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Hello readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage Blog! Have you ever wished that you could have been a kid forever, that you could fly away to a place where you would never grow old? Well one way to achieve this goal would be to get in touch with Peter Pan and fly away to Neverland! Residents of Perry did just that on November 20 and 21 1971. They watched as Wendy, John, Michael, and even Captain Hook interacted with Peter. Here at Hometown Heritage, we are lucky enough to have some rare photos of the event! In our first photo we can see John and Michael Darling. Michael is sitting on their (rather enormous) dog and is holding an unknown object, while John is carrying his umbrella. Moments later Wendy would come into their room and put them to bed and it would not be long before Peter Pan found them. In fact, our next picture happens to capture the illusive teenager lying on top of the fireplace. It is suspected that it is around this time that Peter Pan convinced the Darlings to run away to Neverland with him. Our final two pictures are of the infamous criminal pirate, Captain Hook. The scoundrel named Hook, due to the hook replacing his right hand, is accused of attacking and threatening the lives of Peter Pan and the Darling children. As you can see, in one picture he is brandishing a sword and assaulting Peter, most likely with ill intent. Our final picture is the last known picture of the criminal alongside the crocodile that was seen chasing him into the distance. It is presumed that the crocodile is the same crocodile that caused Hook the injury resulting in his hook hand and that the animal had acquired a taste for Hook. After their scrape with the pirate captain and his band of thugs, the Darling children decided to return home, and lived peaceful lives. If you wish to see a reenactment of the events of this story, the Perry High School Music and Drama departments are performing one this weekend! There will be three showings, with two both at 6:30 P.M. on both March 31 and April 1 and a matinee at 1 P.M. on April 1. If you attend, you can see how closely the play resemble the scenes seen in these photos of the events! Did you ever wish to fly away with Peter Pan? Let us know and the comments, and join us next week for another Hometown Heritage Blog!
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Hello readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage blog! This morning I was watching the television while eating my breakfast, as I always do, and a segment came on about a new prototype car that was recently finished. This car, called the Hum-X for those interested, was special in that it could employ hydraulics to raise itself into the air and pass over other cars in traffic. This got me thinking about that today cars are everywhere and, aside from new ones like this, are no longer that amazing to us. However, this was not always the case. Look at the slide show below. As you can see, they are all pictures of people standing next to various cars. “What is so special about that” you might ask. That, my dear readers, is exactly my point. Today, we all take cars for granted and understand (generally) how they work. However, imagine just for a moment that you were living back in the late 1800s and early 1900s with these people. You are used to getting around via horseback or walking, and suddenly this metal mechanical marvel (or devil, depending on whom you ask) appears. It goes just as fast as any horse you have ever known and it never gets tired! Also buying one costs probably the same amount as a small house, yet somehow your father managed to bring one home. What else would you do but take a picture to mark this momentous occasion! Everyone will want to be able to remember the day your family first got its very own Model T. Yet, compared to today, no one seems to be as excited about his or her first car. Sure, teenagers get excited when their parents present them with the keys, but it is not the same kind of excitement as it was in the 1900s. Back then, it was something to parade about the whole town, showing all your friends and neighbors how lucky and wealthy your family is. Today it is something everyone simply expects to happen. Who knows, maybe in the future we will react to new invention as people in the 1900s did (fingers crossed for flying cars!). Do you remember your first car? Did you and your family all take pictures around it to mark the occasion? Let us know in the comments, and come back next week for another Hometown Heritage blog!  Hello readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage Blog!
Red fire trucks are a common sight nowadays. There is at least one in every town, or at least close enough to be at an emergency in minutes. They race to fire and accidents, speeding along to get to those in need as quickly as possible. However, did you know it was not always as easy for firefighters to get to emergency quickly? Look at the picture included with this post. From the looks of it, it is just a bunch of men pulling a cart. However, this is not just any cart and these men are not just any men! You probably cannot tell from the picture alone, but this picture was taken at the Fireman’s Convention of 1912. All of the men that you can see with the cart are the firefighters at the time. “But why are they pulling that cart?” you might ask. Well, let me tell you! This cart was part of standard fire equipment of the time, and was a hand-drawn hose cart. Whenever there was a fire, the firefighters would drag this cart through the dirt streets of Perry to fight the fire. Imagine how long it would take for them to get anywhere with that cart! I do not know how heavy a firefighting hose is, but I can imagine that pulling them around on a cart would not be easy. Getting to a fire in time to save a building would be quite difficult, and getting to another town would be even worse! At the time of this picture, though, there were not any fires. Instead, as part of the Fireman’s Convention, teams were put together to race the carts as part of a tournament. It does not say in our records, but I hope that the Perry team were the winners! Do any of you readers remember a time when fire trucks were not a common sight, or when fighting fires was harder than it is today? Let us know in the comments, and join us next week for another Hometown Heritage Blog!  Hello readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage blog!
March Madness is coming up within the week, so I thought that we would have a basketball themed blog post today! We have many basketball pictures in our collection, but many of them are simple pictures of team line-ups or stills of games in action. Most of them do not offer much interesting things to look at, aside from how uniforms have changed. However, a few pictures have unique aspects to them that cause one to pause. For instance, there is one picture titled “1979 Basketball Cheerleaders”. Similar to the other pictures, you can see in this picture how much the uniforms have changed. This is not, however, what I find most interesting about this picture. The most interesting part of this picture are the two people in the background! One of the two people is dressed as Santa. This is most likely because the photo was taken around Christmas time (at least I hope!), so he is of less interest than the man standing to his left. Looking carefully it would appear that this man is dressed as a giant bird! If I may be so bold, I would assume that this is supposed to be the Mascot, the Perry blue jay. However, to me he looks ridiculous! He barely resembles a bird (only the “beak” and eyes tipped me off) and I highly doubt that anything resembling feathers are anywhere on the costume. It is amazing how much different the costume is from today’s mascot who has feathers and is much more bird like. It makes me wonder if this one is still in storage somewhere! If you know anything more about this mascot costume, let us know in the comments, and join us next week for another blog post! Hello readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage blog! Many of you, like me, probably remember when Perry used to have a railway instead of a bike trail. There used to be the whistle of a train near every-day and cars would have to wait for the trains to pass. The Milwaukee Road, as evidenced in the art in the Hotel Pattee, used to pass through here as well. In fact, I found some interesting pictures about the Milwaukee Road in our collection! First, we have a picture of the last Milwaukee train to leave Perry on March 23, 1980 at 6 P.M. Although not that interesting of a photo, it shows the slow progress of the railroad leaving Perry. The next photo, however, creates some questions for me. The picture is also of the Milwaukee Road, but has a note that says it is the “Rip” Track Area. From the looks of the picture, it seems to be an empty road, with a bit of track near the bottom of the picture. This is where my questions start! I looked up what a “Rip” track is supposed to be and according to Wikipedia it is short for “repair inspect paint” track. Yet to me, it seems like there is no track here! In addition, the picture is dated to 1980, the same year when the last Milwaukee train left Perry! Perhaps this means that it is the ripping up of the train tracks in this area? It would definitely appear this way, since the area is covered in dirt and the track at the bottom is covered up. However, I do not know for sure, as our database does not provide much information. Since this happened in 1980, perhaps some of you readers may know? If you do, please let us know in the comments, and join us next week for another blog post!
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This website is possible with the support of the
Dallas County Foundation
This website is possible with the support of the
Dallas County Foundation