catalog request

The last thing I want is another catalog sent to the house but The Vermont Country Store is an exception. Any store that sells Ice Cubes, the intriguing chocolate bits that were sold by the cash register at Castlewood restaurant in Wood Dale, IL where we had to go at least once a week so my brother could have a waffle with chocolate ice cream and bananas on it for dinner is okay with me from a nostalgia-monster feeding standpoint. Was that a run-on sentence?

P.S. I didn't like eating anything on Castlewood's menu or much of anything back then so I would eat a dinner roll and sugar packets, nice.

the year was 1976

and I loved the Krofft Supershow

no longer amusing

There were several amusement parks that were rather close to my home as I was growing up, they're all defunct now. Let's see...there was:

I don't see how The Park at Mall of America is any better than Old Chicago...Old Chicago was great fun and "The Chicago Loop" was my first roller coaster ride. Rumor always had it that the corkscrews from that ride went on to be part of Great America's Demon or Turn of the Century or some shat. According to everything I've read, OC was only open for 5 years, that makes no sense...though I was between the ages of 6 & 10 during its lifespan and it was a much different time to be a kid and when Bolingbrook wasn't so much a suburb.

Dispensa's was pants. They kept changing the commercial theme song as the prices went up. It went from "any ride a quarter, five for a dollar" to when it closed, "any ride a dollar, five for your first born".

I'm still waiting for my babysitter, Kim, to bring me to Santa's Village when she gets her license...though now I see that it's closed and I guess I'm SOL.

I don't know that I ever went to Adventureland but it was the closest to home. I just remember the giant muffler man lumberjack dude standing guard and the colorful paint peeling picket fence (full of lead I bet) surrounding the place. And look, it was even open "Both Memorial Days", uh, what?

(click on photos for sites where credit is due)