One thing you remember from your childhood that is no longer around

It could be a small thing or a big thing.

I remember Tiger handheld video games. Each one was could only play one game, and it was LCD so the background was usually pained on and the character would just flash from one position to the other. I remeber I had three. The Little Mermaid, Batman and Tiny Toons. A kid in my class though just had a whole backpack full of them.

mostly in my sleep, mind you.

:P

Just a short subway ride north of Boston, or a short harbor ferry ride south of the city, landed us in these great fun parks. Roller coasters, arcades, sausage and peppers sandwiches on the beach. Great stuff and a lot of fun.

The amusement parks are totally gone now, with condos standing in there place. It sux.

Your post about amusement parks reminded me of this one that I visited as a child. Thanks for the memory!

in Jackson, Ms.

family and friends in Arkansas and Kansas we stop at Tallulah for at least gas. Nice little town and Highway 65 is a nice break from the interstate.

I've only seen photos of the Revere Beach amusement park (I'm 42, BTW).

Revere Beach was like the movie "American Graffiti" on steroids. Last stop on the Blue Line.

Muscle cars and gum-snappin' chicks, cruising the boulevard under the amusement park lights that went on for a couple of miles of beach front.

I wonder what kids do for fun anymore with the outdoor fun parks gone.

They still cruise their Irocs and hang out on the wall eating clams from Kelly's.

up the Revere when my ex and I were living in Cambridge.

We never took the ferry to Nantasket, though.

There were still pizza stands and hot dog stands, cotton candy and sub shops etc at Revere and Nantasket but I do not remember ever seeing the rides running.

Not surprised the condos moved in. Prime Beachfront property...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whalom_park

"You'll have a whale of a time!"

We would all go into the bedroom. One person would be "it." That person would have a pillowcase tied over his head. Then we'd all run and hide around the bedroom, taking with us stuff to pelt the person with--basketballs, nerfs, pillows, stuffed animals.

The person would count to 25, and then he'd try to find us, blindfolded by the pillowcase, as we pelted him with stuff.

"It" would rarely escape without a few bruises...and when he finally got one of us cornered, he'd tackle us, and that person would become "it."

Oh, and bb gun wars. We'd get up on roofs in the neighborhood, run along the ridgelines, and shoot each other with bb guns. Then we'd spend the afternoon drinking kool-aid and eating little debbies, picking the sand from the shingles out of our roof rashes.

Then one of our neighbors got an Atari, and that pretty much ended the outside mischief. Sadly. :(

LOL...we were idiots when we were kids. This was at a time when our mothers worked, so they never knew the shit we did while they were gone.

"Oh my god! I could have been killed!"

Brett moved away to Dallas when we were 15 or so.

Well, he came back to Mississippi to visit when we were in our early twenties. He said, "Give me your finger." He pressed it against his cheek bone right under his eye--right at the eye socket, and he rolled my finger around there on his face.

There, still embedded in his face a decade later was one of the bb's I'd shot him with. He told me that he had had a crush on me way back (hell, a surprise to me, because I was a tomboy then, and love was never a concern of mine), and he said that he never had it removed because it made him remember me and all the fun we had. I was at the same time repulsed and appreciative.

Yes, it's a wonder that we still have legs, arms, and eyesight! :D

Thank God you didn't blind the guy! BB gun wars are not a good idea kids. It's a wonder any of us survive childhood!

If you ever meet a guy in Irving or Dallas, and he's got a small bump under his eye, remember he loved me first!

:rofl:

:hi:

accumulating other kids as we went, climbed everybody's grandmother's apple, plum and peach trees, picked grapes from my grandmother's arbor (everybody knew she had the best arbor in town, and she didn't care because she always had too many grapes)

and when we got older we sunbathed, ridiculously, seeking a tan ..which is something I was never destined to have ..

running through the sprinklers, jumping in the big piles of leaves in the fall.

trick or treating for home made goodies and being spooked by the older boys who would jump out of hedges at us for grins. (Miss Willie May's popcorn balls and Miss Jessie's 'extra bag of candy' for our fathers, which turned out to be laced with bourbon!)

Whoever was "it" had the towel and threw it at anyone they could. If you got hit by it, you became "it." Getting hit by a cold wet towel was a shock and everyone screamed to get away from it.

That'd be fun around the pool!

:hi:

you definitely did not want that cold, wet towel hitting you - it was a shock to your system. On a hot summer day by the pool, it would feel good to get cold and wet. But when we played it, we were all scared of getting hit by it so we were always screaming. (Of course this only happened when the parents weren't there.)

Y'all's version sounds a lot more violent, though! haha Ours involved someone getting "murdered" in a dark room, but also someone being a detective and people having to guess who had done what. But the "murder" was always the most fascinating part, being a little kid and all. I remember playing it with my cousins and we had to call it "Suspect in the Dark" b/c my aunt was religious and didn't like the name- even though it was played exactly the same either way.

except for animal paths..and blue sky & rain you could drink..straight from the sky.. streams you could drink from & fish you weren't afraid to eat after you caught them..


Lillte kids wandering around on bikes with no fear of someone grabbing them..

of course we also had no A/C, no TV, radio in a foreign language, and virtually NOTHING to do, but play outside from morning til night:)

It was either in Arkansas or Missouri--can't remember which.

Based on Lil Abner...had a wooden roller coaster, if I recall correctly, that had no centrifugal force and made me feel as if we would be dumped off the top every time we went around a curve.

Thanks for the memories!

I only rode the centrifugal force ride once. :puke

It's kinda sad to see Dogpatch USA all abandoned and in ruin. x(

I didn't know it had closed down! Indeed, I have not thought of it in my adult life until your post.

Thanks for the memories....good memories, except for the horrible sunburn I got that day and the deathly rollercoaster ride.

:hug:

A sad sight indeed.

I grew up in Oklahoma and our parents took us there a couple of times when we were kids. The Harrison area is just gorgeous! :hi:

I live a couple of miles from Dogpatch.

These days no one seems to know who owns it. Last year some of the buildings got new roofs and the brush was cleared out so that Marble Falls can once again be seen from Hwy 7, but that is about all that was done.

I was born in Pulaski County. :hi:

http://www.undergroundozarks.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=13cc45e89e6584257646f26f52ca68b2

there's a lot of discussion.... apparently there's something coming, but who knows what.

Also, an excellent (albeit sad) history of Dogpatch:

http://arkansasroadstories.com/attractions/dogpatch.html

The Enchanted Forest.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_Forest_(Maryland)

I'm not sure if it was the same, but it's also gone

Frontier Village of San Jose:

http://www.frontiervillage.net/

MPK

There were several small amusement parks/tourist attractions in southern California that are now gone:
Santa's Village in Sky Forest, Calfornia and Enchanted Forest, both of them near Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. Japanese Villlage and Deer Park in Buena Park, California. Treasure Island, which was part of Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, and is still there, but is not open to the public any more - it's available for special events, but when I was a kid anyone could go onto it for a small fee. I really miss and love those small theme parks and the quaint rides and overall charm.

..coolest amusement park ever when I was young. There were all these little mechanical diarama type displays. You'd put a quarter in the side slot, and the little mechanical men would hammer in nails or drive a car around the block. All done with gears and mini-pulleys moving small wooden or metal sculptures. Before CGI and motherboards.

Sadly, developers grabbed the land in the 70s and built these ugly-ass condos that now sell for 3/4 million (even in this depressed market). But Playland lives in the memories of us all who were around for the Summer of Love and even before!

Zelinsky acquired them and opened his own exhibit, Musée Mécanique, which is still around. It was housed for many years in the Cliff House, but it's now down at Pier 45. They even have Laff'n Sal who, you remember, graced the entrance to the Fun House.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcEyYFS8hNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51oH7Lhm_Lk&feature=related

I knew the displays were around somewhere, and that the Cliff House got rid of them during the remodeling (which is no improvement in my opinion). I was hoping someone would enlighten me as to where they'd gone (since I'm obviously too lazy to do my own research!) so I thank you for the info.

I was just biking down the Great Highway a couple weekends ago, but didn't make it up to the Cliff House, since I turned on Lincoln and went into the park. Is the Camera Obscura still there?

I wonder whatever happened to the displays. Thanks for letting me know about that, I've never heard of it before.

...when I was shooting my graduation project film for CalArts up at Big Bear, we took the back-side drive home to L.A. and passed the remains of Enchanted Forest. The "castle" (actually the cover for the water-tank) was still standing, and a few outbuildings, but the rest of the place had been recovered by nature.

And I hadn't realized that Santa's Village had closed, although I'm not all-that-surprised, once I think about it a bit. I was only there once, when I was five or six. What amazed me at the time was not any of the rides or shops (although the gingerbread was good), but the "North Pole" near the entrance, encased in a clear coat of ice that you could walk up and touch. I was a SoCal kid, used to warm weather, and had only seen snow once, during Easter vacation at Yosemite. The idea that you could actually have an ice-coated pole in the middle of Southern California in summer, and with such perfectly transparent ice at that, was an absolute revelation to me.

stuck on a strip of paper. Pure sugar with coloring. Usually in a glass case with the wax teeth and small wax coke bottles full of syrup.
"Penny candy".

You can probably get arrested in California for just posessing it now.

mark

The store's been around since the 1800s (and looks it). They sell food and tchotchkes and subs, but most everyone goes there to fill bags with penny candy out of glass jars and open bins. We always used to stop there before we went camping.

and buy a bag full every week.
I had no idea it was still made.

That's great - kids need a lot of sugar.

Thanks.

mark

They come in a plastic bag now, along with a bunch of other penny candies I remember from my childhood.

by practicing with those candy-on-paper things.

And I loved those little bottles!

I realized that I'm remembering that candy from 45-50 years ago.

I must have really liked it a lot.

mark

:bounce:

I did not know that.

I add my own sugar (a mix of sugar and Splenda) to the powder mix (each packet only a quarter).

I never buy the pre-mixed stuff.

i miss her.

more local businesses.

thriving downtown areas in small towns and small cities (at least in the midwest and south).

non-national distribution of products: if you went from illinois to texas, they had different shit in the stores.

You see some kids use them for transportation, but it's rare to see them just ride for fun.

oh and kids playing "guns"

As a kid that was one of my favorite games, but it was killed off by the PC police.

They even do skid-outs!

:bounce:

or the pink Itza ball:shrug:

It was flat and you put it in the toaster to heat it up. When it came out of the toaster, you smeared this white frosting on the top of it (included).

These were so good! We used to fight over them as kids.

I cannot remember what they were called, though.

They were flat and had "ridges" in them that would catch the frosting...they were so freakin' good!

Pillsbury's Toaster Pastries?

Pillsbury's Pop Ups?

I think it's called TOAST!

Welcome to ignore.

they still make it. :9

The pastries we ate as kids didn't have a fruit filling.

Grandma and Grandpa always stocked up on them and oreos whenever I came down to visit!

He buzzed and had a ball point pen sticking out of his snout, so your writing looked all vibraty and circly. I loved him.

They're ripping it down as we speak.

which were quickly removed in order to maintain coolness of said bike

I loved that show. Especially the Tom Lehrer songs ("Who can turn a can into a cane? Who can turn a van into a vane? It's elementary, it's Silent E")

It was pretty pioneering for its time, using graphics and effects which were cutting-edge at that point in TV history. It was a lot more fun than Sesame Street. And what a cast - including at vairous times, Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Mell Brooks and Joan Rivers in addition to the lesser-known regulars who were also good.

smoking and could use a pack of those.

I guess I was around six or so. I used to blow on them and make the powdered sugar puff out. Recently I was at a candy store and they had candy cigarettes, not the bubblegum kind. I looked at them and I couldn't believe they were marketing that to kids.

blow through them as they were solid candy. Actually they kinda tasted a little like cardboard.

You could only make a cloud once.

Like this:

They looked nothing like cigarettes except that they were long and white. They looked more like little sticks.

All white except for the red "fire" on the end. Some were redder than others :D

I never saw those bubble gum things either.

I was at Watson's Drugs in Orange (it still has the old soda fountain and grill) and they had all sorts of "retro" candies, including candy cigarettes.

Perfect!

WE would throw them straight up in the air while standing in the hoop and then run away in any direction and see who's dart was closest to the hoop. Somehow the danger factor made the game funner. Totally awesome game.

Just like the astronauts (supposedly) ate.


http://www.yumsugar.com/670388

And Beeman's gum... can't get the shit in the great white north anymore.

Chemistry sets with real chemicals...you know, all the things you could really hurt yourself with. Somehow we survived, but noooOOOooo--it all had to go, JUST IN CASE. :(

I absolutely loved Spirograph and I had the original plus Super Spirograph when it came out. I had a Gilbert chemistry set and I remember it included chemicals which became dangerous or explosive when mixed together and even a few chemicals which were toxic even by themselves! (Copper chloride, sodium bisulfite, etc.) I even had a Geology Set.

That proves it...the end of civilization is upon us.

Even though they tasted like medicine I still liked them. :9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIdGDcWBsoc

My brother had one of those. It never worked like they showed on the commercials.

Mine worked pretty good. Between my brother and I, we also had the stunt chopper and the rocket-like Snake River stunt cycle.

I learned more from this series of 10 mail-order kits than I learned from all of my science classes in school. You built the projects yourself and nearly everything you needed was included. The manuals alone are priceless, but the act of building each project and seeing the results for yourself was the best possible way to learn.



The weather station kit



The series of kits was ingeniously designed to utilize parts over and over for different purposes and projects. The disadvantage was that you sometimes had to disassemble one project or part of it, in order to use a part for another project, but they minimized this and you could pretty easily reconstruct the first one if you wanted to. Why there aren't kits like this today I don't understand - it would get a lot more kids interested in science.

A series of kits produced by Bell Labs and given free to schools. In the "Solar Energy Experiment" you actually made a solar cell that could generate electricity from the sun. In "From Sun to Sound" you used a solar cell and built a circuit which made an audible sound. In "Speech Synthesis" (which was the most hotly desired kit) you built electric circuits which could produce sounds similar to vowel sounds made by humans. A lot of kids wanted that kit so they could make it cuss out the teacher, but then were disappointed when it only made vowel sounds. "Crystals and Light" contained experiments with growing crystals and looking at them under a microscope, and learing about crystal structure.

phones that didn't unplug from the wall

carburetors

one-room and two-room schoolhouses with multiple grades in the same classroom with one teacher

UHF stations

No 7-11s or Motel 6s or cassette tapes

78 rpm vinyl records

God, am I old?

is that your picture on the upper left of your post? :P

Plus I remember listening to "The Lone Ranger" and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" on the radio. :hi:

the clip holds 4 shells

Little Golden Records (small yellow 78s with one song on them)

Haven't thought of them for many a year.

Loved those. Also, 7-Up bars, Jarts, cap guns, being allowed to have the run of the neighborhood until the street lights came on, theater tickets that didn't suck up your whole allowance. Mosquito fog -- I had a really big fascination with mosquito fog and I used to love running through the clouds of fog every morning and at dusk. Looking back on that now I think it's a miracle that I didn't get hit by a car and I'll no doubt die of some strange mosquito fog cancer of the lungs

:cry:

Food Service......

I worked the closing shift and would show up early to ride the rides. Three times a season, they would keep a section of the park open until about 4:00 am or so and have an employee party. I enjoyed working there, even when frying corn dogs.....

Bill Clinton. "If you like it so much, why don't you just marry it?" and other silly "comebacks."

:shrug:

i almost bought them, too

http://www.frontiervillage.net/pages/history.html

I lived less than a mile from there.

damn, i loved those things :9

i've searched high and low across town and can't find them :cry:

i miss those too... the butterscotch ones were to die for... the chocolate-vanilla swirled were good too

shit, for that matter, i can't find a place that has soft serve twist cones anymore

And I imagine you would need to use whole milk

Jell-O Pudding Pops

2 cups cold milk
1 package (4-serving size) Jell-O Instant Pudding and Pie Mix
6 (5-oz) paper cups
6 popsicle sticks

Beat pudding mix and milk together, at least two minutes.
Spoon into cups. Insert popsicle stick in center of each cup.

Freeze 5 hours (or overnight). To remove pop from cup, place
bottom of cup in warm water for 15 seconds. Press firmly
on bottom of cup and push pop out. Don't pull on the popsicle
stick.


http://www.chefandy.com/recipes/pudding.html

The key was used to adjust the skates to fit on your shoes.

You got a brand new key."

Melanie

I was 16, working as a live-in babysitter for my godmother's kids near the Jersey shore. It was the summer of 1968. We went to Monmouth Mall one day and I stopped at a little store that sold funky handbags, hair accessories and some hippie gear. Melanie was there working with her mother, who ran the store. The mother talked me into buying her daughter's first single. She had a small stack of them in the store. One of the songs on the single was "Brand New Key," but I can't recall the other one. I thought it was so-so.


A couple of years later I was doing classified ads at the Rutgers Targum, the student newspaper at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, NJ. One of the guys at Targum was a Melanie fan. He begged me to lend him the single so he could listen to it. Alas, the bum never returned it. Thanks a heap, Bennet Zurofsky, wherever you are. Not that I particularly cared for Melanie, but the single might have eventually been worth something.

When I was a kid, most grownups smoked, and smoking was everywhere. I even have vague memories of cigarette ads on TV.

with the windows closed.

It's a wonder we all didn't get lung cancer.

I remember being really small and walking with my mom in the grocery store and for some reason I had a helium balloon, and some guy walks by with his cigarette and pops it on me.. I cried and cried I was so upset lol.. I also remember looking up and it being very smoky in there.

Salute your shorts. Pete and Pete, Doug, Are you afraid of the dark?, clarissa explains it all, Double Dare, hey dude, stick stickley. It was the only channel I watched!

They were great shows.

Now the only good thing on Nick is Avatar... and they recently ended the series.

IIRC it tasted something like root beer

Flavor straws - paper straws with chocolate or strawberry flavoring tucked inside. You sucked the milk over the flavor

Green stamps - I got a hookah with GS in the 70's (later childhood)

President Truman

They never tasted as good as you hoped.

They were like really wide skate boards, and one lay down on one's belly on them as on a sled. You could steer them, but they had no brakes. We used to ride them down the hills of Berkeley and San Francisco. My parents refused to buy me one, but I was known to borrow them from friends.

These had to be the biggest Kid Killers of all time. They made lawn darts look benign.



Also trading cards - not the sports ones, but ones with pictures of flowers or puppies or kittens that girls would trade. The horse pictures were always the most desirable, flowers and hearts were disdained by the discriminating collectors.

I actually found some on eBay!

As a young child I used to STAND beside my mother as she drove, sucking my thumb and twirling her hair.

When she had to brake suddenly her arm would jump up to prevent me from falling into the windshield.

It's AVOCADO GREEN!
:woohoo:

but now we're going soft. I tried dialing one of those recently and almost got a hernia.

cool

Going to down to Milwaukee for Brewer games every year for Cub Scouts. The Brewers always lost. back when the Brewers were in the AL and didn't play real baseball. Having the "Tastes Great! Less Filling!" argument on the bus ride back home.

Rainbow Falls, a waterpark that was in Plover, WI. I had relatives in nearby Stevens Point who took me there a couple of times. It was torn down years ago and it's now a complex of big box stores and chain restaurants like Starbucks, Hudson's and Golden Corral.

Driving past the pre-renovation Lambeau Field. That great Green and Gold corrugated steel temple of football greatness.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_mJzDaBhfJzQ/SCO_OK0viCI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/W0ORTUXWvRQ/s400/blog+001.jpg

But we were moving to Europe for a few years, and the word from my parents was that we'd never be able to use it over there, so no dice. :shrug:

One of my really good friends (now brother-in-law to Michael Medved :puke: ) got one of them just before we left. I was sooooo jealous -- until I saw it in action, and realized that I'd probably have fun with it for a day or two, then run out of ideas for flimsy vacuum-formed toys.

and the Wonder Bowl next door.

It was a ride unto itself. You got in the tram, and you were whisked almost silently towards the Magic Kingdom. Each section of the parking lot was named after a Disney character, and the driver announced each one. The tram itself was fun to be on. The view of Disneyland from the parking lot was exciting, it was like you had finally reached this magical place and there it was before your eyes - sort of like approaching the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. That view is lost forever now, as most of the parking lot is taken up by the tacky California Adventure park. The parking lot also provided a soothing decompression as you left Disneyland, after the intense sensory overload of the park, the the tram ride provided a quiet peaceful few minutes to appreciate what you just experienced.

My gramma would take us there once a week to get her hair set. We went by bus as she never drove a car.
I loved those days. I didn't know they wouldn't last. God, I miss her.

Those horrible instruments of torture that we wore to bed, and even out in public during the late 60s. They were spiral tubes of metal covered in plastic mesh, with a length of hard spiky plastic brush material (the kind they still use to make looped toilet brushes) in the center to grip your hair and your aching scalp. We pinned these tightly to our heads. Sleeping in them was agony. But we had to use them to make sure our bouffant flip hairdos were perfect.

The more genteel of us wore see-through colored chiffon scarves to partly cover them when going out in public. Teenage girls made a point to wear curlers on Saturday afternoons to indicate they had dates for Saturday night -- or, like me, pretend they had dates. Women wore them for grocery shopping. I believe we looked like some kind of aliens in them.

This, of course, was in the days before hair dryers, electric curling irons and electric curlers were available.

Cher temporarily freed us from this madness by inspiring us to copy her long straight hair. We used to iron our hair (on a low setting) to get it perfectly straight, while our mothers watched in horror. Those with thicker, curlier hair cut the tops and bottoms off big metal juice cans and rolled their hair in those to straighten it.

I am forever grateful to whoever invented the blow-drier.

I just saw an electronic football game at the Dollar Store that was identical to the one I coveted circa 1979.

Comforting somehow to see it...

Out of what must have been hundreds of tries, I never beat my dad.

Those little 6 packs of wax bottles that had a tasty drink, then you could chew the little wax bottles.

Clackers - in S America they're called bolas- and are considered a deadly weapon

Creepy Crawler Bug Maker kit - The most efficient process to inflict second degree burns on 8-yr old boys devised by science.

Then there was Ted's - Three different Ted's. First is the chain hot dog stands. (Is 9 stores a chain?) They're still around. Next was Ted's the corner store. All the candy & soda pop a kid could imagine - although my imagination was pretty limited. Last is Ted's Ice Cream shop. What's interesting is that all three were considered to be "walking distance" for 8-10 yr olds - from a half mile to two miles away.

We were pretty brutal. Lord of the Flies had nothing on us. Getting slammed in the face with a dried up chunk of dirt was all in a days work.

Even though they were against the law by the time I needed shoes.

I remember going to a store in Memphis that still had one, and getting to put my feet in one and see the bones in them.



-------------------------------------------------------------

Later, one of the coolest gifts I got was the Science Fair 150-in-1 Project kit.

i've got one that's old.

The case of fancy candies and treats in the department stores.

Or did I make that up?

radios.

You were supposed to put this piece of plastic on the screen and draw over it. I remember being about 2 years old and crayoning directly on the TV screen.

That only happened once.

Best Barbecue I ever ate, any where. Whenever we had guests from another part of the country, we ordered from Kozy Korner and my mom always had a bottle of the hot and the mild barbecue sauce in the refrigerator for making barbecued chicken.

I also miss my parents and grandparents, and roaming free as a kid all over town.

That, and the SuperBall™

Well, the building is still there, but it's now the town office building in Wilmington, Mass.

and these wonderful burgers which everybody just called 'Tastees' which I now believe were a variation of the Iowa Loose Meat Sandwich.

The little envelopes the Tastees came in had a little map on them that showed other locations in Nebraska and Iowa with a big arrow swooping down to Russellville.

I would kill (well almost) for a Tastee cone right about now, and a Tastee Burger. I have never eaten anything like them although Made-Rite in Iowa looks a lot like them.

If I recall correctly, either the husband or the wife of the couple that opened it shortly after WWII was from Iowa and this was the family business up there. The other half of the couple was local.

We think he came from up there, was based at Ft Campbell, met her and decided to settle in Kentucky and open the shop. It was a true drive in like Sonic, and they hung the trays on the windows of the cars. NO roller skating carhops though.

Now it is possible that he was the local, was stationed in Nebraska or somewhere, met the girl, got into the family business and brought it home to Russellville.

Either way, he must have made a fortune, that place was always busy.

I was very sad when they closed down, sometime after I finished college in 1969.

Thank the gods.

I don't miss the dark days of the early Cold War.

An indoor amusement park in the '70s:

http://www.negative-g.com/OldChicago/OCIndex.html

:cry:

Cheap knockoff of some other burger joint the name of which I can't remember just now...

We used to go to the one in Muldraugh, Kentucky, just outside the North Gate of Fort Knox, where my dad was stationed. BG must have been confined to the Old South/Midwest regional border area, because I never saw it anywhere but in Kentucky. The food was just right for kids, but looking back on it as an adult, it makes me shudder a little. My parents probably rolled their eyes when we asked to go to Burger Queen for dinner.

The one in Muldraugh displayed a portrait of General George Patton. At the time, I thought that was pretty cool.

When I was stationed on Fort Knox myself as a soldier, I went out to Muldraugh, a couple of times, but Burger Queen was long-gone...

chemistry sets

"Prodigy needs your attention"


KC

And all modems were dial-up.

I wish i remembered which of my insane relatives gave me that thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdS9ZJ_Wf4k

sold in those long low coolers that looked like top loading freezers

My grandparents

Playing kick the can and grey wolf

My sting ray bike

Our Avion travel trailer

My paper route

My great Uncle, the ultimate outdoorsman and naturalist

My dog and the long walks we took together

the ones I played in seem to be gone now

"It's more than a camera, it's almost alive!
It's only nineteen dollars and ninety-five!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Swinger (and I never realized Ali McGraw was in that ad)