As a Lauderdale, I'm familiar with most products made in Memphis, but this was a new one.

Fa-Mo Pickles! Is that short for "Famous" I wonder? And what, I also wonder, makes them so damn great? After all, they're not just good pickles. They are "The South's Most Delicious Product" and man, that's really saying something.

And are pickles really "made" in Memphis?

Yet another curious advertisement found in an old school yearbook, in this case, the 1927 Lantern of The Hutchison School.

One of the oldest — if not the oldest — schools built in Shelby County (the folks at Central and Tech will argue forever about that honor), Messick first held classes back in 1909. Over the years, the mighty Panthers trounced teams throughout the city, and kids came to regard the old red-brick building at the corner of Spottswood and Greer as a home away from home. But the buildings decayed, the school district changed, and in the early 1980s the condemned buildings fell to the bulldozer. Although some of the campus sites remain, it's not a typical high school anymore. These days the city school system calls it the Memphis Adult Education Center, and you can enroll for vo-tech courses and also earn a GED, among other things.

Wait, I have the wrong person. That dreadful experience happened when I was taking trombone lessons. And the teacher didn't use a piano lid, he used a sledge hammer. And now he is in prison.

So just let me start over. The woman pictured here was Susie DeShazo, one of the best and most talented piano teachers this city ever had. Countless musicians were influenced by her music school, which she opened in 1925 with her sister, Jenny, at 1264 Linden, just across the street from Central High School.

Miss Susie, as everyone called her, was the youngest in the family and probably the most musically gifted. An old Memphis Press-Scimitar article noted that she was "born with that sense of absolute pitch, which enabled her to recognize and produce any tone correctly."

Just as I myself was able to do on my harmonica!

A talented violinist at a very early age, she turned to the piano when she "rebelled against the squeaky sounds produced on the violin by beginners" and very quickly became "one of the South's most outstanding artists." One reviewer commented that "she possesses a superb technique. Her playing is characterized by great tonal beauty and a warmth of style that make her programs never-to-be-forgotten events."

Much like my harmonica and oboe recitals at the Lauderdale Mansion!

The original (shown here) was a tiny, 28-seat drive-in, which opened in 1937 at 3053 Summer, just across the streem from Leahy's Tourist Court (now Trailer Park). Then, in the early 1970s, a second and much larger Monte's — this one with 250 seats, a private dining room, and even an outdoor garden, opened farther east, at the corner of Summer and Isabel.

Both eateries, as you probably gathered, were owned and operated by a fellow named Monte Robinson. He got his start in the restaurant business by buying and operating the old Skillet Restaurant across the street from The Peabody. It was slow-going at first, but he made a success of it, and even purchased two other Skillet restaurant, one near the Hotel Claridge, another close to the Hotel Gayoso, along with the old Shanty Cafe on Court Square.

• The Peabody Theater

Back in the 1930s or so, Cooper-Young was like a small town, and trolley cars rumbled down Cooper and turned onto Young on their way to the fairgrounds. I managed to find a nice photo of the old building, taken in 1943, in the Memphis Room at the main library. Squint hard at the marquee and you can see they were showing (as theaters did in those days) a double feature: My Friend Flicka and Mister Big. A banner over the door reads "All The Best Features!"

The Memphis Room also had two other images of the Peabody, but I didn't bother scanning them because my scanner is too slow and I was in a hurry to get home and take my daily 8-hour nap. One showed a tiny, rather plain lobby, with a little snack bar set off to one side. The other photo showed the auditorium itself, with light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. I tried counting the seats, but gave up after 600, so the building was larger than it looks from the street.

You don't remember it? Then stop reading right here, turn off your computer, and do something productive with your lives.

But if you do remember this show, then I'm going to tell you more about it, like it or not.

First of all, the main character's name was indeed spelled "Be." I know this because some time ago I talked to a nice gentleman named Holden Potter, who produced and directed the show, and he ought to know. Mr. Be himself was a local actor named Allen Bates, who dressed up like a locomotive engineer, and this kindly old fellow served as the host to the half-hour show, which featured films and puppets, including one called Ponce de Lion (a play on the name of the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, you see).

"This was in the days before organized kindergarten and day care," Potter told me, "so the show was designed to fill in for that." They went with an old-timey train motif because back then, in the 1960s and 1970s, everything was high-tech and plastic, and Potter says, "We wanted to convey that grandfather image, smelling of pipe tobacco and oranges, and trains had a certain romance. Kids knew that trains could take you anywhere you wanted to go."

Does anybody even remember the polished aluminum fountain (shown here) that was installed in 1962 at the entrance to the Front Street Post Office? It seems a local group called the Gold Star Mothers raised some $50,000 for a memorial to their sons, who had died in the war, and recruited Memphis architects to design one. What they wanted was a traditional, shrine-type structure — something with nice bronze statues and granite columns.

What they got, though, was a gleaming rectangular trough, with water dripping into a big marble pool below. The Gold Star Mothers were dismayed, calling the flashy thing "a monstrosity." The designers (whose names I can't recall) defended their work, saying the fountain was "the first example in Memphis of non-representational civic sculpture." In other words, it was some of that "modern" art, and some people here didn't appreciate it. This was 1962, remember.

Well, not always. I turned up a pair of old Memphis Press-Scimitar articles that told about the darker side of operating one of these contraptions.

The first story was headlined, "Merrymobile Man Claims She Drew Pistol on Him." This being Memphis and all, I don't know why this story surprised me, but dang — who would assault a Merrymobile driver? Well, Mrs. Shirley Marie Lucas, did. In July 1963, she operated the Pecan Hill Trailer Court at 2340 Raleigh-Millington Road. She later told police that she "loved children but hated litterbugs," so one day when a Merrymobile came to a stop in front of her property, fearing that those beloved children might throw their popsicle wrappers on the ground — horrors! — she told the driver to move on. When he refused, she pulled a pistol on him!

It's not clear what happened next, though I assume the driver did indeed move on, but the story says that charges of "disturbing the peace" against Mrs. Lucas were dropped, and she pleaded not guilty to carrying a pistol. I'm sure the Merrymobile driver decided to just avoid the trailer park after that. I certainly wouldn't risk my life selling popsicles.

That's the unfortunate driver, Robert Tramel, in the photo above. The newspaper said he was "mopping his brow after the stormy court hearing."

The other event, from a child's point of view, was probably more horrifying. Just imagine a little toddler, clutching his money in his hands, waiting on the curb after hearing the cheerful tinkle of the Merrymobile bells — only to see the little cart fly by IN FLAMES! Oh, I would have nightmares for years after witnessing such a terrifying sight.

The brainchild of a local ice-cream vendor named Robert Heffelfinger, these red, white, and blue merry-go-rounds on three wheels rolled down suburban streets in the summertime. The putt-putt of the little one-cylinder engines and tinkling bells suspended from the aluminum canopy told every kid in the neighborhood, "The Merrymobile's here!" and they'd scramble outside and wait on the curb, their fists clutching nickels and dimes. The driver could reach into freezers on either side of his seat and hand out ice-cold popsicles, Buried Treasures, Drumsticks, Eskimo Pies, and other mouthwatering delights. The prices were a treat, too. Back then, a popsicle cost six cents, an ice-cream sandwich a dime.

At one time, some 80 Merrymobiles operated out of the Merrymobile Ice Cream Company's headquarters on Broad, but by 1973 the fleet had dwindled to a dozen. When the firm went out of business a few years later, most of the little cars ended up in a dump in Tipton County (or so I heard). But a handful survived, and one from the early 1950s, identified by a metal tag as number 43, sat forlornly outside Sid's Auto Frame Alignment Shop in Millington for years.

But I recently turned up a 1927 newspaper advertisement for the store's sporting goods department, and just look at the amazing selection. If you have trouble reading the ad, let me just mention a few of the items for sale, and their 1927 prices:

Spalding golf clubs (irons) — $3.50
Spalding golf clubs (woods) — $5.00
Narragansett Livewood tennis racquets — $2.95
Louisville Slugger baseball bats — $1.85
League baseballs — $1.25
Shakespeare automatic fly reel — $4.50
... and lots more

Golf bags came in "all sizes" with the prices starting at just a dollar and stretching all the way to $45, which was a stupendous amount of money to spend on a golf bag in the 1920s. For you, I mean, not for me.

Note that they also sold a baseball glove called the "Dazzy Vance" (a fine name indeed) for the rather steep price of $8.50. Nothing with the Lauderdale name on it ever came cheap, I assure you.

Over the years, I've gotten quite a lot of questions, comments, and suggestions from readers. Almost two dozen, I'd say! But my favorite correspondence of all, I might as well admit, is the kind that does my work for me. And such is the email that I recently received from my good friend, Melissa Anderson Sweazy, a super-talented photographer and writer (and author of the upcoming book, Veiled Remarks: A Curious Compendium for the Nuptially Inclined).

Melissa wrote to tell me that the old Memphis Daily Appeal newspaper from the 1860s — that's right, the EIGHTEEN 60S — is now online, where you can peruse it at your leisure. It's not available in Memphis, where you might expect, but is archived (along with many, many other newspapers) at the University of Texas in Tyler, Texas.

And my oh my, it's a treasure trove of historical tidbits. Not only are there plenty of compelling stories about the Civil War, but the newspapers back then were just packed with oddities. Such as this little item, from March 26, 1861: "We learn that the 14 men and 15 women at the Home for the Homeless are all troubled with sore eyes."

Home for the Homeless?

Mention Whitehaven High School to most people, and within a few minutes anybody who attended that school will bring up fond memories of Chenault's, an extraordinarily popular drive-in on South Bellevue, just down the street from the school.

The Lauderdale Library contains a pair of postcards, showing this establishment from the inside and the outside. I can't tell you, exactly, when the place opened, because I just don't remember. And it's confusing because there were actually two different Chenault's, an old one and a new one. Most people seem to remember the new one (shown here).

I know this because I turned up a 1955 Press-Scimitar clipping announcing that Reginald “Rex” Chenault was planning to build a brand-new restaurant at 1400 South Bellevue, to replace his older and smaller establishment right next door. Calling it “an interesting modern building,” the newspaper observed that the new Chenault’s Drive-In “would include a public dining room of exposed brick and wood paneling, a private dining room, a tap room, and an upper level to be rented for private parties.”

Several weeks ago, I wrote about White Station, the little train depot at Poplar and Mendenhall. See "Elvis Presley's Mystery (Train) Station." According to various biographers, Elvis got off the train there after returning to Memphis after his 1956 appearance on the Steve Allen Show, and then strolled all the way to his home on Audubon Drive, just south of the park.

Now, at least one writer said that Elvis walked across "a big field" on his way home, and several people have pondered just where that was. I surmised it could have been any of the subdivisions under construction at the time.

But my pal Ed Frank, director of Special Collections at the University of Memphis Libraries, has studied maps and aerial images of that area taken in the early 1950s, and has decided that the "big field" was Audubon Park. He provided me with the great aerial photos shown here (click on them to enlarge them). Poplar Avenue is the big street running diagonally across the bottom of both pictures. The view is looking towards the southwest, and that other big street, at the left, running north and south, is Perkins. This was years before Perkins Extended was pushed across Poplar. That's present-day Cherry Road cutting across the park.

Elvis would have walked west (to the right in the photo) down Poplar, turned south at Perkins, and then crossed Audubon Park to get to his home, which would have been towards the top of the photo.

In recent weeks I've droned on and on about some of our city's "theme" restaurants — namely the Polynesian-themed Luau and the tropical-motif Tropical Freeze. Well, using a grant from the Lauderdale Foundation, I recently purchased an old menu from another eatery in town with a rather unique theme — the Ohman Ranch House, which modeled itself after the Old West, even to the point of having an old six-shooter as a front door handle.

William L. Ohman opened his first restaurant in the mid-1940s at 1358 Madison, just east of Cleveland. It was a pretty ordinary place, really, more like a drive-in, so in 1948, Ohman went all-out, building a rustic lodge behind the original restaurant. The menus proclaimed it was "a bit of Texas in Tennessee," and patrons found themselves in a rustic saloon, with rough-hewn walls, fake kerosene lanterns, and brands burned into the beams. The menu I purchased came from 1951, and it offered all sorts of "Wild West" concoctions, including Texas Shrimp ("big like Texas"), Chuck Wagon Chicken ("Pecos Bill went wild for this!"), Beef Tenderloin Steak ("It ain't bull, it's tender"), and a barbecue plate that used "only lazy, contented pigs."

(Something tells me those pigs weren't too contented about being slaughtered, but I digress.)

The cover of the menu (above) is especially interesting because it shows how Cleveland and Madison looked half a century ago. Look carefully, and on the north side of Madison you can see that a Doughty-Robinson Drug Store stood on the corner, and next to that was the Star Bowling Alley. You can see the original Ohman House #1, and behind it the Ranch House, complete with outdoor patio and a parking lot entrance adorned with a wagon wheel and the folksy message, "Y'all come back."

Across Madison, on the south side, was the Howard Graham Furniture Company, Johnnie's Shoe Repair, a beauty parlor, and Jenkin's Cafe, which apparently had a huge sign advertising Goldcrest 51 beer mounted on its roof. And across Cleveland was, then and now, Stewart Brothers Hardware.

Memphis had other roller-skating rinks before this one — Rainbow Lake and East End come to mind — but none of them had the visual impact of Skateland. And I'm talking about the original building, when it was located on the north side of Summer Avenue.

Drivers on Summer could hardly miss the clean lines of the massive building just east of Mendenhall, with a facade of rough stone that framed a wall of glass panels. "SKATELAND" was spelled out in red neon along the roof, and three winged shoes — complete with spinning neon wheels — provided a crowning touch. Anyone still not clear about what went on there could also read, in giant red neon letters, "Roller Skate for Health."

Inside, sweeping trusses of laminated wood supported a high wooden dome that arched over one of the largest rinks in town. A neon signboard mounted on the back wall gave skaters their instructions: "All Skate," "Trios," "Reverse," "Grand March," and when the session came to an end, "Skates Off."