OKC Memories #6: Bought a Videotape Lately?

It's been a while for me too!

But here are receipts from some OKC-area merchants who seem to not be around anymore.

Sight n' Sound had several locations.  This one on South Western Ave is now a tire shop.  This purchase was two blank T-120 VHS tapes on February 25, 1986.

The day after Christmas in 1986, I bought some VHS tapes from the Soundtrak location on S Meridian.

At Crown Movies on the southside, I bought the VHS of Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. as fast as I could!  Feel free to read the list of "Coming Attractions" for a nostalgic rush, assuming you're old enough to recognize any of these movies' titles.

More blank videotapes from the Service Merchandise on the southside, in January 1991.  The space is now occupied by Big Lots.

This receipt from a few months later came from the same place, but now the receipt gives the location as "Walnut Square," the name of the shopping center.

This last, from December 1991 was for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  This Sound Warehouse was also at I-240 and S Penn, in the building corner now occupied by Vintage Stock.

Hope I stirred some fond memories of media gone by!  See you Monday.

  

Wonders Galore

Yep, while PARD the laptop is being cloned, it's another conglomeration of covers about fascinating mysteries which might divert your questing brain from thinking that existence is boring.

Corliss's books are big on actual citations of publications that report weird things, from old articles in professional journals referring to things transiting the sun, (back when there were no manmade flyers), to OOPARTs (look it up) reported in newspapers.

Cohen has written a few books examining reports of saucers and critters.  Very straight newspaper-like reporting, with a side of speculation on what mundanity might have inspired the witness to interpret a cloud as a UFO (for example).  Lots of his books are written at what was once called high-school reading level, nowadays his prose might tax the so-called instructors.

This one holds a warm place in my heart because it, and Frank Edwards' tomes, were some of the first I read in descriptions of the downright weird.  Godwin writes about blindfolded cyclists, Kaspar Hauser, moving coffins, the abominable snowman, and others.

I think the appeal of books like these to adolescents is severalfold:

• They stretch the imagination
• They help stimulate analytical thinking by comparing hypotheses and/or explanations
• They show us that "rational" explanations which don't solve the problem aren't worth entertaining
• They prove that the grown-ups don't know everything.

I know I gobbled these books up as a youth.  Why don't you search one out?  Until next Thursday, fellow thunkers!