Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/283499
7 4 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4.14 for a Houston construction company that was using nuclear-reactor-produced radioac- tive pellets to spot faulty welds in plumbing pipes, a purpose cleared through a civilian license from the Atomic Energy Commission. While cracking open crates of the pellets, the manager and three other men were contami- nated by radioactive dust. Without notifying medical authorities, the men went home for the day. When word got out, the manager's family was ostracized in their neighborhood. "It has gotten so no one will come and visit us," he woefully told reporters. At a time when television was gathering a head of steam but had not yet steered the American public's consciousness toward professional basketball and football, the common-denominator sports were still base- ball and boxing (oh, and horse racing once a year). Te great, unbeaten Rocky Marciano had called it quits in '56, and the nation's attention turned to the middleweights "Sugar Ray" Robinson and Gene Fullmer. Fullmer had taken the crown from Robinson in January, but on Wednesday of Derby Week — carried by WAVE-TV live — Robinson knocked out Fullmer with what will go down in sportswriting history as "the perfect left hook." You'd have to guess they were watch- ing the fght at Jack Fry's, then not a swanky place but a hangout that served, besides booze, plate lunches and was run by Jack Fry himself, a major boxing fan. L ouisville's dining scene and nightlife were a whole lot diferent then, and often worked as a combo. It would be two years before the Grisanti family arrived, and the name of the game was supper clubs: Hasenour's at Barret and Oak; Bauer's Since 1870 on Brownsboro Road ("out where the countryside begins"); Kunz's Te Dutchman, next door north to today's Palace Teater downtown; Te Old House near Fifth and Liberty; Luvisi's, a touch farther south on Fifth; Leo's Hideaway at First and Jeferson "on Hucksters Row" (a title of endearment given the old Haymarket); Gordon's Golden Horse, with "Mr. Entertainment, Don Brad- feld," just south of the Palace; Riney's South Seas at 414 W. Fourth St. ("chosen by Photo Magazine as one of America's 10 greatest bars"). I gleaned this information from ads ap- pearing in a Chamber of Commerce monthly tourism booklet titled "Welcome to Greater Louisville, Your Guide to Pleasure." Amaz- ingly enough, considering the publisher, the opening page was a full-page ad for Iroquois Gardens, "Louisville's smartest supper club," which featured a photo-illustration of belly- dancing luminary Boubouka, naked on top except for a pair of glitter-cone pasties. As we said, welcome to Greater Louisville. Consumer prices, of course, were nicer then. Courier ads from Derby Week touted a redwood-frame upholstered chaise for $29.95; Converse tennis shoes for $5.98; your choice of 10 cans of frozen lemonade or three fresh pineapples for a buck; a pound can of ground cofee for 79 cents. If you wanted to take your kids to the Pegasus Parade in 1957, you didn't have to fnagle some deal with your boss so you could get them downtown by 4:30. Back then, the parade was held at night, start time 8 p.m. (and we ran on Central Time, not Eastern, so it was dark). Why nighttime? Apparently, huge employer GE had something to do with it, and gas generators powering light-bulb dis- plays made the parade a noisy afair. Te four-mile route, which ran west to east instead of east to west, spread the crowd out over several downtown streets. It began at 14th and Broadway, proceeded east to Fourth Street, then north to Market, east to Tird, south to Broadway and east to Shelby. Tere were no infatables, and tin foil — made by another major Louisville employer, Reynolds Metals, for home use and cigarette packs — was a go-to component. Big wow factor: incandescent light on crinkled tin foil. A small-business Louisville rundown: 320 barber shops, 360 beauty shops, 14 (strictly) beer depots, 25 billiard parlors, 730 clergy- men, 700 small food markets, 125 hardware stores, 89 shoe-repair shops, 33 tailors. C hurchill infeld admission ("15,000 unreserved seats!") every race day except Derby Day, including Oaks Day, in 1957: $1.10. Clubhouse admission: $2. Ah, but Derby, another matter, yes in- deed: $2.55 for general admission, a wallet- busting $6.15 for a clubhouse-grounds pass. Oh yeah, and a Harry M. Stevens cup of cofee on Derby Day cost shivering track- goers 15 cents. I say shivering because, after a glorious Derby Tursday with a high temperature of 85 degrees, the weather deteriorated to the extent that the 83rd running of the Derby broke the record for the coldest on record — 47 degrees and cloudy at post time with 40-mile-an-hour wind gusts from the north. (Te newspaper described them as "40-degree wind gusts.") Two years later, Derby Day would record its highest temperature, 94 degrees, in history. On the morning of that wonderful Derby Tursday, there were suspicions in some camps about the soundness of Gen. Duke, and there were hints of it in the ofcial odds, with the Gen. Duke/Iron Liege entry at 9-5, Bold Ruler at 8-5 and Gallant Man at 6-1. When the scratch bombshell hit early Satur- day, not a lot of faith was left among bettors that Iron Liege could pay of alone, especially because he had come in ffth of six horses in the Tuesday Derby Trial. Of 17 Courier-Jour- nal and Louisville Times sportswriters giving their frst-, second- and third-place picks, two chose Iron Liege, and then only to show. Who was to know that the horse would respond so well for Hartack after he had tanked in the Trial for jockey Dave Erb? Who is to say whether, had Gallant Man regular rider Johnny Choquette not received a 10-day suspension right before Derby Week, which caused an 11th-hour phone call to Willie Shoemaker, a similar trip with Choquette up and no misjudged fnish line would have resulted in Derby win? And what if the willful Bold Ruler, who went of as the 6-5 favorite and fnished fourth, hadn't wasted energy trying to pull Eddie Arcaro wide on the frst turn? Finally, what if Gallant Man's owner, Ralph Lowe, hadn't dreamed the previous night, as he famously claimed he did, that his horse would lose because the jockey would stand up too soon in his stirrups, resulting in the coining of the title "Te Bad Dream Derby"? Te world will forever be constructed of what-ifs. Churchill infeld admission ("15,000 unreserved seats!") every race day except Derby Day, including Oaks Day, in 1957: $1.10. Clubhouse admission: $2. Ah, but Derby, another mater, yes indeed: $2.55 for general admission, a wallet-busting $6.15 for a clubhouse-grounds pass. 64-81.indd 74 3/19/14 5:27 PM