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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 28, 1978)
allege Stations newest bar, atery is one-family affair THE BATTALION Page 13B MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1978 By MARK WILLIS Battalion City Editor it a time when family-owned and rated shops and businesses are ippearing, Bryan-College Station anew and unique exception. Jrins, a beer garden and eatery, med during the summer and is becoming one of the most popu- entertainment spots in the area. ,ocated on Old College Main, ns is operated by Pat and George ildress and their daughters K.C. IBJ. Cowgill. The family mem- s, transplanted Houstonians, re the ownership and the work Jved in running the business, b say that Grins is new may be jitly misleading. The building houses the bar was built in 8. The structure housed the ater Tabernacle Baptist Church Iryan for the first 39 years of its Jncle Sam’s topless dancing bar does looming business — even at Itinch existence. The Childress family bought the building for $2,000 and moved it to the present location at a cost of $5,000. ‘‘We went to ten movers before we found one who would take the job,” Pat Childress said. The movers centered the building on a slab of concrete already in place on the College Main site by putting a beer bottle on either end of the slab and having the driver aim the build ing between them. “He didn’t touch either bottle though there was only six inches clearance,” Mrs. Childress said. After the move, the family and some friends set out to convert the church into a bar. The choir loft be came the bar proper, the pulpit be came the serving area, and the pew area became customer seating. George Childress hand-made 25 ta bles to furnish the bar. “We wanted a comfortable kind of country decor,” Pat Childress said. The family constructed the bar with whiskey barrels that they sawed in half. In addition, they placed four swings on the porch and put in a sound system complete with stage. Another unusual feature of Grins is its lack of air conditioning. In stead, the building is equipped with a number of the large old-fashioned ceiling fans common to this area in the ’30s. Surprisingly, they do a rather good job of cooling the build ing. Grins’ most popular dish, says Mrs. Childress, the head cook, is Louisiana cajun-style shrimp gumbo. “It is from an old family recipe that originated in New Orleans,” she said, but refuses to share the re cipe. The gumbo is only served on Tuesday because of the time in volved in shelling 100 pounds of shrimp. The bar provides live entertain ment in addition to the beer and food. The house performers and part-time bartenders are Ken Ap- pelt and Kevin Duff, who play a var ied mixture of country and country rock music. In addition there is amateur night every Wednesday. “We are still kind of feeling our way, but things are going well so far,” said Mrs. Childress. When things are in better order the family plans on building another porch. The bar now holds 100 people and the present porch will handle 40 to 50. The new porch will add about 3,000 square feet. By DICK WEST United Press International /ASHINGTON — It’s barely noon, an unfashionable hour for :h, and already the Lone Star [House is jiynmed. urthermore, probably the last g this crowd is thinking about is Star beef, so happens that the unimposing cafe on Ninth Street, a block hofthe J. Edgar Hoover Build- is owned by the U.S. govern- t. nd although it has a few steaks beef sandwiches on the menu, t of its customers are drawn e by the novelty of patronizing erica’s first nationalized topless o parlor. dial’s a nice father figure like le Sam doing with a joint like Is the bewhiskered symbol of republic turning into a dirty old ? fell, it’s a long story, but mostly after of inadvertence, ccording to Justice Department :ials, one of the previous owners, ransportation Department em- loy< with stolen govement funds. So the department obtained a court order to get control of his share. Then the other partner re- liquished his part and the whole swinging scene became federal property. Eventually, the General Services Administration, which handles such transactions, is expected to sell the place. Meanwhile, the publicity ap parently is turning the Lone Star into a bonanza. After the Washington Post re cently reported on the govern ment’s new role as a go-go entrepreneur, business began grow ing by leaps and bounds, not to mention jiggles, quivers and undu lations. Or so a recent noontide visitor to the Lone Star was told by Rhoda, one of the undulators. What kind of a place does Uncle Sam run? Certain raffish types who frequent dives of this stripe say there isn’t much to distinguish it from the common run of topless However, citizens concerned with social issues will be gratified to learn it is at least an equal opportu nity employer. Of the three dancers on duty the day this research was conducted, one was Puerto Rican, one of Orien tal extraction and one black. All exhibited a great deal of what federal sociologists call “upward mobility.” Particularly Rhoda. She occasionally swung herself upside down from the top of the small mir rored stage, producing a rather in teresting gravitational effect. Rhoda later told an interviewer she used to be a gymnast. Although the Lone Star is in the remnants of what was once Wash ington’s tenderloin, and is sandwiched between an adult bookstore and a burlesque theater, it has a fairly high class clientele. At least most of the males who dropped in at lunch time wore coats and ties and were comparatively re strained in their reactions to the dancers, including those who occa sionally performed atop tables and the bar. Rhoda explained that the Lone Star got a lot of business from people who worked at the FBI building down the street. That fig ures. The FBI, after all, is a part of the Justice Department, which engi neered the federal takeover. Plus its agents and employees are imbued with a well-developed sense of loy alty. For one visitor who ordered pork barbecue at the Lone Star Beef House, the food was a bit disap pointing. But the service, rendered by a blonde in what looked like a one-piece pink bathing suit, couldn’t have been more oppor tune. The sandwich was served pre cisely between the times that dan cers, who identified themselves as Cheryl and Shorty, were pulsating on top of the table. If it had been sitting there while either was doing her number, there could have been a serious accident. This is something the Occupational Safety and Health Administration may want to look into. Some evenings the best seats at Grins are out on the family-run bar’s porch, where porch Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr. swings add to the establishment’s relaxed at mosphere. Cartoons at movies vanishing because production cost high uthors anecdotes portray true bluebloods took says ‘gentlemen’ a dying breed United Press International DNDON — An English gent- decided to commit suicide, e to his class, recounts Maj. glas Sutherland, he got out the leBook in which real sportsmen d a record of everything they »t and entered his own name er the category “various ”. Then lulled the trigger. onsidering the circumstances, er men might have dispensed this final formality, but Suther- who claims to inhabit one of coldest castles in Scotland (gent- en tend to disdain central heat- is not interested in them. His book is confined strictly to the angered species represented by title, “The English Gentleman.” be casual reader, chuckling from cdote to anecdote (when the Club and the Conservative b merged the result became ivn as the Lava-Tory) can’t be tied for suspecting Sutherland is e interested in good humor than breeding. But the book was lished by Debretts, whose guide re peerage is the standard work blue-blood-stock, and the word is by the holder of a [ue and ancient title, Sir Iain icreiffe of That Ilk. ir Iain, who knows many of n, offers the assurance that the Jish gentleman has not disap- red, as many think these egalita- days. He is simply getting har der to find. Sutherland offers clues on how to recognize one, but it isn’t always easy. For example, a gentleman found walking in Picadilly in somewhat shabby clothes explained to a friend: “It does not matter how I dress in London. Nobody here knows me.” Later the same friend visited him in the country and found him no better attired. “It does not matter how I dress here,” said the gentleman. “Every body knows me.” Sutherland implies that those who consider the gentleman mildly anachronistic forget his real achievements, such as inventing “abroad.” “The gentleman ventured into Europe because he had to find something to do between the end of the foxhunting season and the be ginning of the shooting seasons,” he said. “It was because the hard weather made hunting impossible after Christmas that he invented the im probable sport of sliding down Swiss mountains precariously balanced on two narrow boards. All that is changed now. The Americans started the rot with their lavish tip ping and their eccentric habits like not changing for dinner which has had the effect of raising the price and lowering the tone so far as the English gentleman is concerned.” The book indicates that the most likely place to locate an English gentleman if the tourist doesn’t have much time is around the clubs near St. James’s Palace. Any clubman ut tering cutting comments about another club is apt to be one of the breed. The prize goes to Lord Bir kenhead who, on his way home from the House of Lords, used to stop at the famous Athaneum Club to use the conveniences. When challenged once as to whether he was a member, he is supposed to have exclaimed: “Good God! Is this place a club as well?” United Press International DES MOINES, Iowa — “Road Runner” and the “Pink Panther” are joining neckers as vanishing species at the drive-ins today, one central Iowa theater manager says. “We aren’t showing cartoons in most sitdown theaters,” said Jim Glenn, manager of a central Iowa group of theaters. “And we are run ning out of really good ones to show in the drive-ins too. Most of the ones we can get just aren’t any good so the kids really don’t like them either.” The problem stems from cost. “Many firms just aren’t making new cartoons. They can cost from $10,000 to $25,000,” Glenn said. So, as the companies turn away from producing new films, the exist ing films get older and they just are not drawing the support and the popularity when they are put on the bill any more. The growing length of movies also is keeping the cartoons away. “The movies are getting longer and longer. We try to have movies scheduled on a two-hour basis and when you consider a 110-minute movie and a seven-minute cartoon, there just isn’t time for the people to get in and out any more,” he said. The romantic duos also are being edged out as regular patrons at many drive-ins because more kids and families are taking in the mov ies. One reason is the move toward outdoor entertainment nationwide and a more reasonable price. “More people are going to the drive-ins around the nation, Glenn OC1.— XK said. “It’s not really a re-discovery, but people like the out-of-doors and they like going where the family can be together. It’s relatively cheap. Glenn said he didn’t know how long this trend would last. "But we re going to do what we can to try and bring everyone out side,” he said. >oc x lie pi i^e ^ a_iwx well; c? m ^ ATTElVTTirnVT ITTlVTTnDCI H i ATTENTION JUNIORS! 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