The jolt of the unexpected crash stunned the country.  The confidence was so high the little signs were ignored, overlooked or just not believed.  In September U. S. steel tumbled from a sky high of 261 to 215.  No one could figure it out. When a few other stocks fell the optimism was so great it was looked upon as a glorious opportunity to buy blue chips at bargain prices.  Such confidence made the shock of the collapse worse.

People everywhere were wiped out.  The wealthy were hurt first then it began to trickle down.  No cause was apparent; the reasons were complex and many.  The country had never worked out a real concept of the industrial revolution.  “We had allowed men of the old order, schooled in the era of trust, to guide the economy in to a dynamic exploding era.  The government sat back and allowed it to happen” according to Allen Churchill.  Economist Stuart Chase “thought the country had allowed the successful banker-industrialist-businessman to become the dictator of our destinies…ousting the statesman, the philosopher, the priest as creator of standards and ethics.”  President Hoover and others gave optimistic points and many prominent politicians and business leaders saw the problems as temporary.  Hoover said it was a business problem and business, not the government, would fix it.

In 1930, C. M. ‘Dad’ Joiner struck oil in nearby Kilgore spawning the East Texas oil boom. Dallas quickly became the financial center for the oil industry in Texas. In the first months of 1931, many petroleum related businesses either moved to or formed in Dallas. Banks made loans to develop the oil fields and Dallas became the financial center for oil in Texas. This slowed the depression locally until the middle of 1931. By then, more than 18,000 people in the city were unemployed. Even before Roosevelt was elected, Dallas had a work-for-food program that helped many. I recall my dad saying the depression did not hurt the average man until 1933. But that was when he lost his job with Magnolia Oil.

Clara Murray said the Tea Room business fell and never fully recovered.  Mrs. Meyers either sold the Tea Room to Clara or put in her hands to run.  I am not sure of which but it was done to keep the Junior League from running it according to Mrs. .Myers.  It was in Clara’s hands from 1930 to 1931 but business was light.  By 1931 it was sold to Kitty Kirk and Kate Reeves but business continued to fall as well as the quality of the food.

Munger Place certainly felt the depression.  Some of the owners leased rooms to renters and others ran boarding houses in homes that were once most elegant.  Repairs were left undone and homes were sold at low prices to buyers who neglected the required upkeep.  Absentee landlords became owners who rented the houses out or redid them into apartments.  But as bad as it was, this was not the great decline of Munger Place; that was yet to come in the late fifties and sixties.

Many homes held their own and Munger Place was still a nice place to live but it would never be the same exquisite place as before.  Neither would it be the showplace of Dallas as it once was labeled, nor would it compete with Lakewood or the Park Cities.

While it still held on with many homes rented, some taking in boarders, others neglected, they were many others surviving in good condition.  Some apartment houses and boarding houses were built in Munger Place in the thirties.

These were usually large box-like buildings that were unattractive and not accommodating to the neighborhood.  Stores and shops declined as the economy declined.  The Columbia Theater and other movie houses did well in the depression.  Movie prices were low and were air conditioned.  The Columbia was in easy walking distance and well attended.

The Schoellkopf’s home at 5003 Tremont was well kept up.  The yard with its many shrubs and flowers was always taken care of and their many parties continued according to Olina Haeber who lived next door.

Dallas found its way through the hard times with some progress. In 1931 the levees were completed in the Trinity River project reducing the danger of flooding in downtown Dallas. Highland Park Village opened as the first planned shopping center in the U.S. with a unified architectural style and stores facing an interior parking area.

In 1932 Centre St. was renamed Elm Alley because there was another Centre St. in Oak Cliff.
In the same year Dallas resident Babe Didrikson wins the AAU women’s track team championship individually scoring all 30 points against the Illinois team’s 22. Things were so bad in Dallas the Red Cross distributed 138,896 sacks of flour and 265,121 garments to 10,000 needy Dallas County families By 1933 the depression may have been at its worst and was taking it toll on Dallas but in East Dallas the city was able to build J. .L. Long. Junior High. The next year the students watched Olin Travis paint the ‘Food’ mural on the wall of the school library. Olin later painted murals at the Hall of State in Fair Park. In 1934, The Flying Red Horse, the world’s largest (at that time) revolving sign , was installed on the Magnolia Building in honor of the convention of the American Petroleum Institute.

Dallas planned to carry out Kessler’s plan for the park around White Rock before the stock market crash but there seemed no way it could now be funded.  Roosevelt’s WPA came along in time to do the park and other things as well as providing jobs.  Workers built pavilions, picnic shelters, playgrounds, foot bridges, trails, comfort stations and recreational buildings. Most parks were touched in one way or another by WPA.

In 1934, largely through the efforts of civic leader R.L. Thornton, Fair Park was selected for the Texas State Centennial in 1936 with a short deadline.

In 1935 no state fair was scheduled and construction began on a $25 million project that transformed the existing fairgrounds into a showplace of Art Deco buildings.  This brought many jobs to Dallas during the continuing depression.  The fair grounds were only a mile and one-third from 5003 Tremont.  Eleven years later my friend Raymond and I would walk to the fair grounds when they were open in the summer.

The 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, that was actually a World’s Fair, attracted more than 6 million people during its six-month run from June 6, to November 29.  Obtaining the Dallas site for the Centennial was a great boost considering the need for jobs in hard times.

My first memory was the mechanical dinosaurs fighting in the Sinclair Oil Exhibit at the Centennial. I recall the blue and green light shining on them at night.

I remember my parents trying to calm my fear while I was screaming and crying at the sight of the exhibit. Years later when my son Andrew was the same age (3) as I was, he reacted the same at a similar exhibit in Arkansas. I had great empathy for him.

The dinosaur was a symbol for Sinclair Oil and Gas stations that appeared on the tall signs at their stations that were common at that time.

Another early memory has to do with my dad that involved Munger Place but I was not aware of Munger Place at the time.

Some time around 1936 or early 1937 my dad managed a gas station on the corner of Columbia and Collett in Munger Place.  My mother would drive from Oak Cliff to pick him up at night.  I always wanted to go in the car particularly at night so I could see the lights.

It seems that there were many colors to see.  I suppose in addition to the many white lights were the red tail lights and the three colors on the signal lights.  This was also the era on the new neon lights on the art deco signs for various stores.  My dad’s station in Munger Place was the beginning of circumstances that would bring my family to Munger Place and to the house at 5003 Tremont.

For some reason my dad, who by this time we were referring to as ‘Pop’, decided to move to East Dallas. I’m not sure of the reason but it may have been he wanted to cut down the long drive from Oak Cliff. On the other hand, I recall him saying he read something that said one should rent instead of owning a home and put the money in a business. If this was his plan he waited six years before buying a business. It think it well may have been he liked Munger Place. For eight years he had a station at Bishop and Davis that he always liked because its location was a nice part of Oak Cliff. I believe because of the layout of Munger Place it was a warmer neighborhood. The Munger developers had laid out a plan that included boulevards, close shopping areas and large friendly porches. Many of these porches wrapped around to side streets and all of these things develop close neighbors. Observers today would say this showed the Mungers had an understanding of geographic and architectural determinism although the terms were not used at that time.

Pop’s warm personality and the close friendly patrons in the little marker center of Munger Place enabled him to be aware of opportunities when they come up. He found a house for rent at 5306 Columbia Avenue; this was three blocks from his work. The move in the first month of 1938 ended a long stay in Oak Cliff. Also in 1937 the Columbia Theater was sold and became the ‘Rita’.

 

My parents lived in Oak Cliff since 1917 in several places; in 1918, my father Samuel Densmore Sr. managed a gas station at Bishop and Davis until 1926.  He was promoted .to service manager of Hawkins Tire and Battery Company according to a clipping in The Dallas Journal that complimented him on the efficiency of service and the appearance of the station that added to the community.  He later worked for Magnolia Oil and in insurance before coming to the station at Columbia and Collett.  I recall my parents considering themselves fortunate since he had a job during the depression.  The move away from Oak Cliff was hard for the family to do.

The move in 1938 brought us to Columbia Avenue. Although it did not bring us to Munger Place, it was only a block away.

The Columbia Avenue house was a bungalow with two upstairs rooms although one was not floored and the walls were only framed. It had a porch across the front which I really enjoyed as a boy that turned five in February just shortly after the move. This was still during the long Depression and like many others we had a number of people living in the house with us. My Uncle Rufe, Dad’s brother, had moved from Dallas back to a farm because of the hard times. Two of his sons, Dale and Vernice, moved into town to work and joined with us in the Columbia house. Later, in 1938, my brother Sam and his girlfriend Virginia, married and lived in the upstairs room. These four and both of my parents, sister, grandmother and me totaled nine.

I liked the house and remember at my first sight of the house running up stairs to see the second floor.  With great optimism to see an upstairs room I opened the wrong door into the unfinished room and was terrified.  I loved the porch that was not as big as the Munger Place porches but was still a nice size.  There was a lot of traffic on the street for that era.  I enjoyed watching the cars go by and by asking more questions than I probably should have, I soon learned the makes of most of the cars at time.  My sister, Nita, was able to finish high school at Adamson in Oak Cliff. This was easy because the street car ran in front of our house on Columbia. She was with her friends until she graduated in May of 1939.

Columbia was an interesting street.  At the the east end, a hill was topped with the columned Juliette Fowler Home.  On the west, the broad avenue ended with Zenith Cleaners that was an art deco one story building with a white tower rising up another level.  I always liked the buildings at each end of Columbia.  Many years later I was pleased to see on page 118 of James Howard Kunstlers ‘Home from Nowhere’ Touchtone 1996, the following, “Civic buildings, town halls, churches, schools, libraries, museums are placed…where streets terminate, to serve as landmarks and reinforce their importance.”

Columbia was the extension of Main and Elm Streets from downtown. It had both businesses and homes that were served by streetcars that ran often. On the southwest corner of Columbia and Carroll was a Spanish American War cannon that was left from a military field that was there in 1898.

From Kunstler Home from Nowhere on page 122

Shopping streets have existed for thousand of years. The human need for beauty has not changed, and civic art until recently was as concerned with beauty as it was with practicality. Ideas about beauty certainly change over time, …But the essential human hunger for beauty remains constant…and we have reason to believe that it is keyed to some of the fundamental ordering systems of nature, and of the human need to see our place within these systems of nature, and of the human need to see our place within these systems expressed in physical form

The map pictured shows the landmarks at each end of the street and the street car tracks. The map is not to scale, Columbia is much longer and many streets are not shown:

Unfortunately the columned building at the east end of Columbia was replaced with a lesser one as was the Zenith building to the west.

At some time in 1938 my dad took me to work with him at Columbia and Collett and introduced me to many people in the ‘Agora’ of Munger Place.  I’m sure I did not remember the names of the people we saw but they were there for many years and I grew to know them well.  There was ‘Doc’ Moore who ran the drugstore across the street from Pop’s station.  Then north on Collett to the end of the shops was Mr. Cunningham that ran the Shell station and garage.  Next was a Magnolia gas station but I believe we passed it up because I never knew any one there.  Next was the cleaners and barber shop; I’m sure when he introduced me to Verbie Miller at the cleaners that Mr. Miller had a cigar in his mouth.  I never saw him without one until the summer of 1978 when he was quite old.  That was the summer I interviewed many people still living in Munger Place and I was fortunate to be able to talk to him.  In the same building were Roy and Joe Bandy, the barbers.  Pop always liked to talk to Mr. C. V. Carver who ran the Rita Theater.  We passed up the Collett Club that was a pool hall run by Raymond Sitzes and I don’t believe I ever knew him.  The little trip around the Columbia and Collett business area is a very cherished memory; the people I met were part of my life for fifteen years.

When we moved to Columbia Avenue I don’t believe the streetcar line on Collett was there. It could have been there in 1938 and I did not remember it but if it was I am sure it was gone by 1939.  I have yet to find anything or anyone who knows when it was removed.  There is a map dated 1927 that shows the tracks there at that time.  It must have been removed sometime between 1927 and 1939.  I believe when it was removed the Fitzhugh bus replaced it as a cross town route.

New Year’s Eve 1938 is a distinct memory for me.  It must have been late that night because I remember by Mom and Dad telling me there would never be a 1938 again.  I kept asking that maybe someday there might be another one but they assured me that it would not happen.  I recall being terribly sad that there would not be another 1938.  That was also the year that my Aunt Florence and her husband Brian moved to California.  That established a California part of our family that included Florence’s daughter, Opal, and her son, Ronnie.  Iola had lived there after attending Woodrow Wilson but came back and forth often to live with us in the 5003 Tremont house. Iola’s mother, my Aunt Eunice, later moved to California in 1948 as well.

In the early spring of 1939, Pop heard about a large house in Munger Place that was for rent.  It was a big white two story that had 15 rooms if you counted the halls and the baths.  It had a second kitchen upstairs.  At times he would make a decision without discussing it with Mom and may have at this time but I don’t remember.  We moved sometime around March of 1939 to the big Greek Revival house at 4938 Tremont at the Collett intersection.

It was an interesting house with two entrances with big Greek columns on each. The house had seen a lot of wear but its space was practical in difficult economic times. Originally both fronts were the same until a later edition added a sleeping porch to the Collett side. Since most traffic was on Collett, as well as the stairs facing there, that entrance was almost always used.

Pop made good use of the space. Along with my mother and dad, myself and my grandmother, Rosa, the downstairs also included my cousins, Dale and Vernice. Upstairs included my siste,r Nita, my brother, Sam, and his wife, Virginia, Uncle Chess and wife, Carrrie, their daughter, Jane and sometimes their son, Robert, and his wife. In the upstairs room with the added sleeping porch was Eva, a young girl from Louisiana who taught in a private school. To the back in the garage house was an African-American family of three. When all were there it totaled eighteen. No doubt that was too many but it was one way to survive the depression. As a six year old, I really enjoyed the crowd.

With this many people around it was an interesting observation of life for a six year old.  Pop knew many people in the neighborhood from his job in the business center.  My sister was in her last few months of high school and was making many friends in East Dallas that went to our church.  My brother and Virginia knew many couples  and anything my brother, Sam, did I was interested in.  He had a job at a gas station on Lovers Lane and Douglas that I visited and recall there was nothing north of Lovers Lane at that time.  My Aunt Carrie was like a second mother and Uncle Chess and Pop would tell stories of their youth.  Dale and Vernice were young men dating.  Dinner time was always interesting but best of all was sitting on the Collett Porch at night listing to what was going on.

The porch had a swing and several chairs but I would sit on the steps or climb on the large square base that supported the twin columns.  It seems people were always coming or going and would crowd through to go in or out.  This was a simple pleasure of that era when the best way to cool off was to sit on the porch with a fan and drink lemonade in the evening breeze.

My sister, Nita, graduated from Adamson High School in May of 1939 and was able to find work in an office downtown.  This was fortunate since the depression was still continuing.  Shortly after, she bought a camera that resulted in us have some pictures from that era.  Most pictures were of her friends who were growing in numbers and many lasted a lifetime.  I’m sure her interest in photography rubbed off on me.  For some reason she never took a picture of the 4938 house.

In addition to all of the people living at our house Nita’s friends often visited.  I thought they all were beautiful.  Maybe my Cousin, Dale, did as well.  He and Mary Bess dated for what seemed to me for a long time.

Dale and Vernice were single. For some of the time so was Cousin Robert who was the son of Uncle Chess and my Aunt Carrie who lived upstairs. Tales of the young men’s love life often made interesting conversation nightly at the dinner table. This must have had something to do with me deciding to tell Ann Gregg, who lived on Victor St. that she was my girl friend. Although I would walk around with my arm around her, I don’t think she knew what I was talking about. Neither did I.

The spring of 1939, for me, was the beginning of a decade and a half of living in Munger Place.

Soon after we moved in to the big Greek Revival house I met Joe Wyatt who lived at 4923 Victor Street. We have been friends our whole lives as well as later making many friends in Munger Place that also have been lifelong acquaintances. Joe had just moved to Munger Place just as I had but it was about fifty years before we found out that we each thought the other’s family had been long time residents. Joe and I soon met Steven Fulda who lived across from Joe. Steven’s family had just arrived from Germany where they barely escaped the Jewish persecutions.

Although the world was in crisis I knew nothing about it and considering the isolationist view of most Americans at that time there might have little talk of it. In games kids would play I do remember playing cops and robbers, we would shoot the robbers, in cowboys and Indians we would shoot the Indians and in war games we would shoot Germans. I didn’t know what a German was. Looking back now I am sure the ‘shooting Germans’ did not come from the current world situation but from the World War of 1914 – 1918. It seems in kid’s games of that time you had to be shooting someone. Most of the movies we saw in those days were about the same thing. I recall each Saturday Joe and I would go the Rita Theater then return to Joe’s backyard and play whatever we saw in the movie.

The New York World’s Fair passed without my notice. Because of the radio and adult’s conversations, I remember President Roosevelt and from the radio alone I remember Governor Pappy Lee O’Daniel and his hillbilly band.

I greatly dreaded that school would start for me in September but I have no recall of the beginning of war in Europe that occurred at the same time. I do remember the emphasis on patriotism that was introduced in the schools and the singing of God Bless America that was mandated because of the world situation. It was not long before the conversations on the Collett Street porch of the house was about the war.

Once when there was a lot of static on the radio I asked Pop, “What’s that on the radio?’ He replied, ‘Just a lot of propaganda.” Of course he was referring to someone’s opinion on the war. For years I called radio static ‘propaganda.’
In 1939, in the first grade at nearby Davy Crockett School, I met Jerry Grubbs who nine years later moved to Munger Place. That was 1948 and just in time to help our friends organize a group that have remained friends and still meet each month at the Garden Café in Munger Place. The boulevards, parks and large wraparound porches in Munger Place produce the geographic and architectural determinism that creates community, bonding and friendship.

The openness of the porches brought some interesting visitors to us in the early summer of 1940.  Our Collett porch looked directly toward the side of the house at 5000 Tremont.  It must have been the Reed family that lived there at that time when their daughter brought a couple of friends home from some eastern girls school she attended.  At night they would sit on their front porch and we could see them under their porch light.  Both porches were in view with the lights on and for some reason they decided to visit with us.  They were especially friendly and one night they waved at us and then ran across Collett to join us on our porch.  I was quite impressed by them and always liked girls that reminded me of them.

They were laughing and cutting up and their voices were quite different to me; years later I realized they had a more sophisticated eastern accent.  They were exceptionally talkative and spirited.  Their dress was stylish and again I later realized their dress was typical of that of a female college.  I don’t remember their names but they were like Yvonne or Samantha or maybe Millicent that too were like nothing I had heard before.  As a seven year old I was quite taken by them as was the whole family.  After visiting several times they were gone.  It seems we saw the daughter or one or two of them again a few times over the years and I was always looking for them.  They had a sort of lively sharpness that added to their beauty that made them more appealing   I remember seeing some movies later about affluent eastern female colleges that reminded me of them.

While the conservations on the Collett porch continued during the summer of 1940 they were mostly about the war in Europe.  We were often visited by the husband, wife and daughter of the Gravely family who were descendants of early pioneers of Carrollton.  The only name I recall was Mr. Gravely’s nickname –‘Fat’.  He was a big man and the nickname was not used as an insult.  They joked about having to fight if the war ever reached us but they were pretty safe since they were in their mid-forties.  My dad joked about hiding behind ‘Fat’.  The first mention of any detail of the war that I remember was about the Italians in Albania and Greece.  In checking the chronology of the war it must have been in October when this came up.