Thing – Page 5

November 14, 2019February 27, 2024

Happy Hollow Park & Zoo

That’s Danny the Dragon. The most famous member of Happy Hollow Park & Zoo.

The playground here is awesome. It would have been my favorite when I was growing up. I definitely spent many happy hours at Happy Hollow exploring as a kid but this playground is new since the recent renovation. My kids love it. Well, they love the whole park. If I just follow them around they can spend the entire day here happily… which is what we did on our most recent visit.

They still put on daily puppet shows! With actual puppets. They even do scenery changes during the plays. I took these plays for granted growing up and I am grateful that kids today will continue to have the same opportunity to see this kind of creativity and performance as a normal thing. They can, perhaps like myself, find the time to reflect and be grateful for places and experiences like these when they are older.

Danny the Dragon is an original member of the park from 1961 and was designed and built by the same bay area guys who built most of the famous rides you will think of when you think of Disneyland, among other theme parks. If you look close you can see that Danny the Dragon does not have tracks on the ground to roll on. One of several innovations at the time, Danny the Dragon drives himself by following the invisible electro-magnetic field pulsing along a wire buried underground in the concrete. You can look up more about Arrow Development on the internet but some of their other famous rides from the first years of Disneyland include Dumbo, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Autopia, Matterhorn, It’s a Small World, and Pirates of the Caribbean. They did many rides for other places around the country including several local attractions like Great America in Santa Clara, Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, and the Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz. One ride they made for Alum Rock Park in San Jose, years before Happy Hollow existed, was a merry go round. That same merry go round later moved to join Danny the Dragon at Happy Hollow Park where you can ride it today.

This beautiful bridge takes you to and from the Happy Hollow entrance over the Coyote Creek.

The renovations added lots of cool features, some subtle, many obvious, and many having to do with preservation and careful use of resources. The walk way above is an example of a pretty use of recycled materials. Something else I appreciate about this park is the incredible number of trees. It really is an impressive place for children to explore and adults to appreciate.

November 12, 2019February 27, 2024

Emma Prusch Farm Park

An animal petting area, playground, animal barn, park, garden, exotic fruit trees… and always free! What more could you ask for. Emma Prusch donated her farm to the city in 1962 to teach future generations about farm life. Thanks to the City of San Jose and the non-profit organization dedicated to this farm site, the park remains open daily and free to all while it continues to teach and provide for the community with activities, food, events, and countless field trips. Special places like these add so much to the richness of our neighborhoods and lives.

November 9, 2019February 27, 2024

Chuck E. Cheese smiling on Highway 101

A familiar site in San Jose is Chuck E. Cheese smiling at those driving by on highway 101.

Nolan Bushnell started Atari in 1972, making video games with a partner in the bay area. In 1977 he opened the first Chuck E. Cheese in what is now the Santana Row shopping center in San Jose. The second opened on Blossom Hill in San Jose and the third was this huge and locally famous one off of 101. Since then this giant Chuck E. Cheese has been smiling at us all as we have driven by. Before the giant smiling rat, this large restaurant and video game arcade building had once been a toy store with giant toy soldiers facing the highway. The location realized its great potential, however, when it opened up as a two story Chuck E. Cheese restaurant with seemingly hidden worlds and passageways for kids to discover between playing what appeared to be infinite video games, structures to climb in, time for loosing and finding staircases again and the miniature Chuck E. Cheese apartment that kids could crawl through. Then, of course, there were the animatronic stage shows. The place was mind blowing for a kid.

It has changed quite a bit in the decades since it oppened. The animatronics and stage are gone; replaced with a wall projecting a video of Chuck E. Cheese. The miniature apartment is no longer there. Well, if it is, it’s not open to the public. The play structures are gone. There is still food, plenty of space, and a whole lot of video games; more games than even there were when the place first opened. You could say Chuck E. Cheese accomplished its mission. Nolan Bushnell conceived of and opened the business as a way to make video games accessible to families and ultimately, to build video game customers. At the time, when video games were just starting out and Atari was just building its fame, video games were found in pool halls and bars where future customers, kids, were not able to get to them. Nolan wanted to mix a family restaurant with a little Disneyland together as a backdrop to providing video games to future generations. The model was copied often and expanded far and wide, spreading the connections of kids and video games.

The first video game I ever really really wanted to own was Super Mario Brothers. I had played Mario Brothers in the local pizza shop and suddenly found out that I could actually own it and bring it home. Yes, I think Nolan’s plan worked.

October 28, 2019February 27, 2024

Pay Phones – Hard to find but still around

October 14, 2019February 27, 2024

Lake Cunningham Park

This last weekend we went to Lake Cunningham Park for the Fall Family Fun Festival. It was pretty impressive. The park is already a neat place to play and visit. The Fall Festival added a whole bunch of great activities, however, and it was all free. That is what amazed me, that there could still exist an event like this where all is free for the public. I mean everything you would need for a great family day including parking, performances, activities like zip lining and rock climbing, pumpkins- big ones too, hotdogs, chips and water that Lucky grocery store donated and that the San Jose fire fighters were cooking and preparing for the community… all of this free! In budgeting there have been times at fairs when we have had to tell the kids no for certain rides or activities. So you can imagine how great it was to play at this community event and not have to say no for economic reasons to anything. We had a blast. It was a great experience and I am grateful to be paying taxes in a community like this and spending money in local businesses that contribute to these events. Also, I had no excuse but to go on the zip line, too. That was AWESOME!

October 12, 2019February 27, 2024

Burger Bar on 1st Street

How many decades has this sign greeted the motorists heading south from downtown? The dollar amount has gone up over the years for the five burgers but the rest looks nearly the same. It was a rare treat to get take-out growing up but when this place was desired in my family, someone would say “go to bag-a-burgers.” I didn’t know the place had another name until I was an adult. I do recall the bag-a-burgers coming home on rare occasion, though.

October 4, 2019February 27, 2024

The 2 Spot

Not far from San Jose in Vasona County Park, there is this special train, “The 2 Spot.” This steam powered train was built in 1905. Yeah, over 100 years ago. Number 2, a one third scale steam train, began running in Venice Beach, California. After several years of service, it eventually found itself in a junk yard where local railroad worker Billy Jones found it in San Francisco bound for a scrap yard in 1939. He purchased it, restored it, and ran it for free for children to ride on Sundays around his Los Gatos farm for the rest of his life.

After his passing in 1968, friends and neighbors created a non profit to move it and keep it going at nearby Vasona Park where it continues to run today. It is pretty cool to ride this train and kids love it. The attraction to the tracks is great and so there are now five trains working to help spread the work load. Number 2 comes out mostly on weekends during the summer months. All of the trains are interesting so it is a treat to see and ride any of the four that are there to pull visitors for only $3 a ride.

I like to get excited about all of the trains but find it especially exciting to ride number 2, this bit of history from 1905 that has carried children and adults for decades. I love when it chugs hard to move up the gradient of the park. Walt Disney heard of this train and visited Billy Jones before Disneyland was a reality. They became friends. The logo, still used today, for the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad was designed by a Disney animator. Billy himself was there at the opening of Disneyland to run their train on July of 1955.

It’s a special ride, for sure.

October 2, 2019February 27, 2024

Friendly Plaza, Monterey

Monterey, Ca — Property entrance built in 1832 across the street from Friendly Plaza.

Monterey is a little over an hour by car and well worth the drive, which is itself a pleasure. For those interested in San Jose history, it is impossible not to get excited about several of our nearby cities that are as wound up in the history of California.

Monterey is one of those important cities in our California history. Like San Jose, this is a city that one could spend a lifetime visiting, learning about, and photographing with great satisfaction.

Pictured above is Colton Hall in the Friendly Plaza. In this building the California Constitution was written in 1849. It stated that San Jose would be the state capitol, was written in English and Spanish as a bilingual constitution, and led to California becaming the 31st state in 1850.

500 seeds comprising four species of trees were sent in orbit around the moon with Apollo 14 in 1971. When they returned, some of what became known as Moon Trees were planted alongside similar trees for research, some were given to states or countries as gifts. In 1976, many were given to cities and states with appropriate climates for the various tree seedlings in order to celebrate the bicentennial of the USA. The Moon Tree pictured above is one of these 1976 trees. In the bay area, the nearest two Moon Trees are in Monterey and in Berkeley. For comparison of two very different earth species, the human species woman visiting the Monterey Moon Tree in the photo above was born in 1976 when the Coast Redwood species Moon Tree next to her was planted.

One interesting thing about bronze statues is that you can always tell where people are drawn to touch them most by the clearing of any natural tarnishing. For this bear, it is clearly the teeth that people are drawn to touch. It took my youngest child all of seconds before placing a foot in the bear’s teeth and asking me to take a picture.

Across the street from the Friendly Plaza is the Montery Museum of Art. Below are a few of the treasures located there.

Monterey and Monterey Bay are incredible locations for discovery. The factors that brought people here for thousands of years continue to influence the lives of the people and continue to draw me to learn and discover more with great appreciation.

September 18, 2019February 27, 2024

Cesar Chavez Park

This is the central park of downtown San Jose, like the town square of its history. Today it hosts big events that bring us together. Well wishers and protestors have greeted presidents from here. Our annual Christmas in the Park takes place here as does a main stage for our huge annual Jazz Festival. Kids play here in the fountains on hot days. In this one place, through a year, we eat, we drink hot chocolate, we enjoy music, children singing, ride carnival rides, watch life, and so much more.

Across the street from the park, where the Fairmont hotel stands today, once stood our China Town. Also, the first Capital of California. Yes, there have been several capital cities of California. Before we were a state, Monterrey was the seat of government for California when this area was Spain, then when it was Mexico, and then when it was an independent territory. Once a state, the Capital moved to San Jose from 1849 to 1851. It had been intended that San Jose would remain the capital but due to a series of issues with land (interesting info here: https://library.ca.gov/california-history/previous-ca-capitals/#), the capital moved to a series of cities from San Jose 1949, to Vallejo 1852, to Sacramento 1852, then Benicia 1853, back to Vallejo, and then back to Sacramento. Due to flood damage in Sacramento, San Francisco was made our temporary capital for the year of 1862 before returning to Sacramento. Lots of moving around. Eventually, the capital settled in Sacramento where it resides today.

Near Cesar Chavez Park in San Jose — That, on the left, is the Fairmont building where the Capital once stood. On the right is Cesar Chavez Park where once stood the San Jose City Hall.

From this spot pictured above which is across the street from Cesar Chavez Park, you can spin around and see a lot of historical places. The iconic sculpture, The San Jose Museum of Art which was once our main post office, the KQED building where once stood the first radio station in the world are all pictured above. If you were to look to the right from there, beyond this photo, you would be able to see the historical locations of the first State Capital of California, one of the historic locations of San Jose City Hall, the location where once stood China Town, and so much more.

September 12, 2019February 27, 2024

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