Jim on Memphis: We're Jake!
Thanks for including me in such an auspicious list of suspects [Editor's Letter, September '08]. You have discovered what I have long suspected. There is Memphis, and there is everywhere else.
Any publication that mentions Uncle Henry's, Moon Lake Casino, and Rheta Johnson in the same issue with the remarkable Lord T. and Eloise is Jake in my book.
Keep it coming!
~ Jim Dickinson
Coldwater, MS
This is for the birds!
I am a Memphis native and enjoy following the Memphis nostalgia. A recent article about a Pure Oil service station at Front & Calhoun [Ask Vance, September '08] is my focus of interest. I worked at that station for my uncle, William Willingham, from 1956 to 1966, when I graduated from CBU. My uncle Bill owned the station from about 1938 to 1970, when he retired and closed it. During the war, Bill's younger brother Tommy, left school early every day, and ran the station. When Bill returned home from France, in 1945, Tom spent time in the Army Air Corps, then moved to Walls, Mississippi, and opened a Pure Oil Station on Highway 61, just north of Twinkle Town Airport. Thanks for your nice article and picture in the September issue. Now you know more than you wanted about the little "birdhouse" station at Front & Calhoun. It seems like I remember going to lunch at Grisanti's "Hole in the Wall" restaurant, across Main Street from Central Station, and behind some other old business, while I was working and pumping gas at the old Pure Oil station.
~ Ken W. Pasley
Memphis
