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This is an extract from the book "Sig Byrd's Houston" by Sigman Byrd (Viking Press, 1955):
Catfish Reef
Well, here on lower Milam Street, the three-hundred block, mostly respectable, is called Milamstrasse--so named by Teddy Buck, who runs a store specializing in clothes for fat men. Teddy has been acclaimed Burgomeister of Milamstrasse by his neighbors.
These include Bichon's Drug Store, our town's main hoo-doo supply house, where black-cat floor wash sells for two dollars and a half in the large economy size. Here citizens who dabble in mojo and hoodoo can buy such innocuous items as dragon-blood sticks, for luck; wonder-of-the-world root, for locating treasures; and sweet mama shakeup, to encourage romance. If you need something a little stronger, you can get oil of bendover, Adam and Eve root, spirit oil, Chinese business powder, black-cat perfume, five finger grass, lodestones, steel filings, easy-life powder, controlling oil, anger powder, mad water, high-john-the-conqueror root, and getaway powder.
Bichon's sells drugs too, including some proprietary preparations bearing the store owner's label: Bichon's Liniment, Mouth Wash, Cough Syrup, Sanitive Wash, Hydralto Injection, and so on. but hoodoo goods are the best sellers, with candles leading--from van-van tapers, for luck, priced at three dollars a dozen, to death candles, at ten dollars each.
There are black devil candles, for getting shed of enemies; Louisiana occult candles in assorted colors, for various uses; and three wick candles, in red for business, green for work, and pink or blue for love, depending on the sex of the objective. Master candles, at three dollars each, are supposed to enable you to master any situation. But it's the death candle that will slay you, the folks who believe in hoodoo tell me. This comes in the shape of a coffin containing a doll ten inches tall--male or female. Light the wick, name the doll for an enemy, and if the hoodoo works he will expire with the last guttering flame.
The next corner , at Preston Avenue, is the place where Fenderbender White used to make his headquarters.
Fenderbender would stand around with a big toolbox that had a sign on the side: STOP ME--FENDERS STRAIGHTENED WHILE YOU WAIT. He was very good at his trade, and his prices were considerably lower than those of the regular body-and-fender shops, but the law frowned upon the noise he made, and he finally vanished.
The four-hundred block, where the Four Hundred never go, is called Catfish Reef.
The Reef is bi-racial. The light and the dark meet here. Generally speaking, the odd numbers, on the east side, are dark, the even numbers light; but the exception proves the rule.
You can buy practically anything here. Whiskey, gin. wine, beer, a one hundred and fifty dollar suit, firearms, a four bit flop, a diamond bracelet that will look equally good on the arm of a chaste woman or a fun-gal. You can buy fried catfish in Catfish Reef. You can buy reefers on the Reef.
Or you can, get faded, get your picture made, your shoes shined, your hair cut, your teeth pulled. You can get your teeth knocked out for free. You can buy lewd pictures, and in the honkytonks you can arrange for the real thing. The reef is a quietly cruel street, where rents are high and laughter comes easy, where violence flares quickly and briefly in the neon twilight, and if a dream ever comes true it's apt to be a nightmare.
Bichon's Drug Store was still in business in 1965, as this blog commentary notes in passing:
My fellow scout buddies (circa 1965) would take a bus downtown, explore Foley's, have a pizza slice or hoagie at Woolworth's, walk down to Market Square to visit Bichon's Drugstore that sold voodoo and occult charms, walk around European Import and then lunch at Felix [a Mexican restaurant], the downtown location of which was cafeteria style.
--Jay Francis
This material is reprinted from
http://jiveandboogie.blogspot.com/2008/08/sig-byrds-houston-viking-press-1955.html
posted by Duke Jones.
and
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2008/03/felix_closes_after_60_years_in.php
posted by Jay Francis
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