No, it was at Knott’s. I rode it many times. However, Magic Mountain, in 1976, opened the Great American Revolution, which was the first steel coaster with a vertical loop. The Revolution is featured in the film Rollercoaster, starring George Segal and Richard Widmark and in National Lampoon’s Vacation, starring Chevy Chase.
BTW, the Corkscrew is still running, at Silverwood Theme Park in northern Idaho.
Hey! I’ve been to Silverwood (when I was stationed at Fairchild AFB). It was pretty neat. It was big enough to be fun and entertaining, but small enough that you didn’t need to spend a week there to see it all. It was inexpensive, and most important, the crowds weren’t insufferably huge. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to get on any ride you wanted to experience.
~~Baloo
Back on topic…remember when you couldn’t run the vacuum or the hair dryer while the TV was on or you’d screw up the reception?
LOL…or if your mom turned on the hand mixer in the kitchen, that would also mess up the reception.
When I was a young teen, mom & dad would go to bed before my sister & I on Friday nights. A few minutes after they went to bed, the TV reception went “fuzzy”. Once I discovered the reason, I didn’t want to think about it.
[Jeeze! They were old people!]
~~Baloo
I remember the Thanksgiving one, but you’re right, no one else seems to!! I think they also served toast and iced tea. My friends always look at me weirdly when I suggest we serve popcorn and jellybeans for dinner like Charlie Brown did. I think part of the reason they served this menu was that Snoopy was the cook or something…
You mean they were…having sex? Parents having sex? Eewwww, gross! Parents don’t have sex!
How appropriate for Kinsey to be the first one to report back on that particular observation.
Does anyone else remember when it was hip to wear a suit and tie? My mom has a picture of herself, dad, and some of their friends in a swank dinner club and they’re all dressed in suits (men) and gold lamé (women). They look like extras in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
~~Baloo
Remember the chu chung sound an 8 track made as it changed programs? And the little thingamabobs you had to put in the hole of a 45 to get it to play on a 33 turntable? I remember when the needle broke on your turntable it was like getting a kidney transplant to replace it. You had to find exactly the right needle or your stereo would reject it.
About Woody Woodpecker… Mel did create the laugh and voice for a few cartoons, but when his contract expired, Walter Lance auditioned other actors and hired his own wife. He did so honestly, though: It wasn’t until after he picked the voice did he learn it was his wife’s.
Mel Blanc never did the voice of Fred Flintstone. That was the work of the late Alan Reed. Mel was Barney Rubble and Dino. (In fact, the two live-action Flintstone movies used the original Dino recordings, after they had been enhanced digitally.)
WEIRD BUT TRUE: 1) Mel did the entire second season of The Flintstones from his hospital bed in a full body cast after suffering a terrible auto accident that left him comatose. His doctors tried for weeks to get him to respond before one of them said, “How are you, Bugs Bunny?”
Mel responded, “Fine, Doc, how are you?” in Bugs Bunny’s voice. (The full story is in Mel’s autobiography, That’s Not All, Folks!)
I hope no one has mentioned these:
Troll dolls. All sizes. Wild orange hair?
Rat Finks. They were plastic finger rings (IIRC) based on a cartoon show.
Water towers for air conditioning, before central air.
Those funny shaped 4-sided clothesline poles for drying clothes outside, that would turn.
Keds and Converse were the only brand name sneakers.
Hang Ten brand clothes, for the fashionable surfer…
Walking everywhere barefoot in the summer.
I used to drink Dr Pepper with peanuts. If DP was unavailable, I drank orange soda, usually Nehi.
But how did your parents’ having sex mess up the reception? Did their activities also involve the vacuum, the hair dryer or the mixer 
?
Have you ever heard of electric vibrators?
Oh.
OK, Jab1, you’ve done the best of them all. You correctly identified Mel Blanc as the voice of Dino. The recent Flintstones movie with John Goodman portraying Fred used the voice of Dino without prior permission, thus incurring a successful (and well deserved) lawsuit from the estate of the late Mel Blanc. The part about the comatose Mel answering in the voice of Bugs is worth beaucoup points and I bow to your mention of that. Yet neither you nor anyone else has mentioned Mel’s “Farms in Berkeley?.. Moooooo.” voice over for Berkeley (CA) Farms Dairy (used to this day). Are you all a bunch of East Coasters or what? Filthy, Samclem, you both deserve major kudos (no singular form of that Turkish word, mind you) for your most excellent contributions.
Soda jerks (who knows why they’re called “jerks”?) who yelled “Man the pumps!” when a gal with a nice stack walked past (or preferrably into) the soda shop. Back when soda fountains would serve you a “Suicide” made up of a squirt or dollop from every pot at the counter. Phosphates, fizzes, floats and malts (sigh). Cuno-Cars, the dark green painted mobile accounting offices. Ceramic knob and tube wiring in houses. Listening to Orson Wells narrate, “Tales from the Black Museum”. Broadcast along with “Tales from Scotland Yard.” Ira Blue broadcasting from the Hungry I in SF on KGO radio. Mal Coyle and Hal Sharpe doing their “Man on the Street” schtick in SF. Coyle and Sharpe in the weather tree. (Took me thirty five years to get the gist of that joke, “The Weather Tree”). Radios with AM only. Stereo receivers with “ceramic” and “stereo” turntable input jacks.Stoves without pilot lights that you lit with “strike anywhere” matches. “Bulova Watch Time”, back when all stations broadcast the correct time so that you could be sure to keep your clocks accurate enough to catch the radio or TV shows being aired. Scanning the RF bands on my parents’ Hallicrafters short wave radio. (Why were SW Radios so popular back in the 30’s to 50’s? Special thread to be built around this question alone.) Bazooka Joe comics wrapped around your one cent wad of pink “choom gum”. Nickle candy bars. Chewing gum that was made from chicle. Army Navy surplus stores where you could buy medals plus all sorts of cool knives and weird stuff. “Don’t eat with your hands son, use your entrenching tool.” (George Tirebiter). The “Don Ameche Show” with the little shadow puppet mouse, “Toppo Giggio” (How’s that for obscure?). Watching a TV show solely because Leonard Bernstein was conducting the NY orchestra that night. Watching the premier of the “Star Trek” series. Being glad that a housing tract had been built nearby (only a half mile hike) so that you could score big on Halloween. Hobos walking by on the Southern Pacific spur line that ran along the edge of our property in “white flight” surburbia. Hearing family stories about how the “Steam Locomotive” had to stop because my next oldest brother was sitting on the tracks (in diapers).
Going to the top of Mount Diablo (SF Bay area in CA) to watch the sunrise. Looking across the entire Central Valley and watching these “clouds” on the eastern horizon that just didn’t move. That’s because these “clouds” were the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains that were over two hundred miles away. (The display case at the top of Mt. Diablo has a picture [taken through a telescope] showing the view of Yosemite Valley as seen from the mountain top which is near San Francisco).
I now officially suggest that we begin a thread consisting entirely of Mel Blanc cartoon quotes. Starting with, "What a maroon" (Bugs), "That boy's about as sharp as five pounds of wet leather", "The kid's about as sharp as a sackful of dead mice" (Foghorn Leghorn), "I may be a craven coward, but I'm a greedy little craven coward" and "Nobody's going to pull one over on this little black duck" (Daffy Duck). Being done, even as you read this thread..... (Hear me Baloo and tremble...) Get cracking Tonto...No music videos the only way to see you favorite band was to go to a concert or get a picture. Although I was about 8 when the first music video Hungry Like the Wolf came out. It was shown on regular T.V. that was before MTV or VHI.
I miss walking barefoot in the summer. <sigh>
Me too. I remember how tender my feet would be in June, and how tough they were by August. I swear, I could’ve walked across broken glass carrying a hundred pound load without harm with my end-of-summer feet. As it was, it always amazed me how I could walk across a hot asphalt road by late summer. Of course, of you stepped on some melted tar, the whole picture changed dramatically.
[ul]**“Ouch! OOch! Hot! Hot!”[/ul]
~~Baloo
What red blooded male that walks (upright) among us could possibly look upon Diana Rigg in her “Avengers” jumpsuits and not drool in comatose delight? What boy, soon to become a man, could espy Patrick MacNee and not see his entire future flash before his eyes? I am always able to stump audiences everywhere when I play “Name that tune” and perform the Avengers’ theme song and interludes on the flute. We need to establish a Camp TV thread just for this sort of warped reminiscing. I always wanted to see what was behind all of those zippers on Emma Peel’s outfits. And finally; “The Scavengers” starring Bananna Peel and Faithful Steed, (my own junior high school satire on the Avengers.)
PS: I’m glad to see that so many others remember the miniature sixpacks of syrup filled wax soda bottles. We won’t mention all of the subsequent wax prosthetics like lips and moustaches.