Little known Austin area trivia....

You are correct about the missionaries and the taxidermy shop.

The suspected muderer was Robert Elmer Kleasen, who lived in a trailer behind the shop on 290.

He was convicted, but was released after evidence against him was thrown out because of an illegal search.

The bodies of the missionaries were never found and Kleason has not been retried.

 

I am really enjoying this thread. Please keep posting any trivia/cool Austin facts you guys have!

 

On the drag, roughly across from Dirty Martin's, used to sit a bar called the Nieuw Hope Inn. It was made from the timbers of a ship, and the boards saying "Nieuw Hope" and " Brownsville" were visible inside. It was in the same block as Emma Jo's a small folk/acoustic music club.

Crown & Anchor used to be "The Beach," a beer/live music joint.

There used to be a skeet range on 2222 just west of 360. The gunshots would startle you when you drove by on 2222.

 

Yeah, I remember it as the Lazy Daisy also.

Speaking of Austin mob stories, does anybody else remember when some hot dog vendor on Sixth Street claimed he was a mobster in the witness protection program? Whatever happened to that guy?

 

^^
John Johnson

 

St.Edwards University started as St.Edwards Academy in 1878 on several hundred acres of land donated by the Doyle family in south Austin.
The first building was the old Doyle farm homestead. My St.Eds High School classmates (Class of '62) demolished that historic structure in the Fall of 1961 to use the lumber for our homecoming bonfire. It was located just east of I-35 & Woodward Street where the IRS Center now stands.

St.Eds got it's charter to operate as a college in 1885. The high school coexisted with the college (later university) until 1967 when it closed.

 

The Longhorns practice field on IH-35 used to be the Villa Capri Hotel.

 

Threadgills use to serve huge slabs of cornbread instead of those crappy little muffins they have now.

KLBJ-FM use to be a really cool radio station.

 

As you walk into Jaimie's Restaurant courtyard on Red River there's a pair storm cellar doors on the right. According to Jaimie, they lead to a series a of underground tunnels that are beneath downtown Austin, especially near the Capitol.
Related note. Jaimie passed earlier this year. His place was one of my hangouts when I came to UT back in the 80s. Really solid guy. RIP, Jaimie.

 

Saint Edwards U was founded by the Reverend Edward Sorin, who is the same guy that started Notre Dame.

Saint Ed's was founded in 1878.

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Jim Bob's BBQ in Bee Cave used to be an AT&T telephone switching office back in the days when an operator would take your call & plug you manually into another line going out.

My MIL used to live on the land that is now the McCoy's in Bee Cave & her Mother worked @ the phone office (Jim Bob's).

My FIL's family used to own 470+ acres @ the end of Foster Ranch Road which is the 1st light W of Travis Country on Southwest Parkway.

Kevin Fowler lives off of Circle Drive on about 45 acres & has Registered Longhorns there.

 

This is a very good read on the history of South Austin vs. North Austin from the Chronicle, 2001.

The Link

When out of town, my dad still tells people he's from SOUTH Austin, and people nod in understanding.

 

Fowler lives off Circle Drive? My granny lives in Stonebridge off Circle Drive. We must drive by his place all the time.

 

Hancock Golf Course (now 9 holes) was the site of the original Austin Country Club. It later moved over to Riverside.

 

And the other 9 was over in what is now Hancock Center as I was told.

 

Lucinda Williams and Janis Joplin both busked for tips on the drag.

Clarksville was developed as a freedman's community. Some of Austin's more famous black residents are from Clarksville, including the Baylors. Don Baylor was supposedly given the option of becoming the first black UT football player, but turned down the scholly in favor of going into baseball.

Terrence Malick, the director of Days of Heaven, Badlands and The Thin Red Line, has lived in Austin for quite some time.

Austin was home to one of the first catalogued serial killers - the oddly-named servant girl annihilator.

I grew up just off of Live Oak Street in Travis Heights. There was a famous murder of a cop on that street in 1978, when David Lee Powell opened fire on a cop with an AK-47. He is actually still on death row for the crime. Also on Live Oak and S. Congress, there was the Cinema West porno theater. It was a Disney-owned theater before it showed porn. When I was a kid and walked by Cinema West to go to Fulmore MS, I remember seeing the theater advertising the names of the movies - but now I can't remember if they were on the marquee or in the poster boxes - anyone remember movie titles on the marquee?

Also around the Live Oak area, Gibby Haynes, the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers (and Trinity U in accounting alum) lived in the Bouldin neighborhood, where he tooled around in his hotrod and supposedly sold crack out of his house.

The street that IH-35 supplanted was originally the main Hispanic commercial thoroughfare in town. I forget the name of the street.

John Henry Falk attended Fulmore as a kid (and chiseled his name or initials, I forget which, into the south entrance), and Ann Richards taught there, a long time ago.

Jorge Luis Borges and Randall Jarrell visited/taught in the UT English Dept.

 

The cop killed was Ralph Ablenado, he was shot while performing a traffic stop at the apartment complex across the street from Travis HS. The road by the south command station is named after Officer Ablenado.

Cook Funeral Home used to be on 11th street across from the Governors Mansion ( Parking lot now north of the Governors Mansion). The Weed Funeral Home was down where the Scottish Rite hall is on Lavaca and Hyltin Funeral Home was on Guadalupe (between Roy Minton's office and Central Christian Church) the funeral homes all ran ambulance service in Austin until 1976 when Austin formed what is now Austin EMS.

E. Riverside Dr. used to have several cool places to go to clubs like Mother Earth, Back Room, Flannigans. Places to eat like Abbey Inn (Best Buger hands down)

Dan's Hamburgers began on S. Congress (now Frans) Dan Junk left his job at King Burger a little further south on Congress to open, the businesses were divided after Dan and Fran divorced.

The original Mr. Gattis is now a pawn shop on South congress north of Oltorf. The original Scholtzsky's is the Amy's Ice Cream shop on SoCo.

There is still a small memorial to the four girls killed in the infamous yogurt shop murders in the parking lot on Rockwood and Anderson Ln where the shop was. The four girls are buried together at Capital Parks Cemetery.

There is a memorial for Tom Landry at the State Cemetery though his body is buried in Dallas,TX.

The Bell tower down on Town lake (Cesar Chavez just west of Congress) was the firemans training tower until they moved to the training tower at Krieg Fields.

 

In addition to the aforementioned Cinema West, in the 70's and early 80's, there was a drive-in porn theater called The Rebel off Highway 71 just east of the highway.

 

Wasn't Mother Earth at 10th and Lamar, not Riverside? That was a great rock club in the 70's. Not great for the music, just a great scene for fun with $10.

 

Yeah, it was East Avenue.

And the Cinema West used to have porn film names on the marquee when those titles were as tame as "Behind The Green Door," "The Devil in Mrs, Jones" or even "Debbie Does Dallas."

There were fairly tame movie posters in the display windows too.

And fresh, hot popcorn and icy cold drinks in cups.

The movies were on film.

With previews.

Seating for couples was available in the balcony.



In later years, the marquee simply said something like "Continuous Adult Movies" or "Adults Only," because the offerings switched to videotapes with titles like "Cum Sucking Butthole Sluts" and kids could have read that from the Junior High across the street.

Munchies and canned drinks from vending machines were all there was.

You could bring in BBQ sandwichies from The Pit down the street and beer if you hid it under your coat.

No repairs were ever made.

Dried splooge, if you were lucky, undoubtedly covered the seats.

Condoms littered the floor.

Whores of all sexes would solicit you in the dark.

The police would walk through with flashlights several times a day and throughout the theater heads would pop up from somebody else's lap.

In places, the arm rests were broken off for several adjacent seats so people could lay down.

Video tapes were sold and rented in the lobby and there were often more people checking that inventory out than were occupied inside the auditorium.

There was another makeshift porn theater/video store/fuckatorium over on S. Lamar.

By that time porn was so easily available in your own home that no one respectable or disease-free went to see f**k movies in theaters any more.

So I bought a VCR.

 

I also remember the Mother Earth on E. Riverside Dr. Also, brings back memories of places like Club Foot downtown.

 

Fred, you... um... seem to have that whole bit down to a perfected rant. Your attention to detail is quite remarkable. Been saving that up for some time now?

LoL

 

Nope, that post ejaculated right out of my memory and squirted onto the screen.

 

The Mother Earth on Lamar would have been 72-75 period. I recall it burning down, maybe that was 77, and behind the move to Riverside. That was after my time.