Amarillo Memories

Amarillo Memories 

If you have a good list of Amarillo/PD related recollections, please send them to me. 

1. Kids inc

2. Roller skates.  There was kind of a natural “rink”, on the sloped oval sidewalk, at the front entrance to Whittier elementary. I lived about a block from school, so I’d take my skates and key and walk over to school.  I’d sit on the curb, slap my skates to the bottom of my shoes, then tighten them up snug with the key. I’d skate around that oval for hours.

click to enlarge

3. Remember your first band instrument, how shiny it was, and its smell. I remember playing saxophone when Kathy Nichols and I tried out for city orchestra. Mr Rhoades was our teacher.

4. Pencil vending machines, 5 cents, states or presidents.

5. Buying savings bond stamps and booklets.

6. The Little Store at 15th and Nelson, candy bars... milky way or snickers, regular 5 cents, large 10

7. Spud-nuts (for a couple of weeks one summer, I'd sell them in white paper sacks door to door all around Travis, I think I ate most of my profits)

8. Toot-n-Totum and my first Icey

9. KGNC - Dan True, Bedford Forrest

10. Cookbook Bread, it’s factory near Twings, and it’s smell

11. Danny Brogden showing me my first IBM punch card

12. Tascosa Drive inn

13. Spotting your first ’64 Ford Mustang

14. Remember them building the American and Amarillo National banks and the new overpasses on Taylor and Bucannon (or is it Pierce/Fillmore?)

15. 1957 - the interstate going thru Amarillo

16. KIXZ and Chicken Man, he's everywhere, he's everywhere!

17. Plains Dairy, Elsie the cow and Elmer’s glue

18. soap box derby racing out by Thompson park

19. The new KVII building

20. Windy Nichols morning chats over the PA

21. Basketball in the old PD court watching the close in crowd looking back and forth as each goal was made by each team

22. The PD band playing ‘Joshua Fit the Battle at Jericho’ at basketball games

23. The impossible car bash

24. Football – Running Stairs, Running Stairs, Running Stairs

25. The smell of our locker rooms

26. Pep Rallies and Coach Kirk parading like a concurring war general

27. The locker room, after we lost our first football game to Abilene Cooper

28. Coach Gilley’s antics 

29. The Prom

30. 55 mph going to class at WT down the Canyon E-Way

(more to come)