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09/25/12

A Reminder of Memphis' Great Corncob Fire of 1952

Just before 2 a.m. on Monday morning, September 24th, an explosion wrecked the Penn-A-Chem chemical plant at Chelsea and Holmes in north Memphis, destroying buildings and sending two critically injured employees to the hospital. The blast, which rattled windows in homes miles away, was a reminder of another disaster that took place 60 years ago at the same site, when the Quaker Oats Company operated the plant there, extracting a variety of chemicals from corncobs. Yes, corncobs. Until the evening of January 15, 1952, most Memphians probably thought corncobs were pretty harmless things. The worst that could happen to you was getting lung cancer from puffing on a corncob pipe. But on that evening, a five-story pile of corncobs somehow burst into flames, and quickly erupted...

Posted at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

09/18/12

Window Shopping at Fortner Furniture in 1979 — The Hard Way

As you know, I've been talking recently about the old Fortner Furniture Company clock, and thought I'd share a story about an interesting event in the life of that building. On June 15, 1979, Mrs. Joy Butler was driving east on Summer at National, when she "accidentally" ran the red light at that intersection. Bad timing. Her car was struck broadside by a Memphis sanitation truck. Butler lost control of her vehicle, and here's the result — her car ended up parked inside the furniture store after crashing through one of the big windows. Her five-year-old daughter suffered a slight cut to her leg, but that was the only injury. Nobody was hurt on the truck. Scribbled notes on the back of the original Memphis Press-Scimitar photograph tell us that...

Posted at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments: 3

09/12/12

The Fortner Furniture Clock Before the Building Was Demolished

All this talk about the old clock that once topped the Fortner Furniture Company building, and not a single image of the clock itself. Until now, provided by my pal Max of Max Savant Photography. As you can see, until its last days the huge metal disk still carried traces of the neon tubing that outlined the numbers and hands. This photo also shows some of the nice ornamental stone (or concrete) work that adorned the building, located at Summer and National. Richard Smith also posted a terrific picture of the clock on my Facebook page. I've recently been in contact with members of the Fortner family, and yes I know who now owns the old clock, so once I talk to them, I should be able to give you the whole story — past, present, and future — of this...

Posted at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments: 2

09/11/12

Fortner Furniture: The Giant Clock Came Later

I know you think I spend most of my days rooting through the old Press-Scimitar files at the University of Memphis, but you'd only be half-right. I just spend my waking hours there. But I did turn up a newspaper article about Fortner Furniture Company, at National and Summer, and judging from the artist's rendering, it's obvious that the giant clock was added later. If you've been paying attention, the "Giant Clock Mystery" was discussed here a few days ago. And apparently the photo that I ran at that time was not retouched after all. If you're having trouble reading the article, let me give you a hand (or an eye, or whatever). Dated April 29, 1960, it says: "An artist's sketch of Fortner Furniture Co. at National and Summer shows...

Posted at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments: 1

09/10/12

Fortner Furniture Company and the Giant Clock Mystery

For decades, one of the enduring landmarks along Summer Avenue was the giant round clock mounted on top of the old Fortner Furniture Company (most recently BoJo's Antique Mall) at the corner of Summer and National. Once illuminated by neon numbers and hands, in recent years the huge clock was little more than a rust-covered (and -colored) disk overlooking the intersection. But still, it was something that almost everyone remembered, and like everyone else, I just assumed the clock was installed whenever the building was erected. But then I found this old photograph, tucked away in the Memphis Press-Scimitar files at the University of Memphis Libraries Special Collections Department. As you can see, it's a fine image of the furniture store in its heyday, and it's...

Posted at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments: 4

09/05/12

Balton Sign Company's Neon Display at the Tri-State Fairgrounds

In the current issue of MBQ: Inside Memphis Business, I tell the story of the Balton Sign Company, which has been manufacturing signs and displays in our city for more than five generations. The company's archives hold nice photos of some of the great signs they have made here over the years, and while looking through them, I found this old (somewhat grainy) photo of the company's booth promoting its newfangled neon signs. Neon — an inert gas that glows bright orange when exposed to high voltage — had been discovered in the late 1800s, but it really wasn't until the early 1920s that scientists figured out a good way to use it commercially, by encasing it in narrow colored-glass tubes. One problem was that neon didn't really produce enough light to...

Posted at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments

08/23/12

Does Anyone Remember This 1960s Memphis Coffeehouse?

A standard feature of old (and maybe recent) high-school yearbooks is to pose groups of students in popular settings or hangouts away from the school. And so the editors of the 1964 edition of the White Station High School yearbook did just that, by putting their "Who's Who" campus leaders in places like Shoney's Eastgate or the parking lot of the Tropical Freeze. Most of these places are (or were) close to the school. After all, that's where the kids hung out, and it made it easier on the school photographer if he or she didn't have to haul the students all over town just for one picture. But I'm stumped by this photo, which shows a group of clean-cut students listening to a stand-up bass player in what seems to be a coffeehouse. The background...

Posted at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments: 14

08/20/12

Lost Memphis (and Good Riddance): The Palomino Motel

The one good thing you could say about the old Palomino Motel, just past the city limits on Summer, was that it had a cool-looking neon sign. But just everything else about this place was bad news. I'm sure at some point in its long history the motel, located where Bartlett Road runs into Summer, must have been an attractive place to stay, for business travelers or families on vacation. But during my lifetime, it mainly had a reputation for trouble — a place to go if you had a fondness for drugs or prostitutes and other unsavory aspects of our city. The worst event of all came sometime in the 1970s 1987, when a policeman, called to the motel to quell some kind of domestic disturbance, shot and killed a young boy playing with a BB pistol in the motel parking lot. It...

Posted at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments: 5

08/16/12

Take a Look at Vance Lauderdale's Personal Shock-Treatment Machine

Various biographies mention that I "probably" am the only person on the Memphis magazine staff (if not the entire city) who has his own personal shock-treatment machine. I can't say if that is absolutely true, because I have not visited the tumbledown shacks along the railroad that are occupied by my co-workers, and since I rarely invite my colleagues to the Mansion, it's not like they have ever spotted my own device and claimed to have one just like it. But never mind about them. This blog is about ME, and since several people have actually asked if this claim is true, here's the proof. I obtained this interesting item more than 30 years ago, from a fellow who had purchased it (or so he said) from a now-closed mental hospital somewhere in North...

Posted at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments: 4

08/13/12

A Memphis City Beautiful Parade in 1941 — What's Going On Here?

The Memphis Room at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library contains a marvelous collection of old photographs: buildings, streets, people, and events. Many of the images are so well-known — to history buffs anyway — that they are immediately recognizeable. And then you'll occassionally turn up things like this. This photo is identified only as "Memphis City Beautiful Parade - 1940." But I just keep looking at it and wondering what it was really all about. I mean, here you have three women in rather bizarre outfits (look at those hats!) pushing what are obviously fake garbage cans. Well, they might be real garbage cans, but they are clearly wrapped in shiny foil and mounted on what seems to be push lawnmowers. Not exactly on par with a Macy's...

Posted at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments: 4

	09/25/12 A Reminder of Memphis' Great Corncob Fire of 1952 Just before 2 a.m. on Monday morning, September 24th, an explosion wrecked the Penn-A-Chem chemical plant at Chelsea and Holmes in north Memphis, destroying buildings and sending two critically injured employees to the hospital. The blast, which rattled windows in homes miles away, was a reminder of another disaster that took place 60 years ago at the same site, when the Quaker Oats Company operated the plant there, extracting a variety of chemicals from corncobs. Yes, corncobs. Until the evening of January 15, 1952, most Memphians probably thought corncobs were pretty harmless things. The worst that could happen to you was getting lung cancer from puffing on a corncob pipe. But on that evening, a five-story pile of corncobs somehow burst into flames, and quickly erupted... Posted at 11:14 AM \| Permalink \| Comments
	09/18/12 Window Shopping at Fortner Furniture in 1979 — The Hard Way As you know, I've been talking recently about the old Fortner Furniture Company clock, and thought I'd share a story about an interesting event in the life of that building. On June 15, 1979, Mrs. Joy Butler was driving east on Summer at National, when she "accidentally" ran the red light at that intersection. Bad timing. Her car was struck broadside by a Memphis sanitation truck. Butler lost control of her vehicle, and here's the result — her car ended up parked inside the furniture store after crashing through one of the big windows. Her five-year-old daughter suffered a slight cut to her leg, but that was the only injury. Nobody was hurt on the truck. Scribbled notes on the back of the original Memphis Press-Scimitar photograph tell us that... Posted at 01:00 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 3
	09/12/12 The Fortner Furniture Clock Before the Building Was Demolished All this talk about the old clock that once topped the Fortner Furniture Company building, and not a single image of the clock itself. Until now, provided by my pal Max of Max Savant Photography. As you can see, until its last days the huge metal disk still carried traces of the neon tubing that outlined the numbers and hands. This photo also shows some of the nice ornamental stone (or concrete) work that adorned the building, located at Summer and National. Richard Smith also posted a terrific picture of the clock on my Facebook page. I've recently been in contact with members of the Fortner family, and yes I know who now owns the old clock, so once I talk to them, I should be able to give you the whole story — past, present, and future — of this... Posted at 11:43 AM \| Permalink \| Comments: 2
	09/11/12 Fortner Furniture: The Giant Clock Came Later I know you think I spend most of my days rooting through the old Press-Scimitar files at the University of Memphis, but you'd only be half-right. I just spend my waking hours there. But I did turn up a newspaper article about Fortner Furniture Company, at National and Summer, and judging from the artist's rendering, it's obvious that the giant clock was added later. If you've been paying attention, the "Giant Clock Mystery" was discussed here a few days ago. And apparently the photo that I ran at that time was not retouched after all. If you're having trouble reading the article, let me give you a hand (or an eye, or whatever). Dated April 29, 1960, it says: "An artist's sketch of Fortner Furniture Co. at National and Summer shows... Posted at 04:36 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 1
	09/10/12 Fortner Furniture Company and the Giant Clock Mystery For decades, one of the enduring landmarks along Summer Avenue was the giant round clock mounted on top of the old Fortner Furniture Company (most recently BoJo's Antique Mall) at the corner of Summer and National. Once illuminated by neon numbers and hands, in recent years the huge clock was little more than a rust-covered (and -colored) disk overlooking the intersection. But still, it was something that almost everyone remembered, and like everyone else, I just assumed the clock was installed whenever the building was erected. But then I found this old photograph, tucked away in the Memphis Press-Scimitar files at the University of Memphis Libraries Special Collections Department. As you can see, it's a fine image of the furniture store in its heyday, and it's... Posted at 12:02 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 4
	09/05/12 Balton Sign Company's Neon Display at the Tri-State Fairgrounds In the current issue of MBQ: Inside Memphis Business, I tell the story of the Balton Sign Company, which has been manufacturing signs and displays in our city for more than five generations. The company's archives hold nice photos of some of the great signs they have made here over the years, and while looking through them, I found this old (somewhat grainy) photo of the company's booth promoting its newfangled neon signs. Neon — an inert gas that glows bright orange when exposed to high voltage — had been discovered in the late 1800s, but it really wasn't until the early 1920s that scientists figured out a good way to use it commercially, by encasing it in narrow colored-glass tubes. One problem was that neon didn't really produce enough light to... Posted at 04:16 PM \| Permalink \| Comments
	08/23/12 Does Anyone Remember This 1960s Memphis Coffeehouse? A standard feature of old (and maybe recent) high-school yearbooks is to pose groups of students in popular settings or hangouts away from the school. And so the editors of the 1964 edition of the White Station High School yearbook did just that, by putting their "Who's Who" campus leaders in places like Shoney's Eastgate or the parking lot of the Tropical Freeze. Most of these places are (or were) close to the school. After all, that's where the kids hung out, and it made it easier on the school photographer if he or she didn't have to haul the students all over town just for one picture. But I'm stumped by this photo, which shows a group of clean-cut students listening to a stand-up bass player in what seems to be a coffeehouse. The background... Posted at 11:23 AM \| Permalink \| Comments: 14
	08/20/12 Lost Memphis (and Good Riddance): The Palomino Motel The one good thing you could say about the old Palomino Motel, just past the city limits on Summer, was that it had a cool-looking neon sign. But just everything else about this place was bad news. I'm sure at some point in its long history the motel, located where Bartlett Road runs into Summer, must have been an attractive place to stay, for business travelers or families on vacation. But during my lifetime, it mainly had a reputation for trouble — a place to go if you had a fondness for drugs or prostitutes and other unsavory aspects of our city. The worst event of all came sometime in the 1970s 1987, when a policeman, called to the motel to quell some kind of domestic disturbance, shot and killed a young boy playing with a BB pistol in the motel parking lot. It... Posted at 02:05 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 5
	08/16/12 Take a Look at Vance Lauderdale's Personal Shock-Treatment Machine Various biographies mention that I "probably" am the only person on the Memphis magazine staff (if not the entire city) who has his own personal shock-treatment machine. I can't say if that is absolutely true, because I have not visited the tumbledown shacks along the railroad that are occupied by my co-workers, and since I rarely invite my colleagues to the Mansion, it's not like they have ever spotted my own device and claimed to have one just like it. But never mind about them. This blog is about ME, and since several people have actually asked if this claim is true, here's the proof. I obtained this interesting item more than 30 years ago, from a fellow who had purchased it (or so he said) from a now-closed mental hospital somewhere in North... Posted at 11:28 AM \| Permalink \| Comments: 4
	08/13/12 A Memphis City Beautiful Parade in 1941 — What's Going On Here? The Memphis Room at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library contains a marvelous collection of old photographs: buildings, streets, people, and events. Many of the images are so well-known — to history buffs anyway — that they are immediately recognizeable. And then you'll occassionally turn up things like this. This photo is identified only as "Memphis City Beautiful Parade - 1940." But I just keep looking at it and wondering what it was really all about. I mean, here you have three women in rather bizarre outfits (look at those hats!) pushing what are obviously fake garbage cans. Well, they might be real garbage cans, but they are clearly wrapped in shiny foil and mounted on what seems to be push lawnmowers. Not exactly on par with a Macy's... Posted at 07:44 PM \| Permalink \| Comments: 4