Puttering in the Study

Shatnerquake - Jeff Burk

Michael C. Smith — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:35:16 -0500

And for comic relief, I just finished this litte gem - a book about a fictional Shatnercon convention where through some interdimensional activity I've already forgotten, all of the characters played by Wliam Shatner come to ife and chase him around the convention hall. When "Oh sh&^, Captain Kirk's got a lightsaber" is one of the lines, and Denny Crane and the Rescue 911 Shatner are walking around you know things are going to be a litte weird.

Nice story, though - and my favorite part was that all of the Shatners spoke the same way, with pauses ... between all ... the words. That never stopped being funny.

An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy - Rick Atkinson

Michael C. Smith — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:57:41 -0500

The one book I took to Greece on our recent vacation was volume 1 of Rick Atkinson's trilogy about U.S. Army operations in Europe in World War II. As I posted recently, I just finished listening to the second volume on the campaigns in Italy and Sicily, and was curious about the first volume on the initial action, which was the invasion of North Africa.

As I suspected, it was a horror story of poor planning, bad leadership, inadequate training, with both cowardice and courage mixed in. Eisenhower, who's pretty inadequate at the beginning, appears to grow into his role as commander as time goes on (at least that's what Atkinson tells us happens - Ike's story is actually something I'm really interested in after reading these two books). Likewise, the battlefield commanders, who appear pretty clueless initially, are gradually weeded out and replaced with commanders who can effectively lead and army into battle. The clearest example is Omar Bradley, who though a mixture of sharp thinking and tactical insubordination actually gets things done where his predecessors and colleagues often didn't. Logistical operations go from the totally disorganized to the sometimes adequate, with immediate effects at the front, when commanders like Bradley can effectively translate material superiority into battlefield success. There is also a tremendous quote along these lines from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who observed that battles are won by the quartermasters before the fighting even begins. That's so true in this book - the Allies are hampered only initially by bad logistics, and the Germans are essentially disarmed by the end of the North African campaign, with no replacements for their destroyed tanks, and no ammunition or fuel for the few that remained at the end.

Atkinson is a terrific writer, but he again suffers from reuse of adjectives - in this books panzers always "slammed into" Allied units, and defenders are always "winkled out" of their positions. But other than that, the writing is extraordinary.

Dracula: The Un-Dead - Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt

Michael C. Smith — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:37:11 -0500

Was surprised to see this in the airport bookstore in Brussels while on our recent layover when I was looking for some reading material for our trip. It's a sequel to the original Bram Stoker novel by Ian Holt and Stoker's great-nephew Dacre Stoker. The book is actually quite good - well-written and plotted, and the characters are enjoyable (and logical) updatings of the original ones. I'm never crazy about authors trying to turn Dracula into a romantic and sympathetic character, but that aside, I thought it was a nice piece of work. It's heavily researched as far as the 1912 details (overly so in my opinion, since it repeatedly tries to have its characters meet up with actual historical figures) and contains an afterword detailing why the authors made the decisions they did, and frankly admitting where they just departed from canon as far as the original book.

All in all, an excellent addition to the Dracula ouevre.

Let the Light Shine

Michael C. Smith — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:26:55 -0500

We're still at the stage in demolition where a big hole in the roof is a positive development. Roof repairs are underway and the new skylight for the 113 side is being fabricated as we speak, using historically correct materials (which I am pretty sure in East Texas includes duct tape and a roll of plastic film. Hope so, anyway).

No, the toilet is not staying. I don't care how historic it is.

My Favorite Byzantine Emperor

Michael C. Smith — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:09:45 -0500

We all have our favorite Byzantine emperors (don't we?), and mine is definitely the last one, Constantine XI Palaeologus (although he preferred to go by Dragases, which was his mother's family name, rather than his father's, which was, after all, only the imperial family). Here's me with the statue of the hero of the 1453 defense of Constantinople in Cathedral Square in Athens a couple of weeks ago.

Candidly, this is the only Byzantine emperor I can think of that was both noble and an effective leader. In over a thousand years, I can't think of another example of one that was both.

Hub renovation - post #2 - Oct. 12-28, 2009

Michael C. Smith — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:21:32 -0400

The demolition continues, but with two dumpsters full the place is starting to look a lot better. Here's Grayson doing his best Mose Weisman impersonation on the 113 side. We couldn't understand why in the world there was a bathroom in the front (see the vent stack next to Grayson) until we remembered that this was the wall of the barbershop, so that was the sink.

Over on the 111 side, the galleries are history (ba-da-bing!) and the place is looking more like it did in 1928. (Compare to first picture - look for the bookcase on the left upstairs).

And my speculation yesterday about the upstairs shelving being from the 113 side's original shelves looks like it was right - much of the shelving upstairs is precisely the correct width to have been in the with the bins. While up there I took a picture showing the extent to which the atrium in the mezzanine had been closed up - part was left for the stairs and you can see the boards that enclosed the rest which we'll be taking out to let the skylight illuminate the "library" area below (which will probably be the world's coolest secretary pool/trial file room space when we're done. The idea is to replicate the appearance in the historic photo above, but with adjustable shelving so that the room can accommodate file boxes, notebooks, what-have-you.

But the big find today was the rest of the 1928 (my guess - nothing to back this up yet so it might be earlier or later) store sign. I mentioned yesterday we had a "UB" and half a "H" and a "TOR" and half an "E". Today I found the rest where I suspected it'd be - built into the upstairs shelving. I put it all together and took a picture - won't this be something back up on the wall! It hasn't been cleaned up yet - the boards and paint are in very good shape and once the grime is cleaned off it'll look pretty good. The sign is about eight to ten feet long (each line), and each board is ten or twelve inches wide.

Hub - original store bins located

Michael C. Smith — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:54:42 -0400

Some days you just get lucky. I was studying the one interior photo we have of the original Hub, circa about 1908 this morning when I noticed something at bottom right. The bins or drawers there looked familiar, with the two metal pulls and the unusual vertical label holder. Then I realized where I'd seen it - the store had a shoe repair bench which we saved which had three stained but very aged drawers in it - with the interiors made of packing crates stenciled "S.S. Weisman, Marshall, Texas".

At present, these are the only fixtures from the store that we can pretty definitely say have made it all the way from 1897 to the present. (We think we have the front doors, but it's hard to say that for certain just yet). Very little we can definitively identify seems to have made the move from the original location (then 119 E. Austin, now 113) to next door at 117 (now 111) in 1928. What is particularly intriguing is that the work bench the drawers were put in was on the 113 side (which the store took back in sometime after 1956) and I wonder whether the workbench was built by Mr. Kariel Sr. at the Hub at 111 and later moved back to 113, or built by a tenant of the former store with the remains of the fixtures of the former store. I tend to think the former for two reasons.

First, I looked at the cards on the bins weeks ago and remember that they still list shoe accessories as contents, which would be odd if another workman was using the bins for something different. Second, when Mr. Weisman sold the store to Mr. Kariel in 1924, the bill of sale specifically included furniture and fixtures. So I think it's likely that the old store's shelving and cabinetry was stripped down four years later to furnish the new store next door. We are definitely seeing that Mr. Kariel reused everything, so it's likely that a portion of the massive amount of shelving we've taken down and stored actually dates to the 1897 store. My personal opinion is that that's where the upstairs and back shelving came from, because the downstairs front shelving had longer dimensions than the old store. The upstairs and back as you can see in this picture contain numerous runs of shorter shelving, all of which is stained at the edges only, and it's pretty rickety without shoe boxes giving it rigidity. Given that we've found old store sign pieces reused here (seriously - we're playing Scrabble with shelf pieces and so far we can spell "Hub" and "Store" (have not found the "Shoe" yet) this may help us date the sign if the board lengths up there match up with the bin width.

This just gets more fun every day!

Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre - The Teaching Company

Michael C. Smith — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:24:37 -0400

Last night I finished this short DVD course (12 half hour lectures) by Richard Brettell of The University of Texas at Dallas on the masterpieces of painting in the Louvre. I didn't realize when I got it that it was limited to paintings, but enjoyed it nonetheless. We saw only a fraction of the pieces he focuses on, and it was annoying to hear about others that I really REALLY wish I'd seen while we were there, but it's pretty obvious that one day at the Louvre is never enough - even for just the paintings. The ones we didn't see that after watching this would top my list are the Marie de' Medici cycle by Rubens.

The Hub - what is it?

Michael C. Smith — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:03:37 -0400

Got some questions today what exactly the "hub" outside the store is or represents. Opinions range from wagon wheel hub to locomotive wheel to universal joint out of a car (okay, I'm the only person I know who grew up thinking that. This is what I thought people were referring to and I could never figure out how these fit under the rear wheels of a car - but for years I thought they were there. (Hey, I may be smart, but I never claimed to be bright).

Anyway, the answer is that it is a oversized wagon wheel hub, which appears to be made out of some kind of sheet metal (tin is a good candidate) repaired over the years with the fair amount of Bondo or something like it. The pictures below show an antique wagon wheel from the 1800's, and it looks an awful lot like the hollow metal store ornament that's sat on a pole on East Austin since President McKinley took office in 1897.

Now why is the store called "The Hub"? According to Marshall historian Melissa Clark (who authored the seminal history fair project on the store in 2000 - probably while a seventh grader) the name of this store came about because Boston, Massachusetts was the main shoe center (as a result of early industrialization in the 19th century in the textile industry in New England, making Boston the major market for shoes), and the nickname for Boston was the "Hub". (The attached photo is of the "Hub Pub" in Boston). That literary reference, in turn, actually comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, in which he quoted a man as referring to the State House in Boston as the hub of the solar system, noting this predisposition to think that one's home town is the center of all good things. The moniker stuck, but it was Mose Weisman who chose to provide a graphical image of the nickname for the center of the shoe industry using the type of "hub" that was more familiar to his customers - a wagon wheel hub. Perhaps coincidentally, the earliest known photograph of the hub does indeed show a wagon clipclopping by...

But Ms. Clark also reports that a "hub" is precisely what the store's founder Mr. Weisman wanted his store to be. This photo of a 1916 memo by Mr. Weisman reinforces that the store was not a specialty one - it was intended to serve the whole family.

Hub renovation - post #1 - Oct. 1-11, 2009

Michael C. Smith — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:13:48 -0400

As I indicated a couple of weeks ago, on Thursday, October 1, I purchased the former Hub Shoe Store from Louis and Audrey Kariel. I'll post more later on the store's history, but the short version is that the store had been in the same family for three generations and 112 years, and I was very lucky to have the opportunity to continue that heritage. I'm not opening a shoe store, but I am renovating it to move my law offices into it, and provide space for law firms that I work with to lease for trial space or for hearing preparation. I will be posting periodically on what's going on, and this post will start with what's happened since the closing.

Of course there was a lot of work prior to the closing, including research in the building itself and the Harrison County Historical Museum, as well as going through many boxes at the Kariels, in which we found invaluable photos (such as the above from around 1908), and documents that shed light on the building's history and construction. All these are important because I hope to renovate the building ina way that preserves and enhances its historical character, as well as recognizing the history of the building, the store, and the families that operated it.

But the actual first thing after the closing was to take our three boys down and take their picture under the old Hub out front, as for so many years we saw pictures of the prior owners, Louis Kariel Sr. and Jr.

History

I need to provide a bit of background on the building, because it is really two adjacent buildings, 111 and 113 East Austin, both of which were the Hub Shoe Store at different times, and have separate histories. As shown in this picture, taken shortly after the new Logan & Whaley building building was constructed in 1907, 111 was at that time "Neville's Place" (whatever that was) and the Hub shoe store was next door at 113. Both the facade and the interior are documented pretty well as of 1908 in these two photos. Of course the old Hub on the sidewalk has been there since 1897, and is the most recognizable feature of the store. (Yes, it's staying).

The Hub Shoe Store was opened at 113 E. Austin in 1897 by Mose Weisman. In 1924, Mr. Weisman sold the store to his nephew Louis Weisman Kariel, Sr. and H.W. Pierpont. Four years later, in 1928 Mr. Pierpont sold out to Louis, Sr., and the store apparently moved next door to 111 E. Austin, where the fancy new digs were photographed. The store remained there until its closing in 2001 at the ripe old age of 104 years. Compare the 1928 photo to the left with the same view last week before demolition started. (The key thing here is the mezzanine that's now hidden behind the wall at the back of the show room - will be a lot more on that later).

What history these two buildings had before 1897 (and 1928) I do not yet know, and that will be a subject of further research. At present I actually have no idea how old either structure is, or what was in them prior to their history as a shoe store.

After 1928, we do know that 113 was divided into a storefront and a back office - the front was a barbershop until approximately 1956. At some time after 1956 the Kariels acquired the 113 property and added it to the shoe store as retail space in the front and storage in the back. The Kariels actually acquired the real estate in 1942 (111) and 1992 (113) indicating that at least as far as I currently am aware, the two buildings had not been in common ownership until 17 years ago. Presumably they were after the land was deeded from the county to its original private owner in 1844, but I have not yet run that trail down.

Work Begins

The day after the October 1 closing I picked up a partial demolition permit from the city, which required $50 and a copy of the asbestos survey I had done back in July. I photographed the building's interior prior to demolition starting the following Tuesday, October 6. The major demolition went quickly, with the shelving (made of wood you could not get for love or money today) coming down first, followed by sheetrock, paneling, and eventually virtually everything on the 113 side. (Yes, we are saving the shelving for reuse as needed in the store - in fact much of the framing and shelf lumber can and will be reused). The demolition on the 113 side resulted in the store's appearance going from this on Oct. 2 to this on Oct. 11. Again, compare to the 1908 appearance - the original metal ceiling and the witness marks on the walls from the original shoe shelving.

The original metal ceiling actually tells some of the story of the store's history, with the white ceiling indicating where the barbershop was - it apparently kept the high ceiling until the shoe store took it in and dropped the ceiling and closed up the original front doors in favor of a display window. The size of the skylight was a surprise - although it doesn't look very large from the front, this closeup and rear to front view shows its size - approximately 8' x 16' x 6' tall. The demolition has also revealed some clues as to the store's earlier history, but more on that later. Most importantly, we found the barbershop's front doors (visible leaning against the wall in the two photos) above the rafters - and it is likely these are the original front doors from when the Hub opened in 1897. We are fortunate beyond words that the Kariels kept these doors safe and sound for over half a century in the attic, so that they could be put back in place approximately 53 years after the barber shop hung its "Closed - moved to 300 W. Pinecrest - Free Parking" sign on them in 1956. (Downtown had parking meters until the 1980's - apparently they were already a source of irritation to customers in the 1950's!)