-
Chapter 14. Deep Ellum’s Just Too Doggone Slow: Decline and Rebirth
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Deep Ellum’s Just Too Doggone Slow Decline and Rebirth I n January 1940 Ernestine Claunch came to Dallas with a friend from Norman, Oklahoma, to work for the Frito Company. It was the end of the Depression; she had finished school, and there were still no jobs in Oklahoma. Her brother Marion was a Frito distributor, and he recommended that she go to Dallas to be interviewed by the company’s founder and president, Elmer Doolin. At that time, the Frito Company headquarters was located at 1405 North Haskell Avenue at the corner of Bryan Street and had about eighteen employees in the office and approximately thirty in the plant. “It was just like a big family,” Ernestine said: They ran a very strict office during business hours, and then when we played, we played, because they would take us to lunch and have parties. We were part of a neighborhood. On the corner there was a City Service station. Next to the Frito office was Carolyn’s Beauty Shop, then a Foster’s Family Grocery, and at 1411 Haskell was the Frito plant. Directly across the street was Sun Drugstore, and on Bryan Street was the telephone exchange, in a three- or four-story building. There was a lot of activity at that building because all of the long distance was handled by operators, and people came to and from work on the streetcar . Going to town on Bryan was residential for working people, and Ursuline Academy was in that area. There were small businesses scattered around and some houses, some apartments, and what were called light-housekeeping rooms that might be converted in someone’s home where, for example, a couple might live downstairs or in a different part of the house.1 Ernestine lived at first with her brother on Mary Street in East Dallas and then moved to the YWCA in the 1200 block of North Haskell. “It was C h A p t e r 14 Title 205 called Proctor Hall,” she said. “And it was filled with working women who worked all over town.” Ernestine lived there for two years and then got an apartment on Swiss Avenue, which she shared with three friends. “We figured out how we could afford it,” she remembered. “The rent was fortyfive dollars a month, and at the ‘Y’ it was six dollars a week for room and board.” Ernestine kept that apartment until 1950, when she married Jack Putnam, who operated Dallas Office Machines in Deep Ellum, located in what had been the Pythian Temple. They met in 1947; Putnam had the Frito account, and Ernestine was responsible for ordering office supplies. While they were dating, they sometimes met in Deep Ellum. “Everyone rode the streetcar everywhere you went,” Putnam said: We didn’t have a car. The streetcar went up Bryan and then crossed over to Main. On Elm they had electric buses. Deep Ellum was very active, lots of people and lots of pawnshops. Smith’s Furniture and Model Tailors were there. That kind of activity. The part I remember the most was that the merchants had all of their wares out on the street. Not all of them, but a lot of them did. Families were down there with children. The merchants kind of Juneteenth parade in North Dallas, 1946. Behind the float is the Pride of Dallas Café, owned by Quitman and Daisy McMillan. Courtesy of the Dallas Public Library. [34.204.196.206] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:06 GMT) 206 C h A p t e r 1 4 hawked their things. They had clothes on racks, and they tried to get you to come into their shops. And there was one café that was in the same block where my husband’s shop was. I don’t remember the address, but they had great food. For years and years we made chili from the recipe we got at this restaurant. Everybody went to lunch at this café. Maybe it would cost twentyfive cents. Jack had many friends there, all of the shopkeepers. Everyone worked until Saturday noon and then went downtown for shopping . On payday you usually went someplace pretty nice for lunch, and you met other people. And then you did your shopping. At that time in the early forties, when you went to town, you always dressed. You wore white gloves in the summer whether you went to church or shopping or wherever. And the girls...