My Top 10 List - Add Your Memory

[RLM]

Al Radka - "Fun Time" I remember Al Radka having a show in the mornings back in the '70's called "Fun Time" Different schools in the valley were its hosts. The opening song I will always remember:

"ITS FUN TIME, ITS FUN TIME, ITS CHANNEL 30 FUN TIME. WE'RE HAPPY TO SEE YOU, WE HOPE YOUR FEELING FINE. WE'VER BRUSHED OUR HAIR AND BRUSHED OUR TEETH AND NOW WE'ER SMILEING WITH OUR FACE, ITS FUN TIME, CHANNEL 30 FUN TIME. WE'ER SMILING WHY DON'T YOUUUUUUU!!"

Ohmygosh! Yes, I remember... Ahahaha! I was reading your post and found myself SINGING the Song..the song I forgot that I knew. So Fun. Thanks.

[RLM]

Berkely's Department Store on Fulton Mall....the most beautiful store in Fresno. My gramma was the accessories buyer. Later she was at Rodder's in Fashion Fair. When I was a teenager we moved to the mountains just below Shaver Lake (China Peak skiing!), and made trips into 'town' for school clothes at Fashion Fair (Lerner's, Miller's Outpost, Foxmoor's if I was really lucky, Gottschalks, Weinstock's), ski clothes at Hubner's Sports, groceries at Hanoian's Market, and stocked up on wine and soda at Dominick's on Blackstone (!). My favorite thing was to go to Penny Candy for fun and visit my mom's friend owner Carol Gustonian. My brothers and I would get blacklight posters, candy, and fun junk like fake barf and rubber chickens. I got a psychedelic fringed paper lamp for my room there. We would stop and eat at the Hofbrau on Shaw, the Tea Garden, Carnations, or for a real treat Leilani's for Polynesian Chinese food.

I loved Leilani's. My parents went to the Refectory for fancy dinners. When I was a baby my mom got a picture of me on a calendar from Producer's Dairy. They did it as a promotion in the late 50's (anyone else have one?) "PRO-DUC-ERS spells Producer's. When you want quality, you'll say yes to Producer's!" I watched Al Radka's Fun Time ('It's fun time, it's fun time, it's Channel 30 fun time!"), Webster Webfoot and the local Mickey Mouse Club show. My brother and I got to be on the show for his birthday one year. I remember summers so hot that my crayons melted into a big soup after I left them out just for a few hours. We played outdoors with the neighbor kids after dinner until it got dark because it was 105 to 110 degrees during the day. As a little girl from 1958 through the 60's I loved the Christmas Lights drive along Van Ness, and Roeding Park and the rides. I had my 6th birthday at Storybook Land (Jack & the Beanstalk slide, the little Church, Three Little Pigs Houses) and went on the helicopters and carousel that had the clown faces on top. We'd go on the paddle boats, ride the train around the little lake and get pink popcorn, then go look at the real old locomotive. Sometimes we went to the Chaffee Zoo.

I thought it was the most beautiful greenest park ever (and still do) with it's winding roads and huge oak and eucalyptus shade trees. I wanted to get married under the column lined vine walkway there, or at Kearney Mansion. We lived on Flordora Street, and I went to Ewing Grade School (later at Pine Ridge school). Mom shopped at Country Boy Market and Long's. If we went downtown we'd drive by the 'new' courthouse, the old Water Tower and every time we'd see the tall Guarantee Savings building my mom would tell us that she worked there as a legal secretary when she went to Fresno State. When I was in HS (Sierra High in Auberry) I cruised Belmont with friends, saw 'Tommy' at the Tower Theater and Supertramp at Selland Arena. We had our Christmas Formal at the Rainbow Ballroom. Mom took us to Duncan Ceramics and the Fresno Art Center and Museum often. Once I had a jewelry booth there for an art fair. In the summer she let me take the Greyhound bus from downtown near the old Basque restaurant (yum) to go see my best friend in Ventura (Gasp! The days of not worrying about your kids being out and about so much. We'd go to the beach and Disneyland. I thought she had it made, but she always told me she missed the mountains and Fresno. I've lived in southern California since college and know what she means. Memories....

Great memories. Loved reading.

[RLM]

Fresno native, read this site many times over the years, figured would join and share a bit....

Some good memories.... grew up on the east side in a then new subdivision at the west edge of the airport that had grown out of Hammer Field..
--- Squirrel hunting with 22's and building forts in the then cotton and potato fields on the edge of the airport, swimming in the irrigation pump pond along the dirt road that would later become Anderson Ave. and getting chased off airport property by the NG MP's when out playing on the farm equipment parked near the taxiways. Playing on the bunkers south of the tower and managing to break into a couple of them, I think I still have an old cash register we found. Otherwise the bunkers were empty outside of some trash.

----Visiting the maintenance hangar of the 144th to watch a friend's dad work on the F106's stationed there and then walking next door to the 1/4 midget track to check out practice sessions. Don't recall seeing races there but saw plenty of practice sessions. Both places were just west of Clovis on McKinley and the 144th wasn't nearly as sprawling as now.

----Grammar school, ditching church to sneak across Cedar to Lesterburger to get a burger and fries before the big kids across the street at McLane High mobbed the joint. Lesterburger was on the southwest corner of Cedar and Clinton next to Casner Drugs. They had other locations around town but that was the one I went to as a kid.

----Miniature golf at Colonial Greens, skating at the Carousel, golfing the mini-course across Shields at Hank's Swank before they built apartments there. They later started a driving range adjacent to the airport extension on Chestnut just north of Shields and I practiced there during high school.

----Golfing and swimming at Airways. Swimming mostly as a kid and golfing during high school. Inexpensive good time.

----Free birthday pizza at Me 'N Ed's. Loved that place. Went to the one across from C&O for years, later the one next to Ashlan Park when dating a friend's sister since they lived across the fence from the parking lot behind it.

---Often mentioned in threads here, cruising the Belmont main, though for myself it was more to hook up with fellow racers. At the time I was involved in the 70's, high schools had their own 'corners' and I usually hung out at San Pablo and Belmont, can't recall if that was McClane or Bullard. Kids from private SJM weren't really into racing and I don't recall ever seeing classmates there cruising. Most of my racing buddies went to McClane. I read a post in this thread from another member who named our racing spots, I bet I knew him back in the day, my big three were American Safety, Martinoil (Suburban propane now, on Cherry) and Jensen and Cornelia out by the sewage plant. After a night of racing we'd watch the sun come up eating breakfast at Denny's at Jensen/99 or at what I remember as Tiny's on west Olive, west of 99, fuzzy on that though.

----Like many others I visited Harpain's Dairy often, especially after Foremost stopped home delivery. Later on, after Harpain's closed, mom would get her milk at Belmont Dairy and I'd get a surprise, meeting a girl I'd gone to high school with by happenstance there, she was working. What I didn't know all those years was her family owned the place, heh.

----Roeding Park memories..... Anyone remember the annual catfish derby? Man that was fun. I've got tons of pictures my dad took at the park, mostly at Rotary Playland, where the train and that whirlygig ride were my favorites. Someday I'll get the slides scanned, dad did everything in 35mm slides.

Many years later, as an adult, worked as a docent there for about ten years in the 90's and happened to be working the rainforest the day Nosey died. Sad day, the keepers and docents were gutted. However, I did often help prep the elephant popsicles, basically a 2x4 stuck into a clean plastic garbage can with various fruits and melons mixed into the water and frozen. So, even with her passing, I still have good memories of my tiny bit of work with those cool pachyderms. A couple docents and I joined a safari group and later went to Africa to see elephants and other of our captive animals in the wild.

-----Not so good memories, ironically related to flying, something near and dear...
A close friend I grew up with lost both his parents and aunt in the Tenerife disaster only a couple months before we graduated. That was a really dark time, kinda took the graduation fun wind out of my sails.

------Two places mentioned a number of times on these forums, Me 'N Ed's and Outpost, narrowly escaped the mess that a Lear jet landing on Olive Ave caused. My house at the time was a couple blocks from there and, whoa, messed that area up for months. Between that an all the houses getting ripped out for the 180 I'd had enough and moved to the country.

A bit long-winded, lived in town or in the area for nearly 60 years, plenty more where those came from. In the realm of hanging on to the past, I get my mail each day out at the road in the same mailbox my parents had set at the corner of Clinton and Chestnut when their house was being built before Chestnut and the side roads were paved. Thick galvanized steel still in service nearly 70 years later. Made in USA strong

Enjoyed reading your recollections.