Old Vickery - Park Lane and Greenville

As long as we're in this area, just south of Walnut Hill on the west side of Greenville there was an old two story house in a small valley that is now parking for Presbyterian Hospital. Is anyone familiar with it? I briefly explored it just before it was demolished, maybe in the 80's. Or the 90's. I think horses were kept there. Beautiful little nitch. Leslie

Leslie,
I photographed the house in 1996 just before it was torn down, but although I explored the interior I did not photograph it. The house was not grandiose, but had a wonderful home atmosphere with a medium size tiled kitchen - small by today's standards. The living room was in the front and it had a den in the rear with a heavy door and a substantial lock. Old man McCann belonged to the Dallas Gun Club and the den was his gun room. The house was built in the 30's before 1937, the year my house was built on the other end of Rambler Rd. Many of the original trees remain at both locations.

Sailaway459,
Did you mean to say that you went to school with D Murphy or that you are D Murphy?

the tower was on the property of reynolds presbyterian home. on the north east corner. some of the kids used to climb up the outside of iy.

Was this area where they filmed scenes for Bonny and Clyde in the 60's? There was an ancient trailer court nearby made of brown sandstone. Jim

The motor court was located at Greenville and Holly Hill where McDonald's is now. They spent two weeks filming that movie in the old motor court. I believe it was called "Vickery Motor Court." I lived near Rambler and Meadow and we heard machine gun fire every night for those two weeks. Even though Hollywood took its usual liberties with history in that movie, an old timer told me that Bonnie and Clyde actually did stay at that motor court for a time, but I don't think they got in a gun battle there as depicted in the movie.

Jethro Wrote:
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> The motor court was located at Greenville and
> Holly Hill where McDonald's is now. They spent two
> weeks filming that movie in the old motor court. I
> believe it was called "Vickery Motor Court." I
> lived near Rambler and Meadow and we heard machine
> gun fire every night for those two weeks. Even
> though Hollywood took its usual liberties with
> history in that movie, an old timer told me that
> Bonnie and Clyde actually did stay at that motor
> court for a time, but I don't think they got in a
> gun battle there as depicted in the movie.

Wasn't the gun battle at the motor court in the movie supposed to represent an event that really did occur in Missouri? That was the gun battle that eventually led to Clyde's sister-in-law getting glass in her eyes, and to Clyde's brother (name escapes me right now) eventually getting killed when they were cornered in a park after fleeing from the Missouri motor court.

Yes, there was plenty of poetic license used in the movie. But the motor court battle was real, just two states away, if I'm not mistaken.

Dave McNeely

I think they were separate in the movie. In the film, Buck Barrow had met up with Clyde in Missouri in a garage appt. and they got surrounded by the laws. A gun battle then erupted. That scene showed the getaway with Blanche running after the car screaming. Later came the auto court fight with C.W. Moss firing a Thompson SMG at a police armored car….I think. Jim

I think I've told this story here before but way up Greenville at White Rock Creek there used to be a beer joint called "The Creek" and I was told that YEARS ago a young couple came through, bought a couple of beers and paid for them with a 10 or 20 and told the bartender to keep the change.

Had the Creek not burnt down and its land been absorbed into a city park and if it was still open, could it have been in the running for oldest bar?
Or maybe not as while it is in the City of Dallas now, I’m sure at one point was in the boonies?

I am told that Bonnie and Clyde frequented "The Creek" as well. I haven't seen the movie in decades, so I cannot make critical comment on where the gun battle was supposed to be, but I do remember noting a number of inaccuracies when I last saw it. I was told they kept low in Vickery and no one has ever mentioned any violent encounters in that vicinity. Curiously, I recently discovered Bonnie Parker's grave a mere 50 yards from my Great Grandfather's grave in Crown Hill Memorial Park. Someone decorated the marker with toy pistols and a live rifle round.

jgoodman Wrote:
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> I think they were separate in the movie. In the
> film, Buck Barrow had met up with Clyde in
> Missouri in a garage appt. and they got surrounded
> by the laws. A gun battle then erupted. That
> scene showed the getaway with Blanche running
> after the car screaming. Later came the auto court
> fight with C.W. Moss firing a Thompson SMG at a
> police armored car….I think. Jim

I've only seen the film one time, and don't remember many details.

The Missouri shootout actually took place about as you describe it for the film, at least according to Blanche's book, _My Life with Bonnie and Clyde_ .

Blanche was still alive (living in Pleasant Grove) when the movie came out, and she had pretty negative things to say about it, both from a factual standpoint, and from how different people were portrayed.

Dave McNeely

I read somewhere that the Hamer family was really upset and may have sued over the way that Frank Hamer was depicted in the movie as he never met them(Bonny and Clyde) until the shootout at the end.

ralph blackoh where havreyou been you are sorely missed

I lived in that orphanage between 1957 and 1959.

I remember the tower. Some of my friends used to climb iy

I grew up across the street from the old stone tower at Glen Lakes and Greenville. My grandmother owned the property on the north west corner of that intersection, right across the street from the tower.

jwholley Wrote:
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> I grew up across the street from the old stone
> tower at Glen Lakes and Greenville. My grandmother
> owned the property on the north west corner of
> that intersection, right across the street from
> the tower.

Please post some photos!
Used to pass it all the time, thought it was a lighthouse when I was a wee lad.

Stonewall Jackson has a plaque that shows it was built in 1939. I don't believe it was ever called anything else, and if my memory serves me correct, the name is engraved in the building - indicating that it has always been "Stonewall Jackson." I went to Stonewall Jackson for two months in 1957 (4th grade) before moving to Vickery just north of the hospital, which was an orphanage at the time. Now I live one block north of the school.

We used to swim at the Vickery pool in the 1960s. The terms "Vickery" and "Vickery Park" and "Vickery Blvd." are very familiar in my memory, though actually all I remember is swimming at that pool. When my father was a young teenager in Dallas in the early 1940s, I think he used to hang out around there and race other kids in cars on the streets around there. That's what he said. He might have also mentioned doing the same thing on NW Highway. He was something of a juvenile delinquent, haha. Don't know how old you had to be to have a drivers license. Maybe he didn't have one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2015 08:35AM by 50'sDallasGal.

I'm not sure about the '40s, but in the '60s you could get a Texas drivers license at age 14 - IF you took and passed the written course in school (I think it was offered in 8th grade) AND took & passed an actual driving class (seems like it was offered in summer school). May have been different on classes in Dallas - I went to school in Houston.

ernie5823 Wrote:
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> I'm not sure about the '40s, but in the '60s you
> could get a Texas drivers license at age 14 - IF
> you took and passed the written course in school
> (I think it was offered in 8th grade) AND took &
> passed an actual driving class (seems like it was
> offered in summer school). May have been different
> on classes in Dallas - I went to school in
> Houston.

I turned sixteen in the early sixties. Believe me, if a driver's license could have been obtained at age fourteen, I would have been very aware of it. Actually, it could be, but only for driving a motor scooter with no more than five brake horsepower. One had to be sixteen to get a regular license. I and all my friends lived for the day we turned sixteen and could get a license. There was one exception, called a "hardship" exception. If there was no other person in the family capable of driving, and driving was an economic necessity for the family (such as a provider having no other transportation for work), then an underage person could be licensed for that purpose.

Dave McNeely