Growing up in Fresno had its good moments. Now that I'm older and (presumably) wiser I can see that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I guess I was just your typically whiny (bored) teen who thought he was having a "Footloose" moment at times. You know the type.
I was out riding yesterday and today (42 & 32 miles) and had some great memories float by.
I remember...
I know alot of folks buy into the whole "global warming" scare, but it has always been hotter than Hell in Fresno. You have to be careful about touching the handle on your car door, sitting on your vinyl seats in shorts, and if your an idiot, walking barefoot on asphalt. The plus side was my mom dropping me and a couple of my brothers and sisters off to swim at Airways. I think it cost 50 cents and you could swim all day. The tallest diving board seemed like it was 50 feet in the air. I bet it was 10 feet.
I remember the Chicken Pie Shop. A restaurant that sells chicken pies has to be great, right? It was.
Zack's. I can never smell a clove cigarette and not thinks of Zack's dance club.
Bowling at Fresno State. We used to make up names for the score sheet, I'd usually pick a name like Fausto Coppi. My brother would pick something subtly perverse. We thought it was funny to have it glowing on the overhead!
We used to play "pickle" till we were exhausted!
My grandmothers walkway used to be lined with jars of sun tea in the summer! Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats a Mason jar full of ice cold sun tea in the summer! She also made top notch potato salad as well! It had little chunks of pickle in it.
My dad was a mechanic for a time and once brought home a "crap load" of donuts he salvaged off of a donut truck that wrecked. If I remember right my mom froze alot of them so they wouldn't go to waste. I think we had the metal sheets they were on for quite some time as well.
I once had a blue and white "SWATCH". That was one trendy timepiece!
We used to eat breakfast at Roding Park with my Dad's family. They'd cook pancakes, bacon, etc. It was fun.
Grandma Smart always had a frosted Christmas tree! And made some wicked rum balls we used to sneak away with!
Ottmar Thomas' Toyota of Visalia commercials! What an accent that mook had!
Pizza and Pipes! It's impossible to eat cheap pizza whilst listening to an obnoxious pipe organ and not have fun! I think it burned down.
I used to get most of my school clothes from the J.C. Penny catalog and GEMCO. Those were the days of terry cloth shirts, O.P. shirts and shorts (nutters), and shoes (fake Vans) sure to keep an orthopedic doctor gainfully employed.
It doesn't seem that long ago. Man does time fly!
4 comments:
Concord was about as exciting as Fresno, I guess.
I'd bet that Concord was much more exciting than Fresno:)
Come to think of it, Concord might have been more fun. We got to go to Walnut Creek at night.
Sometimes we'd venture out to Clovis at night, that was considered a step up:)
BTW, Tim Lincecum is a freak! That's one Giant I root for when he takes the hill (unless it's against LA of course). The only other Giant's I used to pull for were McCovey (one of the greatest ever, period) and Matt Williams.
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