Hee Haw

Damn straight.

He kept playing despite terminal cancer.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Katrina hit his place in Louisiana.

Last place I saw him was at Wolf Trap.

 

Interesting collection of talent:

 

I'd forgotten Barbi Benton did 4 seasons on the show.

 

Not a country music fan so really didn’t recognize half of the faces, but I do want to know what drugs the drummer was on that night. If she started playing using only her head, I would not have been surprised.

 

The drummer is one of the Mandrell sisters. Irlene? Not sure.

 

Indeed.

Two Mandrells and a Gatlin.

 

Dammit, that beats my pair of Statlers.

 

Were you there the night Waylon and friends played the park?

 

Really enjoying this thread. My mother was a fan of Country so it was in my house growing up.

Isn't it striking to see the crowds behavior. Very little physical reaction to the music and in their seats at the end.
It's fascinating to see how public behaviour has changed.

 

Well if I remember correctly - that was a Nashville Network show supposedly "Saluting Country Music - or TNN's first 10 Years" it was actually a surprise Tribute to Ralph Emery and half of Nashville showed up.
Would have been better if they had the New Nashville Cats with Mark O'Connor etc.

Between that album and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Circle Be Unbroken II - (which featured many of the same musicians) - that's all you need to know about country music.

 

Aren't those called "muttonchops?"

 

I worked in Costumed Characters at Six Flags for two years. At that time they had licensed the H.R. Pufnstuff characters from Sid and Marty Krofft, plus the Six Flags trademark black bear and white rabbit. Try wearing a black bear suit made of furry fabric about 1/2" thick while you wear a fiberglass oven for a head. In Georgia. In August 95 degree heat. On black asphalt. While you dance around and put on a show.

We lived on ice water and salt pills. Every morning the first couple of guys in would stop by wardrobe and pick up a couple of Santa bags of old worn-out uniforms that had been cut off for shorts, big old t-shirts and the like. We'd go out into the park and do a parade or something, come back to the trailer, take off our sweat drenched clothes, put on a dry set, and flake out on the floor under the air conditioning. The ice house was directly next door, so we always had a big water cooler full of ice water.

First time I worked a shift there, I walked in and the first thing I see is that someone has drawn a big picture of Pufnstuf in the inside of the front door in magic marker. In big letters over his head was written "Home of the Human Punching Bags". This was pretty much true. Heathen little kids would pull your tail, grab the costume and spin you around, punch you. The worst were the 13-15 year old boys, who were big and strong enough to really hurt. SFOG sold souvenir boat paddles about three feet long with the Six Flags logo on the blade. Try the edge of one across the back of the knees from some Pony league kid. This will perhaps sound a bit racist but it's true. The worst beating I ever took on that job happened on Easter Sunday. Many, many city buses of Black families came to the park after church, still in their Easter clothes. Those kids absolutely beat the shit out of us. We normally took out maybe eight costumes with a couple of guys in jumpsuits working security to deal with any nonsense. After the first time we went out that day, we cut it to four suits and eight minders. It was brutal, and you really couldn't say or do a damn thing about it. In a general sense in dealing with it maybe you could con one of your tormentors into shaking your hand and then crush his while pulling him in close and hissing "Do that again and I'll get Security to throw you out of the park", but mostly you just had to take it.

The good side of the ledger? One, it was fun as hell. You got paid to play with little kids, take pictures with them, dance with grandmothers, and hit on the pretty girls. We all had more chances with girls then we knew what to do with, both visitors we got phone numbers from and girls who worked there. You see, the normal SFOG shift was nine hours with a 15, 30, and 45 minute breaks in it, but because our job was so hot that there was a legit fear of heat stroke, when we went out for half an hour, we had a half hour break before we went back out... in addition to the 15/30/45 everyone else had. So you'd take a 45 right before your 45 lunch break and you could screw off for an hour and a half.

Because we had so much free time we were always getting into scrapes around the park. We'd put our street clothes on while on break, so we wouldn't look like employees, then ride the rides or go flirt with some girl who was on the clock, and unless their ride boss knew you were an employee no one really saw it unless she wasn't doing something she was supposed to be. Eventually they gave us jumpsuits with logos all over them to brand us as employees and broke some of that up.

Some former SFOG employee may still have a picture of me in the Pufnstuf suit. I knew the guy, and he caught me on one of the back trails in costume. It was Labor Day, when the college kids (who got a small bonus for every hour they worked before Labor Day so they wouldn't quit till then) were about to quit and go back to school. He asked me to do something funny, so I pulled Puf's tail between my legs and forward, thus creating a big ol' dragon erection as I gave the camera the finger as best I could with a three fingered Puf hand. I wish I had a copy.

Good times.