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These places aren't really gone, only their original place they started in.
Example:
La Fogota - started out in a gas station
Chris Madrids - I believe someone said it was a Ringos (anyone know the exact history of its growth?)
Chesters - was a tiny hole in the wall burger joint on Fredericksberg across from USAA.
The original Taco Cabana was a Dairy Queen (can anyone confirm this?)
Anyone else what to share the early beginings of some of our favorite institutions in SA.
These places aren't really gone, only their original place they started in.
Example:
La Fogota - started out in a gas station
Chris Madrids - I believe someone said it was a Ringos (anyone know the exact history of its growth?)
Chesters - was a tiny hole in the wall burger joint on Fredericksberg across from USAA.
The original Taco Cabana was a Dairy Queen (can anyone confirm this?)
Anyone else what to share the early beginings of some of our favorite institutions in SA.
I frequented La Fogata from its beginning, when the proprietor would grill asada for tacos almost in front of you.
Los Barrios, on Blanco Rd., started out in a Dairy Queen-type of structure before eventually expanding out. They also used to open for breakfast at 9 am on Saturdays. Their chilaquiles (sp) were awesome back then.
These places aren't really gone, only their original place they started in.
Example:
La Fogota - started out in a gas station
Chris Madrids - I believe someone said it was a Ringos (anyone know the exact history of its growth?)
Chesters - was a tiny hole in the wall burger joint on Fredericksberg across from USAA.
The original Taco Cabana was a Dairy Queen (can anyone confirm this?)
Anyone else what to share the early beginings of some of our favorite institutions in SA.
Primo, Chris Madrid's may have been a Ringo's,
there were three or four locations.
Call Chris and ask him.
In my 1976 City Directory, 1900 Blanco Rd is listed as vacant.
Chris Madrid is listed as an employee at El Chico Restaurant.
(in my 64 Directory, 1900 is Hayne's Texaco)
There is a Ringo's listed at 3219. Ringo III Food To Go.
Also Johnny Ringo at 923 Jackson Keller.
And Johnny Ringo at 202 Fredricksburg Rd.
All three of these list different owners.
The last Ringo's was at West Ave and La Manda.
I ate in there a lot. Great burgers, the steaks were terrible.
Ringo and his wife retired 6-8 years ago, no more Ringos.
One day he told me the whole Ringo history,
but I don't remember all the details.
Part of the story was that he was going to buy Luther's Cafe,
from Luther, for his son.
His son was killed, so he did not buy Luther out.
Luther's Cafe was still at 109 E Locust in the 76 Directory.
My friend Ted had bought it from Luther.
A hole in the wall with about six stools, no tables.
3310 San Pedro was still listed as Dairy Queen,
in the 76 Directory.
Tunie's Drive In was across Hildebrand when
I was hanging around at the DQ in the 60s.
A bunch of my friends worked there.
I knew the original location for Chris Madrid's was a Texaco station. I remember my hands hurting after rolling newspapers there.
The original Taco Cabana was a DQ. I had friends working there - small counter to sit at. Chris Madrid started at the corner and subsequently took over the Alpine Ice House next door. My dad spent many a night at Alpine sipping a beer wrapped in a napkin. They had the gallon jars of pickles, pig's feet, pickled sausage behind the counter. I remember buying cigarettes there for 35 cents. No ID, no problem in those days.
And of course. you remember the Sommer's Drug store and Winn's at the corner of Blanco and Fulton. Casbeer's has been there forever. I can't believe they put that roundabout in and squeezed Blanco down to one lane in each direction from Hildebrand to Summit. It seems that our elected officials do everything to impede the smooth flow of traffic.
the night Baer's Lee Volunteers outlasted McVea's Brackenridge Eagles, 55-48,
in a bi-district playoff game at San Antonio's Alamo Stadium.
It is the night McVea scored 38 points, Baer 37.
Statistics alone would have made it a game for the annals.
There were 17 kickoffs, no punts and only three penalties.
The combined 103 points was astonishing for that era.
The game sold out a week in advance. It was locally televised.
For many, coming one week to the day after President Kennedy's assassination,
it had a salving effect.
It featured San Antonio's two best teams and, many believed,
that year's best teams in the state's top classification, 4A.
It was powerful 10-0 Lee vs. swift, 8-2 Brackenridge,
the defending state champion.
It was Lee, with its predominately white student body from the more affluent North Side.
And Brackenridge, whose students mostly were black and Hispanic,
many from lower-income West, East and South Side neighborhoods.
It had the glamour individual matchup, McVea vs. Baer,
featuring the state's two most touted backs of '63,
one black, the other white.
Both, as if on cue,
summoned their most brilliant games that crisp November night.
Baer, had 333 total yards that night to go
with five touchdowns and seven extra-point kicks.
Many who saw the 5-8, 165-pound McVea play
insist he was the best open-field runner in Texas high school history.
Then, before, since.
(after the game),
As both teams huddled in prayer at midfield,
a rare act in those days, a downcast (coach) Forren said:
They'll be talking about this game for years to come."
Good read here, sounds like a great game. I had mentioned in a post long ago that my friends dad played on that Brack team (Floyd Boone). I remember him showing me the yearbook for the year Brack won state. This was when I was in 10th grade and I had no interest in SA history like I do now, I would have loved to hear some of those stories from his dad. The best high school game I ever saw was when Jay finally beat Holmes, think that was in 89 or 90...not sure on the year.
When my wife and I first got married in 1985, we lived in the apartments at 7585 Ingram Road - back then I think they were called Greystone - now they are something else. Anyway, right at the intersection of Ingram and Culebra in the same center that now houses Fast Eddies, there was an awesome club and it was called Edge of Town.
Am I just imagining this? And my wife too? Perhaps there was more than one Edge of Town as some people recall it being over on Perrin Beitel or Nachodoches, but honestly, in at least 1985 and 1986, there was one on Ingram and Culebra.
Can anyone else confirm this?
I looked at my 84-85 city directory, which lists the Edge of Town at 14040 Nacogdoches. The address listings for Ingram Road stop at 6903 (Carl's Jr., by the way!). There is no listing for Greystone Apartments, but they may not have been in the city limits at the time.
So I really can't clear up any confusion. But I think I do remember another Edge of Town on the NW side of town, but I never went there.
Good read here, sounds like a great game.
I had mentioned in a post long ago that my friends dad played on that Brack team (Floyd Boone).
I remember him showing me the yearbook for the year Brack won state.
This was when I was in 10th grade and I had no interest in SA history like I do now,
I would have loved to hear some of those stories from his dad.
The best high school game I ever saw was when Jay finally beat Holmes, think that was in 89 or 90...not sure on the year.
spaceage - Floyd Boone is quoted several times in the article.
I copied the entire story from that Dallas paper back in 99.
Here are a few more excerpts, (it's a long article):
"But I really didn't think it would be a high-scoring game," Baer recalls. "Our defense had only given up 62 points all season."
The Volunteers, who outweighed Brack by an average of 20 pounds a man, were projected as favorites. But the defending state champions weren't intimidated.
"We weren't just representing Brackenridge," says Boone, the Eagles' fullback. "We were representing our own. We knew where we came from and we knew we had something to hold up."
The big game
No one on either team, however, was prepared for what awaited on game night. When the teams took the field for warm-ups, the stadium was packed, with portable bleachers pushing capacity beyond 26,000.
On one side were Lee's fans, dressed in the school's red and gray. On the other was a sea of Brackenridge purple. Each starter was introduced on TV. Lee's Townsend remembers being acutely aware of the TV cameras well into the first quarter.
"I can still feel the crowd," Boone says. "They were so close to us that night. If you ran out of bounds, you'd run over somebody."
Brack's Forren had two surprises. The first was sprung when Lee made its traditional entrance, sprinting behind a student carrying a Confederate flag.
"I got one of our kids, a small, black guy, to dress up in a Union Army suit," Forren recalls with a chuckle. "He ran right behind, carrying an American flag. That went over pretty big with our fans."
***********************************
Floyd Boone and Edward Coleman grew up with McVea near Lincoln Courts, a West Side housing project. They say McVea was by far the best athlete at Grant Elementary, then Dunbar Junior High.
In 1962, McVea's junior season, the Eagles lost three of their first six games. But behind McVea and the passing of senior Victor Castillo, Brackenridge won its final eight games and the state championship - the last by a San Antonio inner-city school.
Castillo, now an assistant principal at Brackenridge, remembers that before the quarterfinal victory at Brownsville, Forren directed the bus to stop at San Benito for lunch. There were no restaurants in Brownsville at which blacks were allowed to eat.
"We really felt the discrimination," says Castillo, who threw for 256 yards in the 30-26 title win over Borger. "It bonded us together."
*****************************
"To me, it was just before the dawning of a new era," says Brack's Boone, who councils parents for the San AntonioSchool District. "I think that was the beginning of the end of that kind of feeling.
"It seemed like our whole world revolved around that night."
McVea's feelings about the game are unknown. He declined a request to be interviewed for this story.
Friends say McVea's life unraveled after his 1976 retirement. A divorce and the death of his parents occurred within a short span.
He had a house with a swimming pool in Houston's Braeswood area. He had two Mercedes and a Cadillac.
But he experienced a series of drug-related arrests beginning in 1987. He also was arrested for trying to bilk 42 chicken dinners from a Houston restaurant. He posed as Oilers wide receiver Tim Smith (who is white), saying he needed the dinners for charity.
McVea's Super Bowl ring wound up in the hands of a drug dealer. He lost his home. He began living in vacant apartments.
"He was the fastest human being in a football suit I've ever seen," says country singer Larry Gatlin. "But he finally found someone he couldn't outrun, and that was the Houston Police Department."
In 1987, Gatlin, who had battled his own drug problems four years earlier, videotaped a plea to a Houston judge to spare McVea of prison. McVea, Gatlin argued, would be better served in a drug rehabilitation center.
McVea had nicknamed Gatlin "Sweet" in college. Gatlin remembers visiting McVea at Austin's FaulknerCenter. The first thing McVea did was pull out an article about the '63 Lee-Brack game.
"All he kept saying," Gatlin remembers, "was 'Sweet, they don't know who I am.' I said, 'Warren, you're a junkie. It doesn't matter who you are. It's not pertinent to your current situation.' "
During McVea's 28 days in rehab, Gatlin and his 10-year-old son, Josh, attended a meeting with McVea. At the end of the meeting, the group leader asked if anyone had anything to add. Josh raised his hand and told everyone that God, rehabilitation and friends helped his daddy overcome drugs.
"If he can do it," Josh told everyone, "you can, too."
"That was one of the most defining moments of my life," Gatlin says. "The moral of the story is this 10-year-old boy got it. Warren still didn't get it."
Two days after leaving the rehab center, McVea tested positive for cocaine and was arrested again. He was paroled two years later, then was convicted of arson.
Despite his '91 arrest and 25-year conviction for cocaine delivery, McVea could get out of prison as early as 2002. He is in Huntsville's Ellis Unit, prisoner No. 639714. He does janitorial work.
According to Glen Castlebury, Huntsville's director of public information, McVea is classified as a state-approved trustee. In general, that means he has been on good behavior and has earned the maximum "good time" credits.
Gatlin hopes so. So do former teammates Castillo, Boone and Coleman and Coach Forren. So does Baer, his lifetime co-star.
"I've never seen anybody run the football like he did," Gatlin says. "No one. He could change directions with both feet off the ground.
"I know we all are human and we all have flaws and chinks in our armor. I hope he's changed his ways and can come back and contribute to society. I love him and pray for him."
I don't know much about Renfro's murder at all. WAAAAY before my time. I know that it was at a pool somewhere, which goes along with what mudpuddle heard. The '63 time frame sounds right, also. I will ask one of my older siblings for details and post if appropriate.
Mud,
McVea is in Houston now. Works for a Hot Shot type delivery service. I think he's doing much better. I believe there was an article in '03 that featured him and Linus Baer. Also, if memory serves, they were both inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame within the last year or so.
I remeber Mr.Boone was a big man and not fat, he reminded me of Carl Weathers (Action Jackson, Appolo Creed). I remeber looking at the yearbook and my friend said "My dad said he was the best player on the team", and he was pointing to McVea. The yearbook had individual photos of them in football poses like on the old trading cards. I also remember him saying his dad said he was having problems, this was awhile back (1990). This game could be one of those Disney movies. He must have been one hell of an athlete....73 scholarships. Thats amazing for todays standards.
I've posted some drive-in pics on Theatres of San Antonio.
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