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Super
8: Kentucky/Houston
Written
June 19, 2012
This
is part of a series of articles based on images from my 1970s home
movies. For more details, click here.
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In
late August of 1972, my parents and I saddled up the Oldsmobile in
Ohio and hit the highways for a trip to the southwest. I took
movies at two points along the way: the rural roads of central
Kentucky, and an indoor baseball stadium in Texas. |
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Kentuckys
tobacco fields were in bloom. That led my father to reminisce
about his boyhood days in that state, where one of his chores had
involved taking the leaves into the barn to dry. |
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But
on this day, I talked him into turning off the Bluegrass Parkway and
driving down some of the back roads. You see, in two weeks
Terry Rockhold and I were going to return to this region and compete
in the Bluegrass National Rally. That story is here. |
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I
wanted to take some footage home to show Terry the types of terrain
over which he would be driving. |
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Not
all the roads were as smoothly paved as those on which we competed
back in Ohio. |
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And
as the navigator, I wanted to become familiar with some of the
landmarks that would be indicating where to turn. |
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There
werent many signs on these back roads. Our registration
materials indicated we would need to be on the lookout for other
objects, including iron bridges. |
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Terry
and I werent familiar with that term, but my father said he
knew what an iron bridge was. |
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And
he found one, too. |
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A
few days later and a thousand miles away, we were in Houston,
Texas. This city was the home of the first indoor baseball
stadium, the seven-year-old Astrodome. |
It
was an amazing structure at its time, Mark Miller, general
manager of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation, told
the Associated Press recently. People were coming from
all over the world to see the Astrodome, it was that
significant. People like Frank Sinatra, Walt Disney, John
Wayne. ... It seems commonplace now, but for its time, being
the first, it was just incredible.
We
wanted to see it too. My parents and I bought tickets for the
Philadelphia Phillies at Houston Astros game on Tuesday, August 29, 1972.
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We
got a room at the Holiday Inn directly across the road.
The
motels marquee welcomed Leo. The Astros,
trailing the Cincinnati Reds by 8½ games, had hired veteran Leo
Durocher as their new manager a couple of days before. |
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Despite
the signs odd urging to breeze em, the
Astros were not going to catch the Big Red Machine in the remaining
five weeks of the season. |
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While
waiting for that nights game, we took a van tour of the
neighborhood, including houses like this. |
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Our
driver took us to see some shops he said catered to the
carriage trade upper-class customers who buy
high-priced goods and get special treatment. |
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My
parents did some window shopping. |
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The
pastries on display at Andres included a giant braided pretzel. |
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Could
we have some mustard over here? |
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Back
at the Holiday Inn, that's yours truly standing in the parking lot.
We
didnt dare walk across the busy highway to the stadium.
The hotel folks recommended we wait for a shuttle bus. |
Since
the visiting team in that night's game was from Philadelphia and we
were obviously northerners, the hotel folks asked whether we were
Phillies fans. No, we confessed, we were from Ohio and we were
actually fans of the Reds, which happened to be the team the Astros
were chasing in the standings.
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The
double-deck bus arrived from the nearby Astroworld amusement park. |
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It
was a short ride to the stadium. |
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I
followed my parents through the gate. |
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And
there we were, inside the dimly-lit giant room that Disney had
called the world's eighth wonder. |
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Pierced
by skylights, the dome soared above us. |
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The
gondola in the center was supposedly high enough to
avoid being hit by fly balls. |
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Down
below, beside the batting cage, Durocher was the center of attention
in his #2 uniform. |
The
new manager (far right) had told the press he was fascinated by the
potential talent of one of the young players on his new team,
outfielder Cesar Cedeno (near right), who he said was as great as was
Willie Mays at the same stage in his career. |
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Bucky
Brandon was the starting pitcher for the visiting Phillies. He
took a one-hit shutout into the sixth inning. |
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But
then the next Willie Mays hit a home run!
The
Astros led 1-0, and the hometown crowd celebrated. |
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The
scoreboards celebration featured an animated cowboy. You
see, indoor fireworks hadnt been invented yet. |
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The
rootin tootin cowboy fired lots of ricocheting bullets
from his pistols. We recalled a decade earlier, when the Astros
had been called the Colt .45s for their first three seasons. |
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And
then our cowboy roped a fire-breathing steer while the scoreboard
showed us Cedenos face in low resolution. |
In
the next inning, the Phils tied the game on Oscar Gambles
pinch-hit single. But the Astros won it on Lee Mays homer
to lead off the bottom of the 9th. Time of game: 2 hours
14 minutes.
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The
scoreboard sent us 8,704 paying customers home with an animation
that appeared to depict a coyote howling at the moon. Good night! |
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