East Dallas Times

By Bruce Felps

Well, that was just delightful.

I just returned from spending the late afternoon and early evening chatting with … more listening to, really, Harry Gibson, his daughter Marcia Phillips who invited me, Jean Ball, and Bill Howell spin stories about back in the Old East Dallas day.

Harry drank bourbon, Jean drank Corona, Bill switched between cerveza and Coke, and I drank from the cup of their combined reminiscences. OK, I had a beer, too.

The chat took place on Harry’s front porch in Munger Place, where he holds forth most every afternoon starting about 4 with the other folks — along with various neighbors who might drop by. They, along with Harry’s dearly departed wife, Marian, were part of the first reclamation wave in the neighborhood during the 1970s that culminated with the historical district designation.

When Harry and Marian bought their house on Worth Street during the ‘60s, his neighbors were “just a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, like me. People said, ‘Harry, why are you buying there? It’s just a bunch of ex-cons.’ Well, hell, we didn’t steal from each other. We went over to Highland Park,” he said with what surely was a twinkle behind the shades covering his eyes.

Cleaning up a house, a neighborhood

The couple’s new house — new to them; it was built in 1905, according to Dallas County Appraisal District records — previously had served as a who…, um, house of ill repute and a bookie joint. Harry said about 15 telephone lines had been installed in the rooms upstairs.

One day, soon after they’d moved in, a friend named Patty came over to help them clean the place. A guy, evidently expecting the former occupants, knocked on the door, Harry said, and asked for one woman by name.

Harry said, nope, nobody here by that name, so the guy asked for another woman. Nope, Harry said again as it dawned on him just what the visitor wanted, “But Patty’s here.”

He described Patty as a tall, svelte, attractive redhead. He also said she’d been brought up as a kid in a brothel operated by a relative after becoming an orphan.

“I called her to the front door, and she knew immediately what the guy wanted,” he said with a wicked chuckle. “She ran him off, and then picked up a big stick and was going to hit me with it.”

He started to switch story gears on me, but I asked how he avoided getting pummeled with said stick.

“I ran like hell.”

Smart man. A woman scorned is one thing. An angry redhead is quite another. I have personal experience, and it was not overly pleasant.

Character study

These guys are true characters. Harry worked as a union leader with the AFL/CIO, and he and Marian hobnobbed with the likes of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. He also worked as a carny back when Fair Park stayed open year-round. Wonder if he preferred the company of politicians or the carny folk.

Jean Ball and her former husband, Jim Ball, published the East Dallas Banner, a kind of ancestor of this little venture.

She owned a square grand piano — I didn’t know such a thing existed — that had only 84 keys, which somehow seems fitting for a square grand piano. Her husband painted it white and used is as his production table for the paper.

They buried a time capsule when the gateway pillars at Abrams Road and Tremont Street were dedicated— made from bricks recovered from similar pillars that once stood in Junius Heights — and one day I hope to find out its contents.

Cover me, I’m going back in

Harry’s front porch is a comfortable place. I watched two birds take advantage of the birdbath thereon while humans sat, talked, and gestured not 10 feet away.

It was my first time there but I felt beyond welcome, and I plan to go back before another seven days go by.

I felt like part of an old Richard Pryor standup routine — and yes, of course that’s redundant because there are no more new Richard Pryor routines — particularly the one in which a younger guy says to an elder, “Pops, tell me som’more of them ol’ lies of yours and make me stop thinkin’ about the truth.”

Only thing is, though, Harry’s stories are for real. Well, most of them … I think.

Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times. There will be a part two of this story because those folks are fascinating and this stuff pretty much writes itself, which suits his lazy butt just fine.