Friday, July 15, 2011

Thursday, July 15th, 1976


Yesterday was Debbie's birthday. This was the first year I had forgotten about it. Well..until now, anyway.

A lot about Jimmy Carter on TV today of course but also caught a cool rerun of NIGHT GALLERY!

We left about 11 AM for the bus station. The bus air conditioning was broke. Was hot, hot, hot and temps outside got up to 90 we heard later. On arriving in Louisville, we walked through town but couldn't find much of an actual downtown so we went back to the bus station. We caught a cab from there and it drove right into a traffic jam. Cost us 8 bucks and we had to go way outside of town!

First thing I saw when we got to the place though was an Omnicon WELCOME sign!

The minute we got there, though, a storm hit that would last several hours and keep raining well into the next day. Our room was right above the swimming pool area. We ate at a very nice restaurant here at the with a very friendly waitress. As we were walking back to our rooms, we cut through the parking lot in the rain and I saw a van with a cool painting of the Shadow on its side!

When we got back to the room, I took a shower and we watched a Sinatra film on the room TV. Groucho was on later but we were exhausted.

NOTES: Here we go! Omnicon! I remember being really shocked to find the convention was way outside of the city itself. In those days, the world hadn't yet spread out the way it has today. There were cities and there was all that area between cities that city boys like myself knew little or nothing about. Years later, during a week of training in Louisville for my Waldenbooks job, I would stay at a hotel in the same general area as to where Omnicon had been.

You'll note I had to mention that I took a a shower. This was actually a big deal as we had never lived anywhere that had a shower. My only association with showers outside of vacations was the nightmarish connotation of having to take group showers in gym class starting in seventh grade. What the HELL were they thinking. I note that, at least in this area, the schools no longer do that.

I still have the original flyer for the hotel where Omnicon was held and I had hoped to run it today but my scanner is down. Will try to do it as a special post later.

2 comments:

  1. Van Culture -

    A forgotten period in American history.

    The Night Gallery always scared me when I was a kid.

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  2. My dad would watch Night Gallery at night after I went to bed. The theme music was enough to freak me out. I would yell for him to turn it down.

    I think I made it through school taking maybe 2 showers the entire time I had gym.

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