. (My parents always made us stop at the pottie first.)

Louviere remembers another, more recent use of Pic. A few years ago, he wrote, timber companies in East Texas started banning public hunting from a public that loved hunting deer with dogs. In the Buna area, some of the hunters began setting fires on timber company lands as retribution. The arson method was lighting an old-fashioned Pic in a bunch of dry leaves or pine straw. A fire started long after the arsonists had left the land. Louviere remembers Texas Monthly magazine writing “Pics fly off of the shelves at the Wal-Mart in Vidor.”

Everyone seems to remember a little neighborhood store from their childhood. Kids in the Cove today still have a neighborhood store. Annette Payne wrote about Veterans Grocery on DuPont Drive which is still being run by the Caillier family. I was fortunate enough to write a feature story about Mr. Tony (Antoine) Caillier and the store back in January 1997. His daughter, Kathryn Knox, and daughter-in-law, Karen Caillier, run the store today, and Mr. Tony and his wife, Merle, come in sometimes, Payne wrote.

The Cailliers still charge for some of their longtime neighbors. “They have a stand in the corner by the big window with little tablets in it with people’s name on them that can still charge,” Payne wrote.

The penny candy booth is still in the store, but is empty today, she said. She remembers being a girl and her mother giving her, her sister and the neighborhood twins a quarter to spend at the store. “Tony knew what we wanted when we walked in the door. He would hand us a small brown sack and when we walked out, we had a bag full of candy for 25 cents,” she said. She remembers sitting in the penny candy booth sometimes when Tony would let her inside to pick out a piece of candy.

Veterans Grocery is still known for its great homemade sandwiches, made to order while you wait.

Bill Hudson recalls Miss Hudnall’s store on Western Avenue where he and his friends would “spend every nickel and dime we had” on ice cream, candy, soda pops, baseball cards, kites, string, rubber snakes, hand buzzers and comic books. “She may have had items for adults; I didn’t notice,” he wrote.

Woody Bishop said Durham’s 7-11 at the corner of 10^th and John served Anderson Elementary. If he was bringing his lunch to school, he could stop and get a small back of Dentler’s Potato Chips (in the green bag, right?). After school, he could get jawbreaker or a pack of gum for two pennies.

Chris Schroder Shivers remembers Floye’s Dress Shop on Green Avenue by 15^th Street, across from the old Stark High band practice field. Miss Floye would let her mother take home a big box of dresses and Shivers would choose the ones she wanted. Then, her mother would return the other dresses and pay for the ones she kept.

Now that’s service, and trust.

Shivers said Miss Annie’s (remember Nick Vandervoort’s neighbor who wore lingerie-looking clothes and high-heeled mules) had a dress store on Fifth Street across from Goldfine’s, and a couple of doors from Velma’s Dress Shop.

She also remembers Kyle’s by the Strand Theater, and later in MacArthur Shopping Center. Plus, she said, Lou’s Shoe Store on Fifth Street started her lifelong love of pretty shoes.

I love Joey Manuel’s memories of buying the little green turtles and the plastic containers at Perry Brothers on Green Avenue. “If you ask me, I think the decline of what was called Downtown came because of the ban on the turtles. Who would want to shop in a store that can't even sell little green turtles?” he wrote.

And Nick Vandervoort brought up another daredevil feat from the 1950s-1960s era in Orange. He asked about how many kids climbed to the top of the First Presbyterian Church dome without a ladder? He said the chimes were real loud up at the top, not that he would personally know.

If you have any memories, let me know at mtoal@gt.rr.com

May 19, 2008-

Small, locally-owned shops and stores once used paper instead of plastic, and I don’t mean sacks. No one in Orange had heard of a plastic credit card. If they charged something, they simply signed a piece of paper. Even kids could charge a soda pop or candy bar at the neighborhood store.

While writing about the small clothing shops and neighborhood stores, people wrote about signing a receipt to charge something. Of course, they’re parents had to have an account at the store. And at one time, if a store owner knew you, you automatically had an account.

An account could come in handy. I recall one time being about 4-years-old and running into the old ABC Store on Park Avenue to get a dozen eggs and charge them. My mother drove me and stayed in the car. As I look back, she likely had a baby and a toddler in the car, so it would have been hard for her to drag three children inside for the eggs. I felt quite grown up.

Today, I can’t imagine sending a 4-year-old alone into any store.

Oh, and last week when I wrote about the “14^th Street Grocery,” I really meant the 13^th Street Grocery. Of course, Fourteenth Street also had a grocery at Link, catycorner to Jones Elementary. Neighborhood stores were everywhere.

“It seems like almost every neighborhood had a small grocery store. I can only guess that in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, many people walked to the market so small stores were scattered all around town,” Nick Vandervoort wrote.

Margaret Terry Peveto wrote that the 13^th Street Grocery was owned by Mrs. Lou Guillory and her daughter, Irene. “She was a kind lady and you could charge on a written ticket and Momma would pay the bill later,” Peveto wrote.

The store sold groceries and meat, and had a large back room with fabrics and sewing notions. The 13^th Street Grocery was of the best places in town to get fabric in those days when a lot of girls wore dresses made by mothers, grandmothers or aunts on a Singer sewing machine. My grandmother even used the old pedal-pumped sewing machine to make me clothes.

Becky Nation, who was a cheerleader at Little Cypress High (no hyphen yet) got her material for the cheerleading outfits at 13^th Street Grocery. She also remembers that special “sharkskin” material.

Vandervoort, who went to Jones from 1954 to 1960, remembers the 14^th and Link store by the school called Kellis’s. I think it was the Wingate Market about that time. Orange had a Mr. Kellis who was in the grocery-produce business for many years. I remember him always being at the Park Avenue ABC Store, but I could be wrong.

Also, Vandervoort recalls the store at Link and 16^th Street, Robert’s. This was before the “modern” Cliff’s 7-11 was built that I used many times while on the way home from Jones.

Robert’s was in an old house. Vandervoort said the wood floors had sawdust on them. He recalls the Cokes (every soda pop in those days was a “coke”) in a vending machine chest. They were stored vertically. You would put your nickel in and slide the bottle around to the place to pull it out.

The little stores sold school supplies like Big Chief tablets or Nifty notebook paper, along with Duncan Yoyos, balsa wood gliders for a nickel and pocket knives, Vandervoort said.

Joette Webb remembered the name of the little women’s dress shop across from the Stark High band practice field on Green Avenue. It was Floye’s. She said Floye was an elegant lady who married designer Ike Clark of Dallas.

James Carpet for a number of years has been in the space where Floyes once operated.

Vandervoort remembers one shop owner who brought a bit of spice to the Westway Street in the Norwood addition in the 1950s. He remembers a neighbor named “Miss Annie” who was an “eccentric older woman with coal black hair.”

Miss Annie didn’t dress like the June Cleaver of Donna Reed mothers in the neighborhood. By the way, remember the muumuu-style “housedress” of the era? We had a next door neighbor who might not have owned any regular clothes, just housedresses.

Miss Annie had a style of her own. Vandervoort said she always wore a one-piece black slip or possibly a nightgown with sheer robe. She also wore high-heeled, black satin mules. He said she was supposed to have owned a downtown women’s shop and he wonders if anyone remembers it.

And for next week, I have more skate stories. Greg Smith wants to know what Steve Ramsey meant by Pic at the drive-in movie. Was it possibly the big comb the guys put in their hair back around 1970 when they started wearing big, curly Afro-style hair?

Let me know your memories at mtoal@gt.rr.com

May 12, 2008-

Every kid once knew the smoothest driveway in the neighborhood. The adults would look at them funny as they headed out to a certain driveway. To the eye, the driveways basically looked alike. But under the metal wheels of skates strapped around a pair of Keds, the intricacies of a cement driveway could be felt.

And what’s amazing is that the owner of the smoothest driveway on the street didn’t mind if groups of kids skated on the driveway. On Childers Drive, Louise Williams’ house had the best driveway. But then the Flakes’ house had the only two-car garage and driveway on the street, so that was also popular. Except that the Flakes lived most of the year out of the country and Mrs. Carter watched their house. She might chase you with a broom.

As an adult, I lived for about 20 years on McKee Drive, once the Wickersham house. I got a kick out of being told by people who grew up in Westmont that the house had the smoothest driveway. I knew exactly what they were talking about.

My daughter did a lot of skating on the driveway, but by that time, skates had changed. The boot kind with hard rubber wheels can’t compare to the old strap-on kind, which were pretty rough. Every pebble in the concrete could shake your legs and sometimes even rattle your teeth.

The metal skates had a leather strap across the ankle. Each skate had metal clips over each side of the foot at the toes. The skate key made everything fit. The skate key had the shape of a bolt nut that worked on the bottom of the skate to make it slide in and out to fit a longer or shorter foot.

How can I describe the part of the key to fit the toe clips? I’m not a handywoman so I don’t know the technical terms. But the bottom part of the key fit the part that made the toe clips adjustable. Every kid skated with the key either in a pocket or hanging on a cord or string from the neck.

In the early 1970s when the pop singer Melanie had a hit with the song “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates, you’ve got a brand new key,” we knew exactly what it meant.

The Youth Center (later Thomen Community Center) opened in 1958 and had a large room with a wooden floor that was used for skating. Older kids had dances there. The Youth Center was the former City Hospital and was in the middle of the Baby Boom era housing development. Kids went in and out of the center all the time. I need some help on some of this. Did the Youth Center have the boot skates for kids to use? Were they free or did you pay a quarter of fifty cents to use them? I remember a counter by the skating rink and it seems like you could get skates there.

We skated a lot, groups of us, sometimes going from driveway to driveway. Skating on the street was rough. Streets even had small rocks in them. So sometimes we walked in the skates across the grass of a yard to get to another driveway. Skating in the summer was one of the few times you would even wear shoes. The metal skates just wouldn’t work on bare feet.

By the mid-1960s, skateboards were coming out. The first ones locally were made by pulling one skate apart and then nailing the two parts, two wheels on each, to a board. A store-bought skateboard was something fancy and a novelty at first.

Does anyone still have a skate key, or even their metal skates?

I’m looking for a photograph of the old 14^th Street Grocery and some more information on some of the downtown shops in Orange. If you remember the grocery or another little grocery, let me know at mtoal@gt.rr.com

May 4, 2008-

Shopping downtown once meant dressing up to look for a dress, maybe not in Sunday school clothes, but at least in regular school clothes. A mother didn’t want her children to be seen in a little shop in worn play clothes. A lot of clothes were bought at little shops. Until MacArthur Shopping Center, a chain store was mostly Green’s, later the Fair Store.

Now, I do recall J.C. Penney’s big store at the corner of Green and Fifth, then came Beall’s next door.

But I’m so young (I love writing that line) that I can’t remember whether Sears had a downtown store or not? The only one I recall is the large one at the shopping center. Montgomery Ward had a downtown “store” to place orders from the catalogue.

Lots of small shops were up and down Fifth Street and Front. Nanci Whitehead had asked about the name of the little shop where her mother took her to buy bathing suits.

I think she means Velma’s, though my mother always called it “Miss Velma’s.” That would have been appropriate, because the small shops were locally owned and operated, and the owners worked.

Velma’s was on Fifth Street where the Orange Public Library is today. I, too, remember shopping for bathing suits there when I was quite young. My mother also bought me “Kate Greenaway” brand dresses. She would read me books with illustrations from Greenaway, a famous Victorian illustrator. But the clothes I got in the 1950s and 1960s with her name on them didn’t look Victorian.

Velma’s wasn’t that large, and that’s from a child’s perspective. But the store carried children’s and women’s clothes and undergarments. Does anyone recall if the store had boys’ clothing or only outfits for little girls?

Velma’s and other shops were in the block that burned in maybe 1962 or 1963. I think it was after Henke and Pillot’s on Green Avenue burned. Then in the mid-1960s, a block around Fourth or Third streets burned. People have told me about a big downtown fire burning stores and offices around 1948.

Martin’s was on Front Street, but it had women’s clothes, not kids. The Smart Shop for women was about a block west, next to the Strand movie theater.

I also remember in the early to mid 1960s the town had a couple of clothing shops in old houses. One of those was on Park Avenue, near 12^th Street, and another one was somewhere in the vicinity of the Methodist Church. Does anyone remember those?

Men shopped at Griffin’s, originally on Fifth Street across from Velma’s, and at Meade’s on Front. Did those stores carry boys’ clothes? If I recall correctly, Griffin’s did have uniforms and gear for Boy Scouts.

Ken Thayer said he worked at Meade’s when he was in high school. I wonder if he got a discount on those Frye boots that were so popular.

The Henke and Pillot’s fire affected the rest of downtown. By the way, for all you newcomers who haven’t been here at least 50 years, Henke’s was where Stark Park is today. After the fire, a small shopping center in a square design was built. Martin’s, Griffin’s and Jay Jewelry moved to the center. And Winston Lewis, who owned Lou’s shoe store on Fifth Street, opened Lou’s House of Elegance, which included women’s dresses in addition to shoes. He kept the shoe store on Fifth Street open for few more years.

A couple of shops were on Green Avenue across the street from the Stark High-Carr Junior high campus. Foreman’s was the larger one, and sold clothing for boys, girls and women. That’s where Nick Vandervoort got his black leather jacket. And that’s also where I threw a notorious public temper tantrum when I was six years old. My mother wasn’t going to buy me the jacket in two shades of blue (the Jones Elementary colors). She was getting me that funky plaid car coat because it was unisex enough that my little brother could wear it after I outgrew it.

It should have been my brother throwing the tantrum. By the way, did any of your mothers buy clothes too big so you could wear them for a while? I recall one coat reserved mainly for Sunday school and dress-up. During the course of five or six years, the coat went from too big to three-quarter-length sleeves, which my mother said was then fashionable.

I can’t remember the name of the other little shop, about a block east of Foreman’s. The shop also sold wooden reeds for clarinets and saxophones. The dress shop was a short walk from the band hall, so many a band member ran across for an emergency reed. Those were the days before closed campuses.

Let me know your memories of Orange at mtoal@gt.rr.com. Steve Ramsey wants to know what people remember about Pic, and I’ve had some people asked about the Fourteenth Street Grocery.

April 25, 2008-

Bicycles and bowling balls have rolled down the Rainbow Bridge. And now we learn of someone who went on a boat ride down the bridge. Only it wasn’t on purpose. The boat was still attached to the trailer.

McNeil Johnson, who used to live in Orange, related a bridge story that is too good to pass by. Back in 1964, he and Bill Sherrod bought a used boat a motor, a 16-foot Thomson with a wooden hull

“For its maiden voyage, we decided to go fishing at Sabine Pass, which meant we had to cross what we called the Port Arthur-Orange Bridge,” Johnson wrote. It was a fine spring day and lots of Sunday drivers were out.

An 18-wheeler truck messed up the trip. He said the big rigs in those days had to slow down “in grandma gear” to get up the grade of the bridge. The two would-be boaters got stuck behind the slowest rig. Because of the slow speed, the 1961 Impala that was towing the boat stalled about 100 feet from the top of the bridge.

“We were dead in the water, so to speak,” he said. “We decided to try and back the car and the trailer down the bridge.”

I can’t imagine.

Other drivers helped stop traffic at the top and the bottom of the bridge, so they could make the attempt to get down. “From the top of the bridge, we had a great view of the traffic jam we were causing. Houston’s Katy Freeway would have been proud,” Johnson said.

Sherrod went to back the Impala down the bridge, but the power steering was out. The back-up attempt didn’t work. After about 20 feet, the trailer and boat jack-knifed. I can imagine the two guys were sweating.

They discussed the predicament and decided to unhitch the trailer from the car and try to manually straighten the trailer. “We took the trailer loose from the hitch and worked hard to get it straight, and then gravity took over. The wooden boat was very heavy, but we thought we were strong enough to get the hit on the car. Boy! Were we wrong?”

Yes, the boat and trailer started going down the bridge. Johnson said he didn’t have much time to think. “So being young, quick and stupid, I jumped on the tongue of the trailer for the ride of my life,” he said. He held onto the front part of the boat. A “rooster tail” of sparks as high as his head were flying around as the metal of the trailer hitch scraped on the concrete. He figures he rode about three-quarters of a mile down the bridge.

“I know the person or persons in the lead car at the bottom of the bridge had a good view of me and the boat racing down the slop toward him. The closer I got to the car, the larger his eyes got,” Johnson said.

When he got to the bottom, he managed to use his left leg and push the trailer to make it turn left, away from the cars and to a crabbing area. The trailer slowed down on the flat ground and stopped before it ended up in the canal. The boat, trailer and rider were fine.

Sherrod got the Impala working and went back down the bridge. The two hooked the trailer on the car and were back toward Orange as fast as they could.

They stopped for a Coke at the first store in Bridge City and watched police cars, ambulances and fire trucks speeding to the bridge. “We were afraid that we had caused a bad wreck,” Johnson wrote. Everything was miraculously okay. They went fishing from Bailey’s fish camp on Sabine Lake. No big bridge trip there.

“If anyone out there can remember the nut hanging onto a boat, riding down the Rainbow Bridge, I would like to hear their account,” Johnson said. Let me know at mtoal@gt.rr.com and I’ll pass it along.

Last week I wrote about the feats of Johnny Brewer in climbing to the top of the bridge to get the red signal light. I had several notes that Brewer is now deceased. He was, and still is, a legend.

The bridge story was too good to ignore, so I delayed writing about some of the small clothing shops around the Big O. I’ll get to it next week. And let me know about some of your favorite things you got at the store. Nick Vandervoort remembers a black leather jacket, kids size 12, that he got at Foreman’s, across from Carr Junior High.

I had been writing about fishing. Joey Manuel, who collects photos from Orange’s history, passed along this one of a huge alligator gar. I don’t know if it was “doctored,” but it looks real.