I loved Saturdays. Rain, snow, or shine, they were the most epic day of the week. You may guess it was because that's the point every week where my education went on pause. That astute observation did indeed play a part, but was minimalistic in my reasoning for being enthralled by a day named after a Roman god. It was a combination of an exciting routine of events that made a kid feel so alive. Let's get into it.
A typical Saturday started with waking up before the sun did most of the year. Most young children do that naturally and it's not until the teenage years where sleeping in becomes habitual. Yet, there was a purpose for it. Saturday morning cartoons. Starting at 6:30am and running until noon, they captivated and entertained us for hours. They were what we waited all week for they were the best of the best. We didn't have cable TV growing up (where cartoons were run nearly 24/7) so once a week we got our fix. Every major channel had them. And it wasn't just watching them; it was also how we watched them. The process was simple. Roll out of bed, don't change out the PJs, make a bowl of cereal, then plop on the couch for the next 4-5 hours. Sarah was the cartoon junkie and would have the TV on and a bowl of cereal ready to go around 6am. Scooby-Doo came on at 6:30am and there was no way she was missing that. Most of the cartoons I enjoyed came on from 8am-11:30am so getting up that early was not in my wheelhouse. Seven to seven-thirty was where I usually drew the line. You may be wondering how five kids managed to peacefully watch cartoons without bickering over what show or channel to watch. We had a system of unwritten rules. Sarah was the first one up and most of her favorite shows aired between 6:30am-8am. Anyone else who woke up at that time simply watched whatever she was watching. After that whomever got their hands on the remote usually had control which was either Tim or I. Nathaniel and Stephen usually didn't get much say in the matter, but they were young enough that as long as the TV was on, they were content.
The morning cartoon hours were more than just the cartoons. Like super bowl commercials, Saturday morning cartoons and something extra with them. We only had an analog TV that got 7 or 8 channels and used the ancient technology known as rabbit ears (antenna). This was before airwaves converted to high definition. Depending on which channel you were on, each had it's own intro and transition clips between commercials. ABC had what was called One Saturday Morning (which was my favorite) that had a sweet intro song (youtube it) before the cartoons and then a little lightbulb in the corner that would be turned on to signal the start of each cartoon. The best set of cartoons they aired were Doug, Recess, and Pepper Ann. FOX eventually had the Fox Box which boasted cartoons like Action Man, Nascar Racers, Ozzy and Drix, Pokemon, and Yugioh. NBC would show cable cartoons that could be seen often on Nickelodeon such as Blues Clues, Little Bear, & Franklin, but were re-run on regular TV in the Saturday morning cartoon time slot. Another side note is that the commercials were even worth it because they were all aimed at kids. The toy commercials, the candy & drink commercials, the cereal commercials, and even the shoe commercials were exciting to watch.
One last thing I'll say about the cartoons is that sometimes it was mission impossible of sorts. My parents were on the strict side growing up and they didn't allow us to watch whatever we wanted even if it was a cartoon. They'd even go as far as to change the channel if a commercial they didn't like came on. For us, some of those cartoons we couldn't watch were some of the coolest. For a period of time, we would attempt to watch these "banned" cartoons when they came on, but only if our parents were out of the room. These would be the most tense ones to watch because any little outside sound caused us to immediately change the channel. The other problem was that the old analog TVs were sometimes slow at changing between stations and when they did, they displayed the channel number for an excruciatingly long period of time in the upper right hand corner as pixelated digits. It didn't take long for my mom to put two and two together as every time she came down the stairs, she saw a channel number in the corner of the screen. Thankfully, we only received a harsh scolding when caught.
After the cartoons had ended the afternoons would vary depending on whether my dad worked or not. If he did, then we utilized those chunks of the day to test new games we created (including the previously mentioned banned ones), played full blown soccer games in our back yard, hung out with Maggie, Katherine, Zach, and any other neighborhood kid that showed up, and if it had snowed, would spend the entire afternoon sledding. If my dad was off work, we would more often then not have an afternoon outing. Sometimes that would be spending a good portion of it at Chuck-E-Cheese, or going to a local park, or spending the afternoon exploring Hanover.
For us kids however, Saturday evenings were our Friday nights. By that I mean the most epic evening of the weekend occurred on Saturday. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, but that reality faded when we all piled in a Ford Aspen station wagon and rolled into Hanover. Nearly every Saturday the first thing we did was go out to eat. We loved this because sometimes it was McDonald's and sometimes it was our favorite buffet called Ryan's. Buffet's were the best because we got to pick what we wanted and had a wide variety to choose from, although some of us were content with macaroni & cheese and french fries. You would think that bringing five kids to a restaurant on a weekly basis would be a nightmare. But my parents raised us right and the simple warning of misbehaving would put going out to eat on a hiatus, we listened. I cannot count how many times random strangers came up to our table to compliment my parents on how well behaved we were. It happened almost on a weekly basis and I had set a high standard for myself to attempt to receive such compliments every time we ate out.
Going out to eat was not the end of the night. Sometimes we'd swing over to our favorite fun center known as Falloon's. It started as a simple arcade center where you could play the games and get tickets to exchange for prizes. Eventually as their business picked up, they added an indoor jungle gym, a mini golf course and allowed a pizza place and a dairy queen to occupy space inside. If I had to designate a favorite place, this was it. The thrill of having a pocket full of once shiny tokens which unlocked countless hours of fun was the stuff dreams are made of.
A night here went like this for me. My dad would give me a $5 bill which was good for 20 tokens. As most games at that time only cost one token, I was able to stretch them pretty far. I always went for the video games first because they didn't give out tickets. I wanted to make sure that the last games I played were the ones that dispensed tickets so I had a better chance of acquiring enough for something I wanted by night's end. I was drawn to the racing games because as much fun as it was to win, it was even more fun to try and wreck the computer drivers. The name of my favorite was Days of Thunder. After that it was usually on to a fighter pilot game where for a few minutes, I got to feel like a real war pilot blasting enemy planes out of the sky. Then came the ticket games. While skee-ball was usually a safe bet and a ticket gold mine, I gravitated towards the more physical games. There was Big Bertha where you had to throw as many plastic colored balls into a large clown's mouth. Spider-Stomp had you stand on a platform and would light up spider pads that you had to stomp on before they turned off. But the one that always drew my attention was an older game that was called something like Whack-a-Croc (probably not, but close enough). The game had a padded mallet attached to it and a soon as you put your token in, mechanical crocs would slide out of their holes at random. Your job was to mash as many as you could in the time given. Some crocs would stay out forever, but some would come out only long enough for you to attempt a whack, but if you missed, you were likely to miss another croc as well. We always made it a competition among ourselves to see who could get the best score, including my dad. We got so competitive that we realized we could hit more crocs without the mallet and just use our hands instead. Sure mashing hard plastic didn't always feel good, but you had to do what was necessary to be the best.
Games of chance weren't originally my cup of tea as it meant betting precious tokens for the chance to win big, but most of the time end up with little to no tickets. Then, on one fateful night, everything changed. There was a popular chance game that appeared in most arcades everywhere. We called it Jackpot, but I believe the branded name was Cyclone. It was a short, hexagonal machine with a dome on top and a light that zipped around a circle. You could pic any one of the sides to place a token in to send the light in the reverse direction. You had one chance to stop the light on the jackpot space by pressing a single button. I never cared for this game because the one time I tried it, I missed badly and got 2 tickets. But this one night, as I was passing by it, I heard the machine going nuts. It was making ringing sounds and flashing like mad. There was a lone man maybe in his late 40s or early 50s just standing there as tickets poured out of the machine. He had hit the rare jackpot. The tickets kept coming so much in fact that I went to play other games rather than watch them all spill out. That lucky guy was still standing there near the end of the night when we went to cash ours in. When the machine finally stopped, the man took this large bundle to the counter. The employee took them and began to feed them through the ticket counter machine. After what seemed like an eternity, the counter read nearly 2000 tickets! My jaw dropped. That many was enough for a prize from behind the large glass, basically the more expensive ones. From that night on, chance games took up to 40% of my tokens whenever I visited a place with ticket games.
My goal became to beat Cyclone. I fed many tokens into that game. Studied the light pattern. Timed the exact moment to press the button. Then it happened. I hit the button and stopped the light right on the jackpot, only to watch in horror as it skipped off onto the 10 ticket space. That was the day I found out the game was rigged. But I didn't know how rigged. My ever relentless desire to beat Cyclone led my timing to be so spot on that I could stop the light on the jackpot nearly every time. But that stupid little light would "skip" off over and over...until one night it didn't. I had stopped it on the jackpot. But the game didn't make victory sounds. The lights didn't go berserk. They just disappeared and the game spit out 10 tickets. Not to be robbed, I spoke with one of the employees and told her what happened. She informed me that if I was successful, the secondary backlight would have lit up as well. This meant that you could stop it dead on, without it skipping, but if the game decided it wasn't profitable to spit out that many tickets then no jackpot for you! That moment surly put a damper on how often I played the game. But like any addiction, the slight urge to play was always there. This would be a game that tested my patience for years to come.
Cashing in our tickets was always fun as it meant we were able to obtain prizes. The reality was that not a single prize was worth the amount of tickets they required nor the amount of money used to purchase tokens to obtain tickets. But as a kid, that mattered not as it was not our money we were spending and the prizes were "earned". I always wanted the big ticket items but never saved up for them because that meant multiple visits where I kept the tickets and had nothing to show for them. Usually I ended up with a lot of candy, some army men or parachute men, some stretchy men, and some other weird dollar store toys. But once I managed to get a black and yellow smiley lanyard. That lanyard held my house key for years and well outlived its value. It may have been the one I used the longest out of all the lanyards that came after it. And I earned it.
Before returning home, my parents would usually want to stop at Walmart to pick up a few necessities. As kids, it was the perfect end to the night as one parent took us to the toy aisle where we would spend every moment we had ogling and and "testing" the toys we couldn't have. What I mean by testing is that a lot of the toys had "try me" buttons that you could press to make them do something to show you how cool they were. For example, one of the hottest toys around Christmas time one year was the Tickle-Me Elmo. At the store (if you found one), you could press his hand to make him talk and then "tickle" him to where he would shake and laugh all while still in the box. Most other toys would make sounds or flash lights, but for us kids, it was sheer enjoyment and for my parents it was free entertainment.
After all the day's fanfare had finished, going home was still a sight. You'd still see the city of Hanover hustling and bustling with people. The car guys would be in the Wendy's or Walmart parking lots revving their sweet rides and showing off their neon glow. The dirt track down the road would be loud and roaring as the Saturday night dirt cars were just getting under way. The bowling alley signs would still be flashing their animated cartoons, beckoning you for an evening bowl. But my favorite part was when my parents drove back up Hershey Heights hill and I could see the entire town's lights as if it was a swarm of July fireflies.
To the average person, these accounts may not be considered worthy of legendary status. But when coming from humble beginnings and a big family, being able to go out to eat nearly every week, making an occasional visit to a fun center, and being able to partially play with toys we couldn't own was enough to make a kid like me think I was living large. Maybe as you finish reading this, take a pause and reflect upon great experiences of your childhood. Take a moment to realize how magical they truly were. You're welcome.
