• Mr. and Mrs. Lauderdale

The yellowed snapshot was taken during an excursion to Maywood, and even though it was the middle of June, Mother is wearing her beloved chihuahua-fur coat and stuffing a Hostess Twinkie in her mouth (she gobbled them down by the dozen). And there's Pa, smoking a Pall-Mall, which is what eventually set the house on fire, when he fell asleep — dead drunk, as usual — with a lit cigarette dangling from his tobacco-stained lips.

The picture brings back painful memories, you see, because just a few days later — having squandered what little was left of the family fortune — they abandoned me in Memphis and tried to evade the taxman by escaping to Canada. And there I was, a mere child of 27, left behind in the Mansion, unable to feed myself or even open a can of dogfood for my supper. Luckily, the lady from Social Services found me in time, and ... well, you know the rest.

This photo was the one used by the FBI on their WANTED poster. As blurry as it is, it worked, too. The authorities nabbed Mother and Father just as they were trying to sneak across the border into Nova Scotia, and — oh, I don't want to talk about it anymore.

• Homer Wells

Wells was a private eye in Memphis in the 1920s and '30s, then tried his hand writing stories about his exploits for True Detective Mysteries, Master Detective, and other magazines of the day and became quite a local celebrity. These (below) are just some of the many "true-crime" publications that contained his stories.

Don't miss it! Southern Routes airs on WKNO-TV this Thursday, March 4th, at 7:30 p.m. The show will repeat on Saturday, March 6th, at 9:30 a.m. and again on Sunday, March 7th, at 7:30 a.m.

Also on the show will be episodes that take viewers to Tennessee's Duck River, a profile of metal-detector guru Sid Witherington, and — a special treat — a segment on local fire dancer Nadia Sofia, who just happened to be featured on the cover of the Memphis Flyer's recent "Hotties" issue. Hot stuff, indeed.

Southern Routes is produced by my pal Kip Cole and co-produced and hosted by my good friend (and fellow historian/explorer) Bonnie Kourvelas, and they do one heckuva job, if I do say so myself.

Why, just keeping me sober for each episode is almost a full-time job for them.

Hope you enjoy it.

These names were impressed into the wet cement with a mold or a stamp and have survived for decades, so it was a pretty good system.

But today I was stumbling around in Central Gardens (please don't ask why), and happened to glance down at my feet as I moseyed along, and I noticed an entirely new — and considerably fancier — form of these signatures. As you can see, they are fancy embossed markers, cemented into place at various locations along Central Avenue. I really like the design of these things. "Miller Maker Memphis" is an especially fine one, with its triple use of a large "M." And I'm sort of intrigued by the interlocking "paperclip" design of "Koehler Brothers & Franklin." I assume that Franklin joined the Koehler Brothers in the concrete company and was determined to get proper (and equal) credit for the sidewalks they poured around town.

My only complaint — why didn't everyone DATE these things? I guess it would have been expensive to create a new plaque every year, but still ...

• Cybill Shepherd in 1969

Others may know her for her singing, or maybe her political activism, or maybe because she kept a home in the South Bluffs for years and years.

But many people, it seems, have quite possibly forgotten that this East High School graduate was, by any definition of the word, a Supermodel. She got her start by winning the "Miss Teen Memphis" contest in 1966, which launched an extraordinarily successful modeling career. In fact, in the late 1960s, it was hard to pick up a teen or fashion magazine without finding Cybill on the cover or featured inside.

While rooting through the Lauderdale Library one lonely Saturday night, I turned up a collection of Glamour magazines (as shown here) from 1969, 1970, and 1971 with Cybill on the cover. Not only was she a fetching cover model, but rumor has it that director Peter Bogdanovich spotted one of these Glamours while standing in line at a Hollywood supermarket and decided, right then and there, that the then-unknown girl would be perfect as Jacy in The Last Picture Show.

(Other stories claim that his wife actually came up with the idea. If that's so, she probably came to regret it, since Peter and Cybill started, uh, "dating" after the movie came out.)

The rest, as they say, is history. But here are some other Cybill-adorned Glamours for you to admire.

• March 1970

• April 1970

• June 1970

• July 1971

• October 1971

• Althea Pentecost & Beatrice Garrison

At the time, I had not located a photograph of one of the school's founders, Beatrice Garrison, so we only included an image of Althea Pentecost.

But as luck would have it, I did finally turn up an old, undated photo of both women in the Special Collections Department of the University of Memphis Libraries, so here you go. Though the entire right side of the photo, which originally ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, has been trimmed away for some reason, you can see that the ladies are standing in front of a lifeboat, so we can assume the snapshot was taken while they were on an ocean voyage.

That's Beatrice on the right, by the way.

PHOTO COURTESY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LIBRARIES

• Delores Weaver in 1957

And when his hit movie Jailhouse Rock came out in 1957, at least one Memphis woman was so bedazzled by the jailhouse fashions that she designed a rather special shirt for her daughter, as shown here. An accompanying news clipping from the old Press-Scimitar explains:

JAILHOUSE BLOUSE
Delores Weaver, 10, wears prison stripes to be like Elvis. A fifth-grade student at Colonial School, Delores designed her blouse, even down to the prison number from Elvis' prison garb in his new picture, "Jailhouse Rock." Her mother, Mrs. G.M. Weaver, carried out the idea with needle and thread. She can rock and roll, too."

I'm not sure that sending your child to school dressed like a prisoner is the best way to motivate a youngster, but what do I know?

What I would like to know is: Where are you today, Delores Weaver?

And what happened to that shirt?

PHOTO COURTESY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LIBRARIES

Now, if I had just been born with more "gumption" I might have been able to look into the life of Dr. Rafferty on my own, but as luck would have it (all part of my clever plan, you see), one of my readers decided to do it by himself.

Hunter Johnson, a very nice fellow who knows a good deal about Memphis history, sent me a nice letter, and I'll include a portion of it here, for your reading pleasure:

"Although I did not know W.H. Rafferty, the last name certainly rang a bell in my mind because both I and my father were patients of a Dr. J.E. Rafferty back in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Joe Rafferty and his wife, Ruth, were both chiropractors with an office on Cleveland at Washington. I did some checking and discovered that he was the oldest son of William Henry Rafferty and his wife, Emma Wilson Rafferty.

• 1934 Fairview Trojans

I really wasn't sure of the team's name until I spotted the little fellow at the left holding the box labeled "Trojans." I think we can assume he's an equipment manager or team mascot of some sort, and not the guy who provides the players with, uh, a certain brand of prophylactics.

You'll notice that the numbering system has changed somewhat over the years. Of course, it's not a very large team here, but the highest number is 21, and there's even one player (in the middle) bearing the number 1, which would put pressure on you, I'd imagine.

Recognize any of your relatives in this picture?

Things were different when I was growing up. We bought fancy little autograph books, and passed them around, collecting the signatures and sayings of our dearest friends. Sometimes these turn up at estate sales or on eBay, and I thought I'd share one with you because — well, that's what I'm paid to do.

This much-worn little booklet was once owned by Robert Hugh Murphy, who was age 10 and in the fifth grade. I know this because he wrote it inside the book. A few of his friends wrote "Bloomfield, Missouri" at the top of their pages, so that tells you where the book came from. Now how it ended up in Memphis, I can't say.

What's interesting is that in a book whose cover is labeled "My Schooldays Autographs" you didn't just collect autographs, but you gathered witty sayings from your classmates. Apparently everyone picked out a clever poem or phrase, memorized it as their own, and wrote that in every book they were handed; they didn't stand there and try to think of something on the spot.

So here are a few of the inscriptions. You'll notice a certain trend with some of them.

And yes, by our standards they are corny, but you bet they were the bee's knees back in 1932, which is the date of most of these:

There I was, trying to toast some crumbs of stale bread for my supper. The rat-chewed wiring shorted out, and — once again — the west wing of the Mansion went up in flames. The firemen arrived in the nick of time to quench the blaze. But in a panic I ran outside without my shirt on, and those damn paparazzi who hang out at the gates caught me like THIS.

I really must cut down on those bowls of Lucky Charms.

Unless — UH OH — I ended up in "the other place" way down below. If that's the case (and I really can't think why it wouldn't be), then my bleak surroundings make sense. Though it's not quite as hot as what they used to tell us in Sunday School.

What AM I blathering about? Well, one of my many, many readers sent me this clipping from his Columbia University alumni magazine, which tells of the unfortunate demise of another Vance Lauderdale — clearly some rascal who stole my identity and even tried to pass himself off as a doctor. Then look what happened to him.

Let this be a lesson to us all. Or something. I'm not sure what to make of it.

At any rate, rest in peace, Vance.

Our 25th president had been elected to a second term in office in 1900 and, for reasons that he never made clear to me, decided to embark on a goodwill tour of the country the following year, taking with him five of his cabinet members. The party left Washington, D.C., by train in mid-April and made a looping journey through the sunny Southland. Newspapers reported that the individual railroad cars, "among the handsomest ever constructed in this country," were given names. The president's special coach was the Olympia. Others were Omena, Guina, St. James, Pelion, and Charmion. Just in case anyone asks you.

After a brief stop in Corinth, Mississippi, the train arrived at the Calhoun Street Station (site of today's Central Station), on Tuesday afternoon, April 30th. An artillery squad fired a 21-gun salute, and Company A of the Confederate Veterans (yes, there were plenty of them still alive) formed an honor guard as McKinley and his entourage filed into fancy carriages for the drive to Court Square. The newspapers of the day noted the irony, "as the men in grey with the western sun beaming fiercely on their grey heads and stooped forms marched as a guard to the former leader of the blue and the Grand Army of the Republic." We were still cranky about the way that whole thing turned out, you see.

He was apparently quite a character. Born in Ireland in 1889, he served an apprenticeship with blacksmiths and foundries in Liverpool, England, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1915. He moved to Memphis, so I understand, because his sister was already living here, and by the 1920s had established Culligan Iron Works, a thriving business that survived until the mid-1970s.

Culligan became good friends with Holiday Inns founder Kemmons Wilson, and as a result his company wound up forging most of the decorative ironwork — railings, signs, bannisters — for the majority of Holiday Inns around the country, which was a plum contract, let me tell you. He pretty much pioneered the ornamental iron business in this city, crafting ironwork for The Peabody, Methodist Hospital, the Memphis Pink Palace Museum, the old Shelby County Jail, and quite a few private homes here.

I know of a home near Rhodes College that has wrought-iron gates forged by Culligan Iron Works, which feature unusual twists and turns, with the top railing of the gates hammered into a pair of ducks' heads. He was known for creating elaborate and fanciful designs.

For a blacksmith, he led a rather elaborate and fanciful life. He did work for Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley (though he did NOT do the famous gates at Graceland), and in the files of the Special Collections Department at the University of Memphis are several photos of a dapper, tuxedo-clad gentleman dancing the night away at various social affairs around town.

Now I know you might think those are photos of ME, but look closely, and they are indeed Joe Culligan.

At the age of 5, Noe tells us in his booklet, "a severe attack of spinal meningitis left me in a delicate condition. In my early youth, a siege of double pneumonia developed into chronic lung trouble. For years I was sickly and weak, spending all I could earn for medicine and doctor bills." Oh, it's a sad story.

While pining away, Noe says he read about a 45-year-old man who regained his health through regular exercise, so he set out to do the same, by purchasing a set of dumbbells. He soon discovered a problem with this approach: "During this period I was a salesman for a large corporation," he relates, "and my carrying these heavy dumbbells around with me created considerable joking and ridicule on the part of the other salesmen and hotel clerks." Well, no wonder. Who carries dumbbells in their luggage?

So Noe came up with his own, more portable, gadget — a pair of wooden handles clamped to a strip of rubber — which he called Noe's Graduated Exerciser. I'm not sure, exactly, what the "graduated" part of the name means. But you grabbed each end and pulled it, and Noe writes that this device, "primitive as it was, proved capable of doing all the things that the other, costlier exercisers failed to do, and more." In fact, in just 16 months, Noe claimed that his weight jumped from a puny 139 pounds to a robust 172, his chest expanded by 8 inches, and his waist size dropped from 31 to 28 inches.

If you've been paying the slightest bit of attention, you'll know that I've recently written about the (in)famous Whirlaway Club — not just on this blog, but also in the June issue of Memphis magazine. In the magazine's "Ask Vance" column, I focused on two dancers — Betty Vansickle (stage name: Betty V) and Sue Sennett, who got into trouble with the law in the early 1960s by appearing on stage in scandalously skimpy costumes and "bumped and grinded" for customers. I was especially intrigued by Betty's costume (which she probably designed herself), featuring a long white glove stretching down her torso.

Yes, that's her in the photo above. The black lines are crop marks and the "haze" around her was added by the Press-Scimitar so she'd stand out from the dark background; that's where this photo first appeared, in 1966. Sexy, huh?

Well, today I received an email from Betty Vansickle Bendall, who told me that "Betty V" was, in fact, her mother, who is still alive and living in Memphis — though no longer dancing, unfortunately.

Here's what she had to say: