30 of 115

|

For many years, from 1955 to the eighties, the Top Half Cafe was the place to go for good, quick food, and the latest small town gossip. On the weekend, the Top Half was the local teen handout, a real-life social network (before the era of online social networks). The Top Half was also the place of the annual Homecoming bon fire, hosted by the Kountze Lions and the Kountze Volunteer Fire Department (mostly comprised of high school students, who loved jumping out of the school's windows to rush to a fire whenever the alarm sounded). As a matter of fact, the first restaurant at this location was an A-frame construction resembling the "top half" of a building, hence the name, until the original restaurant accidentally burned down. Most small towns had full service cafe's, but only Kountze had HALF a cafe, with full service! The owner's son "Bull" now uses the location for a successful ice manufacturing and distribution company, Read Ice, and as for the local kids, well, they now gather on...

I remember like it was yesterday... The little black box of PRANG watercolors I received at Christmas when I was seven started me on a lifelong love of drawing and painting. Rendering the images of every comic book character from Mickey Mouse to Superman and Little Lulu furthered my art education. Little Golden Books, "The Color Kittens," taught me the basics of mixing colors. Then a magical experience happened! At the Jefferson Theater in downtown Beaumont, Texas (where I was born and raised), I saw Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Eagerly I awaited each new release through the years: Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp. At 12, I started an art notebook and bought my first oil paints. At 14,...