• Main Street at Night

The caption at the top of the card says it was taken from the roof of the Randolph Building, which stood at the corner of Main and Beale. The postcard artists took some license, I think, when they painted in some of the signs, but certain landmarks stand out. The cluster of buildings in the left foreground is the old Gayoso Hotel. Illuminated signs for many long-gone businesses are dimly visible, especially the one for Brennan's Stag Hotel, which would have stood just a few doors down (if not right next door) to the Gayoso, and Goodman's, its huge sign mounted on the rooftop at the right. I'm not sure what Goodman's was, and yeah, sure I suppose I could look it up, but I don't feel like it.

Because ...

I'm mainly intrigued by the penciled notation scrawled across the front of the card (this was before you were allowed to write messages on the back, which was reserved for the address). Somebody has written, "Della, Grandma says for you to take good care of Grandpa's face."

Oh gosh, what was wrong with poor Grandpa's face? And why couldn't Grandma take care of it herself? Has she gone off on a vacation, and left the poor man in the care of Della, who might have forgotten to "take care" of his face if not for this postal reminder? And who was this Della, anyway? She sounds very unreliable, if you ask me.

I'll never get to sleep now ...

Look — they even ran railroad tracks down Cleveland (or Watkins) to bring materials to the site.

The authors of Memphis: An Architectural Guide note that this was the biggest building in Memphis at the time, and when it opened in 1927, "Sears proudly proclaimed that it covered more ground than the Great Pyramid in Egypt."

And like those pyramids in Egypt, it stands today as empty as a tomb.

• 100 North Main in 1964

So I thought I'd share this photo with you, because that's the kind of decent, God-fearing, kitten-loving fellow I am. As were all the Lauderdales before me, I assure you.

The photo is just one of thousands and thousands archived in the department's Memphis Press-Scimitar Collection, one of the greatest history resources in town.

And since I've mentioned the Special Collections Department, I think it's only appropriate that I thank Ed Frank, Sharon Banker, Chris Ratliff, and other members of their hard-working department. They never fail to go above and beyond the call of duty when the Lauderdale entourage swarms into their quiet domain on the fourth floor of the McWherter Library, and quite frankly, it would be impossible to do this blog and my regular column without them.

You have my everlasting gratitude.

What's this got to do with Memphis? Well, it reminds me of the old Leonard's barbecue joint on Lamar. A neon sign out front showed a pig, wearing a top hat and swinging a cane, with the words, "Mr. Brown Goes to Town." A fine sign, indeed (and relocated to the Leonard's in East Memphis). But what was even better (as far as signs go) at the original location was the smaller neon sign inset into a wall of the building, showing a pig relaxing happily as he was being consumed by the flames of the barbecue pit. I can't remember if that one also got moved to the new location.

The point is that quite a few BBQ places tend to show the pigs having a good old time, just as they are about to be cooked and eaten. That's weird to me, because I can't think of a single steakhouse that shows cows enjoying their last moments in the slaughterhouse. Not even seafood restaurants seem to show fish on their journey to our stomachs. So why is it okay for us to see pigs on Death Row?

Of course, sometimes you'll see it with chickens, too.

Even though I haven't been able to find a photo of it, one of my all-time favorite neon signs stood in front of Jack Pirtle Fried Chicken on Poplar, just east of Cleveland, which showed a line of chickens running across a diving board and then leaping — to their searing deaths! — into a steaming bucket of grease. A pair of neon drumsticks sticking out of the same bucket was an especially nice touch, I thought. Kind of showing the "before" and "after" of the chicken's demise.

They tore the sign down when they demolished that particular Jack Pirtle. An AutoZone stands on the site today. If anybody has a photo of the sign (preferably in color), please send it to me.

In the meantime, I have a curious hankering for some sausage ...

I wanted to share an interesting old photograph that I found tucked away in a Central High School yearbook. It's an aerial view of the three old Memphis bridges that cross the Mississippi at the South Bluffs area. (Click on it to enlarge it.)

The view is looking eastward towards Memphis from Arkansas. From left to right, you have the Harahan Bridge (1914), the Frisco Bridge (1892 — called "The Great Bridge" when it first opened), and the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge (1949).

What's really interesting is that if you look very carefully at the top of the photo, at the easternmost end of the Harahan Bridge, you can see a portion of the insanely complicated one-way road system that gave automobiles access to the roadways that were suspended on the outside of the bridge. They were added later, you see, and there was no space to put them inside the bridge spans.

In the May issue of Memphis magazine, I give an account of Confederate Park — what used to be there, how it came about, and what changes have taken place there over the years. Stop what you are doing right now and go read it. Here I thought I'd just share with you some old postcard images of the park, so you can see the then-and-now changes for yourself.

Take a close look at the last two postcards, which seem to be identical (they're on the next page). But one shows a pair of steamboats in the Mississippi River, and one doesn't — which gives you an example of the liberties that postcard artists took with their subjects, and is just one reason that old postcards are sometimes not the most reliable sources for historians.

But they're still fun to look at, nevertheless. Here you go:

Let’s get something straight right now: Nobody is buried beneath the Doughboy Statue in Overton Park. Instead, the massive monument honors “the memory of Memphis and Shelby County men who gave their lives to their country in the Great War,” according to the massive plaque mounted on its base. And back then, they were talking about World War I. The plaque holds the “1917-1919 Honor Roll” and carries 230 names. I am ashamed to say there’s not a Lauderdale among them.

The old Doughboy has endured its own battles, that’s for sure. It was the brainchild of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who raised funds “with the aid of a grateful public and schoolchildren” (according to a smaller plaque mounted on the back of the base) and hired an out-of-town sculptor named Nancy Coonsman Hahn to erect a monument to America’s fighting spirit. Although I’ve been unable to find out just how much the piece cost — and let me tell you it is indeed one big chunk of bronze — I did turn up old newspaper articles that tracked a subscription drive to raise funds for its massive stone base, and that alone was $3,500.

Anyway, the statue — depicting a grim-faced U.S. Army soldier clambering over a rock with his bayonet drawn — went up in Overton Park on September 21, 1926. And some people were certainly not happy with it. Michael Abt, a Tech High School art teacher and sculptor (who gained fame for designing most of the Cotton Carnival floats), caused quite a stir in the newspapers back then by calling the statue “the attack of a vicious beast.”

In the September issue of Memphis magazine, I tell the compelling story of the little green cottage on South Front Street, which opened in 1939 as a Pure Oil Station (above). The building went through many owners over the years, and is now the property of a nice fellow named Kris Kourdouvelis, who lives next door and uses the old gas station for storage.

Yesterday I received an email from a Memphian named Kenneth Pasley, whose uncle was the original owner of that station. Here’s what Kenneth had to say about it:

"I worked at that station for my uncle, William Willingham, from 1956 to 1966, when I graduated from CBU. My uncle Bill owned the station from about 1938 to 1970, when he retired and closed it. During the war, Bill’s younger brother Tommy left school early every day and ran the station. When Bill returned home from France, in 1945, Tom spent time in the Army Air Corps, then moved to Walls, Mississippi, and opened a Pure Oil Station on Highway 61, just north of Twinkle Town Airport. Henry Halbert may have owned the little station in question before Uncle Bill, but he did not own it after 1938. Henry Halbert ran the Pure Oil Service station at 836 South Third (Third & Iowa), when my other uncle, Reggie Willingham, went into the Army Air Corps. Reggie took the station back over when he returned from the war. Henry then went on to open “Halbert’s Auto Supply”.

Thanks for the additional information, Kenneth.