Well, I've done it again. Remember Hart's Bakery, Anderton's, Shifty Logan, the Bitter Lemon, the original Skateland, the notorious Whirlaway Club and their sexy dancers, and other people and places from the past? They're all featured in the 2010 Ask Vance Calendar, along with dozens and dozens of other rare images of our city. Just look at the cover! Fancy, huh?

Now I know you'd like to hang on to that old calendar forever. But it really won't do you much good after the end of the year, so it's time to buy a new one — AND GET A 12-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION TO MEMPHIS MAGAZINE AT THE SAME TIME. A tremendous bargain, if I do say so, for just $12. Heck, that's only half what we used to charge for tours of the Lauderdale Mansion, and all you saw was the basement, crawlspace, and cesspool (where I spent so many happy, happy hours).

You can also order a gift subscription for your friends, while you're at it. Remember, if you like reading "Ask Vance" and also enjoy the weird posts I put on this blog, you'd better keep those subscriptions coming in, or Vance Lauderdale hits the streets, looking for another job. One with dignity, I mean.

And just think of the poor children! No — not MY children. Just bratty children in general.

So call 901-575-9470 or go HERE to order a calendar and keep me employed. It's a win-win situation for all of us.

And then a few days ago, a reader who identified himself only as skipchip, sent me this message:
The owner of the Tropical Freeze, Eleanora Waddell, died January 15, 2007 in Memphis. Several items from the shop were recently stored in Memphis. I have photos of some of the menu boards.

I immediately wrote back and asked for photos of the signs, and here you go (more images below). Notice that he also has a few decorative panels as well, with brightly painted palm tree designs.

Looking over the menus, the selection at the Tropical Freeze wasn't really very unusual, but you'll notice they did offer such oddities as "Tropical Sundaes" (just 35 cents), a Papaya Juice Pina Colada (25 cents), and even an ice cream flavor they called (what else?) "Tropical Freeze" ( a whole pint for just 30 cents).

Also, their "Tropical Shakes" were "made with our own Tropical Freeze — a delightful blend — of island-grown products." What's more, they were "nature's most healthful, non-fattening and refreshing flavors."

Many, many thanks for sharing all these pictures, Chip. If you want to sell any of these to the Lauderdale Library, well, you know how to reach me. (See more photos on the next page.)

Whew. That must have been some party!

But while I was in that lovely town, I wandered past this football stadium. It wasn't a very large place, so I imagine it must have been for a local high school. What I most recall, though — in fact, it was the only thing I can remember about Ripley — was the curious sign on the place.

It's called Tiny Knee Stadium.

Does anybody know why?

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:

But the art academy (now known as Memphis College of Art) wasn't the only victim of this outrageous behavior. You know the graceful statue of the three female swimmers that stands as the centerpiece of the garden by the west entrance to Memphis Brooks Museum of Art? (The actual location is called the North Holly Court.) Lovely, isn't it?

Well, sometime during the evening of August 9, 1976, somebody must have thought otherwise, because they hacked the thing to pieces.

Here's the photo of the ruined sculpture that ran in the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Quite a mess. The newspaper reported, "The statue has a history of controversy. When it was first put in place, critics objected so strongly to the nude figures that the sculptor, Frances Mallory Morgan, was required to put a suggestion of bathing suits on the figures."

Apparently that was not enough. Luckily, the artist was able to repair the damage, and it's hard to tell the piece ever looked like this.

But sometimes you just come across things that are a bit unnerving. Like THIS display in the living room of a sale last weekend. Man, that gave me the shivers. I snapped the picture and scampered out of the room in a hurry, because if that unusually lifelike doll — if it WAS a doll — moved even a fraction of inch, I knew my heart would stop, and that would be the end of "Ask Vance."

In fact, as I turned to leave, I'd swear the little creature whispered, "Mister, can you please find my Mama"? but I don't want to think about it anymore.

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.

Now first of all, J.T. Hinton & Sons was mainly a FUNERAL HOME, and I've complained before about what I consider a conflict of interest. Would it really be in their best interest, I have fretted, for the ambulance drivers to deliver you to the hospital safely — and therefore lose a perfectly good, perfectly DEAD funeral home customer?

But I digress. Hinton, competing with many other ambulance and funeral companies in Memphis, hit upon a rather unique marketing plan. As the ad says, they already operate "The World's Finest and Safest Ambulances." Not just in Memphis, mind you, but IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

And now, they provide you with "the first and ONLY Armored Ambulance in the World."

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.

But — I don't care if you did get stuck with the awkward phone number 666 (back in the days when phone numbers here were apparently just three digits).

It's just not a good idea, if you ask me, to name your taxi company after the Mark of the Beast.

Or any company, for that matter.

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.

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.

Here's the letter:

I hope someone there can help me by providing some information.

My parents moved to Memphis in 1957 and I was born there in 1959. Around 1962, I only know at three years old, my sister and I appeared on a local children’s show. We were the featured quests, coming out of the audience to do the new dance, The Twist.

I began to think about this when my sister died several years ago. My parents can no longer remember the station or the name of the show. They mistakenly thought Wink Martindale was the host, but a very nice email from him said that was not so.

Do you have any knowledge of this show, the station, or the host? I know there are certainly people in the Memphis community who would have this knowledge, but I don’t know how to find them. I have made phone calls and wrote a columnist with no success.

Thank you for your time.
Jeanna McManus Hartzog
medbsw@yahoo.com
P.O. Box 124
Silver Creek, Mississippi 39663
601-660-5720

Yes, the two concrete gate posts are topped with brightly painted, cast-concrete FROGS. Now I have to say that for a former prison, Shelby Farms certainly has a lot of gates, but these are the only ones I've found (so far) that feature animals. And why frogs, I wonder?

They're located on Nixon Road, just south of Mullins Station, right across from the building that now houses the Shelby County Archives. The gate itself doesn't serve any purpose anymore, since the road now runs just a few yards to the east of it. But I really do like the frogs. I'm sure they brightened the days of the prisoners who trudged through these gates years ago to work the fields.

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 ...

But this Thursday evening, September 24th, you can — and should — go to Elmwood Cemetery to attend the book-signing for Veiled Remarks, a really fine book produced by my friend Melissa Anderson Sweazy, a super-talented writer and photographer.

Subtitled "A Curious Compendium for the Nuptially Inclined," the book is a nice collection (hence the word "compendium" you see) of all sorts of historical tidbits and oddities relating to marriage, such as: an Old English rhyme for predicting the best day to marry, Charles Darwin’s pro and con list concerning marriage, etiquette expert Emily Post on how to handle broken engagements, notable figures in history who suffered cold feet on their wedding day, and — my personal favorite — “a brief history of the syphilis test required by most states in the early twentieth century for a marriage license.”

Not that those test results had anything to do with the Lauderdales' many broken engagements, I assure you. What ARE you thinking?

Now why would Melissa hold this event at Elmwood? Well, she'll tell you all about that when you arrive. At least I hope she will.

The book signing begins at 5 p.m. in the Elmwood Chapel (just inside the main entrance) and will last until the hundreds of thousands of people who read this blog have gone home. I myself may make a rare public appearance, which is reason enough for you to attend.

For more information about the book, go here.

• 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.

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.