Mid-20th-Century Dallas
Gerald Mud and Diamond Clips
The photo shows downtown Dallas in the mid-1950s, Texas, USA.
American writer Stephen King in his novel 11/22/63 talks about Dallas in the early 1960s. In the novel, schoolteacher Jake Epping is transported back to 1958 from 2011 and, while traveling to the United States, describes his observations:
“Ive been circling Dallas for two months looking for an apartment. Nothing fit. The reason was because I didnt like Dallas. The Times Herald (nicknamed “The Dirt Gerald” by the Dallasans) tediously praised Dallas from room to room. Morning News, which is more romantic, wrote about Dallas and Houston being “in the race to heaven,” but the skyscrapers in the editorials resembled an island of architectural bliss surrounded by the rings of the Great American one-story building. The newspapers ignored the slums, where racial barriers were slowly starting to fall. Then there were endless neighborhoods populated by the middle class, mostly war veterans, World War II and Korean war veterans. Veterans wives spent their days rubbing furniture with Pladge polish and laying them down, and then taking clothes and linen out of the Meitag washing machines. The average family had two and a half children. Teenagers mowed lawns, cycled the Herald Mud, waxed Turtle Wax on the family car, and listened (secretly) to Chuck Berry on transistor receivers. Maybe they told worried parents he was white.
Beyond the suburbs, with rotating sprinklers, the lawns lay an empty plain. In some places, mobile sprinklers still served cotton-sown fields, but King Cotton died, making way for endless acres of corn and soybeans. Dallass true crops were electronics, textiles, chatter, and black money — petrodollars. Drilling rigs werent seen very often in this region, but if the wind was blowing from the west, where the Permian Basin was located, both cities stank of oil and natural gas.
Lots of scoundrels roamed the central business district. After a while, I began to call their outfit “full Dallas”: a checkered sports-cut jacket, a tight tie with a large clip grasped from below (these clips were considered jewelry in the sixties, so diamonds or glass usually sparkled in the center), white Sansabelt pants, and flashy embroidered boots. The scoundrels worked for banks and investment firms. They sold soybean futures, oil development rights, and land west of the city, where nothing grew but dope and tumbleweed. The scoundrels clapped each other on the shoulder with sparkling rings and looked like “son” to themselves. On their belts, where businessmen in 2011 wear mobile phones, many wore a handmade revolver or pistol in a holster.”
Previously in Old Photos: Istanbul in 1965, The Hobbits and the British.
The photo shows downtown Dallas in the mid-1950s, Texas, USA.
American writer Stephen King in his novel 11/22/63 talks about Dallas in the early 1960s. In the novel, schoolteacher Jake Epping is transported back to 1958 from 2011 and, while traveling to the United States, describes his observations:
“Ive been circling Dallas for two months looking for an apartment. Nothing fit. The reason was because I didnt like Dallas. The Times Herald (nicknamed “The Dirt Gerald” by the Dallasans) tediously praised Dallas from room to room. Morning News, which is more romantic, wrote about Dallas and Houston being “in the race to heaven,” but the skyscrapers in the editorials resembled an island of architectural bliss surrounded by the rings of the Great American one-story building. The newspapers ignored the slums, where racial barriers were slowly starting to fall. Then there were endless neighborhoods populated by the middle class, mostly war veterans, World War II and Korean war veterans. Veterans wives spent their days rubbing furniture with Pladge polish and laying them down, and then taking clothes and linen out of the Meitag washing machines. The average family had two and a half children. Teenagers mowed lawns, cycled the Herald Mud, waxed Turtle Wax on the family car, and listened (secretly) to Chuck Berry on transistor receivers. Maybe they told worried parents he was white.
Beyond the suburbs, with rotating sprinklers, the lawns lay an empty plain. In some places, mobile sprinklers still served cotton-sown fields, but King Cotton died, making way for endless acres of corn and soybeans. Dallass true crops were electronics, textiles, chatter, and black money — petrodollars. Drilling rigs werent seen very often in this region, but if the wind was blowing from the west, where the Permian Basin was located, both cities stank of oil and natural gas.
Lots of scoundrels roamed the central business district. After a while, I began to call their outfit “full Dallas”: a checkered sports-cut jacket, a tight tie with a large clip grasped from below (these clips were considered jewelry in the sixties, so diamonds or glass usually sparkled in the center), white Sansabelt pants, and flashy embroidered boots. The scoundrels worked for banks and investment firms. They sold soybean futures, oil development rights, and land west of the city, where nothing grew but dope and tumbleweed. The scoundrels clapped each other on the shoulder with sparkling rings and looked like “son” to themselves. On their belts, where businessmen in 2011 wear mobile phones, many wore a handmade revolver or pistol in a holster.”
Previously in Old Photos: Istanbul in 1965, The Hobbits and the British.
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Contributed by OldPik on January 6, 2025
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