FLASHBACK: 1982 Season!

Junior · February 27, 2011, 08:22:35 AM

By this year, the Deepwoods area of SDC had become so developed the area was rethemed as "The Riverfront" area, which we all know and love today. My friend Carol was stationed at Tom Sawyer's Landing as an attendant, but moonlighted with the Juniors at the diving bell where she sometimes played "Ruby Dugan," working our line entertaining guests. Bruce Herschend got married that year, the diving bell team whooped the saloon team in a touch football game at the end of the season, and the admission info for SDC in the brochure that year mentioned that the SDC campground and waterslide were "just 3 minutes down the road" from the park. It all happened in 1982. See photos and scans of this season on my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juniordugan

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A personal note: I was employed at SDC from 1978-1984, and have presented these FLASHBACK threads over the course of January and February that spotlighted, a year at a time, some of the things going on at the park during those years. I hope you have enjoyed them. This is the last one. I could start my own Website and catalog on it scans of every item I kept in my personal files from those years, but it would just be too time consuming, so I hope you have liked these glimpses into the stuff I've kept in a file cabinet all these years. There is much, much more, and maybe sometime in the future I will post a bit more. We are very close to the opening of the 2011 season now, and instead of looking backward as we have with the FLASHBACK threads, we can now start to look forward to a great, new season at Silver Dollar City!

Zephon · February 27, 2011, 09:10:17 AM

I remember the football game, Junior. Some people got pretty hurt in it as I recall. Some people took it just a little bit too serious. Oh well, that was then. Thanks for the flashback.

mhguy77 · February 27, 2011, 09:35:29 AM

I enjoy all the flashbacks. I was a young teen then and very much into SDC. Its fun to be reminded.

sanddunerider · February 27, 2011, 11:03:28 AM

I like the all the history you come up with on the flashbacks. thanks

Junior · February 27, 2011, 02:25:52 PM

Regarding the football games...our star player, maitanence man Russ Maulden, got the wind knocked out of him and had to go to the hospital ER for a check up. Although I never could find anyone willing to admit to this, the American Plunge team was called AKU, which I think stood for "Ass Kickers Union, or A-- Kickers United." So, yeah, some of them took things a bit seriously. For me, it was just a chance to run around being the natural goofball that I was back then. Not a great player, so I was a comic on the field. We were not a well disciplined group, and I imagine it looked more like the three stooges out there. But it was a fun night. Big party afterwords. I was the one responsible for getting our team shirts with the "Goon Platoon" lettering on them. By the way EVERYONE on my team still owes me $10 each for their game shirts. Guess I'll NEVER see that money!

Zephon · February 27, 2011, 03:24:17 PM

Hah! Good Luck with that. I'll mention it to Russ if you want me to.

Junior · February 27, 2011, 05:35:35 PM

Russ may have been responsible for "let Mark be stuck with the bill for those shirts" movement, (A typical prank we Juniors would pull on one another.) so I don't think all these years later it would do much good!

betamike · February 28, 2011, 10:43:37 AM

What's funny about these photos is the shot of the cable slide. I have such an embarrassing moment stemming from that slide when I was 7 or 9 years old. As I recall, you hit the end sand pile pretty hard when the cable stopped. Well, I must have been recovering from a week's worth of head cold and when I hit, it literally knocked the snot out of me. All I remember is someone on the sidelines (a wooden fence maybe?) going "Ewwwwwwww" really loud when it happened.

That was the last time I recall making my way up the steps to the cable slide and soon afterwards....it was gone...along with the Gandy Dancer too if I'm not mistaken.

Junior · February 28, 2011, 04:49:45 PM

There was a cable slide and a fireman's pole in Tom Sawyer's Landing when it opened in1980. A kid didn't hang on to the pole once when he came down it, and it knocked the wind out of him. Mom and dad loudly complained that it was unsafe. The pole disappeared within three days. The cable slide lasted two or three seasons. Again, some kid did not pay attention to instructions the attendant gave, and smacked the wooden wall at the end of the slide, knocking the wind out of 'em. Bye Bye cable slide! Too bad, I really preferred working the cable slide over the original ballroom, cause what kids did in there was...well...one night after a diaper came off a little one two crew members had to stay over and individually hose down each ball. Bleeeeechhhh! Memories worth repeating? Sorry, not THAT time!

sanddunerider · February 28, 2011, 06:23:22 PM

I have always wondered/worried about that detail.. And then you have the same thing at Mcdonalds,Chuckie cheese, and so on. Nothing sterile and clean about that whole scenario.

Junior · March 01, 2011, 08:33:14 AM

Just a "heads up" notice. I've noticed I'm about at full capacity on my free Flickr account...so that means it's about time to seriously purge some of the photos on the site. I'm probably going to leave everything on the site alone for about a week or two, but about the time the 2011 season opening at SDC rolls around, I'll probably delete most of the 2010 season and off season photos to make room for the new season stuff. So take a look at all the "Flashback" series one more time, and at some of the 50th anniversary related postings like the articles about SDC that I had published last year, because most will vanish in two weeks. Thanks!