My eighteen-month old granddaughter is visiting and so we’ve descended at my house into the kind of chaos that only a toddler can create. Unable to form any coherent thoughts, I present instead two pictures that left me speechless in wonderment. They were in the same folder but they may or may not have been taken at the same time. As usual, it’s not the ostensible subject that fascinates but rather what’s in the background.
First, rugby:
Let me just say, wow. Look at that shack! Was that art department space? It looks like the house that the Clampetts left behind.
Second, softball:
Obviously there’s no awesome shack in this one, but there are those arches just beyond the tree line. I’m not sure what those are.
Bonus: Part of preparing for commencement is herding the cats so they march out in the proper order. That’s what these are for.
I think the arches are part of the now-gone Tidelands Motel at the corner of University and Main.
David Parsons was working in that vicinity.
The MOB’s OwlTails uniforms were rescued from the more modern building, at about the time that Laboratory/Loop Rd was first paved past Alumni Drive.
There’s a set of David Parson’s bird sculptures hanging on the third floor of UHCL’s Bayou Building.
Definitely the Tidelands: http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID22079/images/tidelandstu.jpg
But it didn’t always have the arches: http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID22079/images/tidelandst.jpg
This Examiner.com article said they were a fourth-floor addition in the late 1960s: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-tidelands-motor-inn-6500-south-main-houston
The arches are the old Tidelands Motel. It was used as graduate student housing after being given to Rice. I remember that some of the rooms needed remodeling because it was thought inappropriate by the administration for graduate students to have mirrors on the ceiling of their room!
See my Reply to Karl Benson, below.
The manager of the Tidelands for many years was our own Dickie Maegle.
My wife has a comedy album of Bob Newhart from 1962 recorded at the Tidelands.
The young Dickie would never have allowed ceiling mirrors in his motel, no matter what Terry Moore and Mighty Joe Young wanted.
However, he was never the same after that Lewis guy came off the bench to tackle him in the Cotton Bowl.
Here’s an Examiner.com story on the Tidelands — http://www.examiner.com/article/the-tidelands-motor-inn-6500-south-main-houston — which includes images before and after the late-1960s 4th floor (with the arches) was added.
The set of buildings next to the (track) stadium were used at some point in there as home for the Rice Recycling Center — a volunteer organization with a self-documenting name.
If you look closely on the porch you will see 55 gal drums. We used to collect bottles in them and crush them with a four foot long length of pipe to get more in each barrel. Then we would drive a rickety pickup truck with several barrels over to Anchor Hocking to sell.
Interesting. I believe in the rugby photo the t-shirted guy seen in profile to the right of the scrum is David Brown.Can’t identify any of the rest.