Goofy and Pluto - October 1967
I hope that you went online (six months ago) and pre-booked your "spontaneous" meeting with one of Disneyland's lovable characters. Oh wait, it's 1967, there's no need for that nonsense!
Town Square looks delightfully uncrowded as guests arrived on a beautiful October day. It's possible that our photographer and his/her family just walked through the east tunnel, and HEY, there's Goofy! He looks a bit confused, but that's to be expected.
Somebody let the dogs out, apparently, because here's Pluto, looking very cute, not that the lady walking past notices. All she cares about is herself (and breakdancing). Pluto may or may not be playing a harmonica, which makes sense, since he's in front of the Wonderland Music Store - though there is a construction wall in blocking the store. Why? The Opera House is next to Wonderland Music, maybe there was work being done there?
27 comments:
Most of the guests are standing around, keeping their distance from Goofy. Maybe he's doing some sort of schtick; putting on a show.
There's only one trashcan here but it gets top billing as the most prominent thing in the photo. The white horsehead hitching post gets second place; being so brightly lit, as it is.
Again, people are keeping their distance from Pluto (dwarf dog, from yesterday). Actually, they're not even looking at him. Maybe 'the Mouse' is just off to our left? I think Pluto is covering his face in embarrassment because he just left a little something on the walkway... THAT'S what the people are staring at!
There's a big pile of coffee creamer on top of the Hill's Bros. roof.
Thanks for the dog show, Major.
Speaking of leaving something on the walkway, that breakdancing lady left behind some greens from the salad that she smuggled into the park. (Hey, she had to have something else to serve her family, other than homemade fried chicken.) She's concealing all of it in one of those large plastic tote bags with a flower pattern on it. And she's holding the bag very close to her chest, because she doesn't want anyone to rat her out.
Major, I started to wonder if these two photos could be merged. I didn't know if you would have time in the a.m. to attempt it, so I tried it. I hope you don't mind! I don't have Photoshop, so I am limited with what I can do. I had to crop the bottom of that planter out, because it was the only thing that didn't line up properly for me. I don't think it looks too hideous!
Merge of Goofy and Pluto (1967) from Gorillas Don't Blog
Hills Bros Coffee Garden...for some reason, I did not realize that it was labeled a "garden"...but I do miss this location no matter who may be sponsoring: Garden or not. Inside was converted to plush/t-shirts in the most uninspired way...there is a need for a coffee location here which I think I have said repeatedly before. Seems like the perfect locale. The Opera House I also think could be better suited to something other than the big bag of nothing that is inside of the lobby area. It's nice to have a "museum" type area in there, and on the rainy day I was there, it was a very very quiet space to sit while madness ensued out on Town Square. I'm not sure square footage that is not productive works in the current business model- I think they actually call it "The Disneyland Story" but besides a 3D map....and "the art of the Haunted Mansion" I'm confused as to what story they are telling. Just some morning musings- the space is large and has many possibilities, I'm assuming that at some point it will become "enter through the gift shop" for Mr. Lincoln...and the exit..."exit through the gift shop"....both of which would be disappointing. I vote for another indoor roller coaster. Merge Mr. Lincoln with a thrill ride. Stranger things have happened. Goofy in this costume was the best Goofy in my opinion. The more "real" costumes these days are a bit plasticy, but I think overall people prefer them. Bring back the uncrowded and sunny October mornings please :) Thanks for the morning photos this AM Major.
Hey, TM!, that's a pretty convincing merge! Makes it look like the people in the Pluto picture are looking at Goofy.
"Thanks for the dog show, Major."
Throw in the hitching post, and you've got a whole dog and pony show!
Coffee Garden? I thought they grew coffee on plantations.
Pluto always makes me think of the French phrase plus tôt, which is pronounced the same but means "earlier."
Thanks, Melissa! It almost looks like Goofy and Pluto are taunting one another, and everyone is just standing around waiting for a fight to break out!
Goofy looks confused, but happy- like me on a good day! "Confused but grumpy" is me on a typical day. Get off my lawn...uh...whoever you are!!!
Wow TM, that merge is fantastic! It does look like the doggos are taunting each other- in a fun, good natured way. We don't want these things getting too intense.
I could hang out in this photo all day- with nary an attraction to be seen... Ok, I lied, I'd have to sneak off and ride something. But it IS a nice slice of time.
TOKYO : that turned out great!! It’s sad to see how many of the sidewalk trees and flower planters have been removed. “Take out there non revenue planters, flower beds , fountains , garden walkways and courtyards and they can shove more people in” …. Infact if you remove all of Disneyland you can fill the space with even MORE people!!
The Coffee Garden & Hills brothers coffee House was substantially remodeled twice ….in the 70’s and again in the 80’s. The Crepe & omlet cook station built for The American Egg House is still there today and acts as a cash wrap area for a shop. That shop was one the lobby where you would wait to be taken into the “shotgun” style dining rooms …. Or in a nice day … if you were lucky .. you could get a seat in the coffee garden. While waiting to be seated you could watch strangers omelets , crepes and waffles be fixed. In the early 2000’s the dining areas were being used for Disney Gallery overflow storage and merchandise managers offices. The really weird thing was the interiors of the space still remained decorated like a Victorian cafe!!!! A friend of mine had her office in there and I was always amazed that the space looked liked it could welcome breakfast diners the very next morning! I speculate it’s been changed since then….
Aw, people are keeping their distance from the Goof and Pluto, clutching their kids’ hands tightly. “Be careful, Goofy’s not quite right, you know.” Great merging, Tokyo! Now there are two of the lady in white and red and boy in yellow (what is on his shirt?) I think I see a ghost in the reflection of the Hills Bros window in the center of the first photo. Thanks, Major.
Great photos of a little forgotten corner of the Old Park. Weird how I can miss something so simple.
That little buzzcut boy in the foreground could be me, and the little girl my cousin.
If I had a girl cousin.
Which I don’t.
Never mind.
Somehow we always sat outside at Hill Bros. I can’t recall an interior at all.
Tokyo, your merge is wonderful, the Dogs are gonna rumble, the little girl in blue is flashing her gang sign at Goofy, she will get behind Pluto and shank him.
Love this today, Major, thanks!
JG
Thanks, Stu, Mike, Kathy and JG! I'm sure the Major could (and might still) do a better job.
Fifty years later (in 2017), Pluto hadn't moved very far from that spot! He was probably waiting for Goofy to show up for a rematch!
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8103016,-117.9186493,3a,48.1y,10.8h,91.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sp73XNPcTEZVuCLQyvJkt2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
I forgot to mention that that large elm tree was still there, in 2017. It looks like the two trees in front of the Hills Bros. and Wurlitzer buildings didn't fair so well.
Tokyo, since Pluto is a dog, after all, he has probable "staked out" that hitching post and is fending off other dogs, who have to go use the fire hydrants.
A cool thing about those big joined photos, when they appear in the background slide show, my PC spreads them across both screens as a single big panorama, which is double cool.
JG
JB, it is kind of amazing that Goofy and Pluto are not surrounded by rabid fans like they would be today. Everyone wants that special picture to share on social media! “My life is better than yours!”, is the implication. I suppose it’s possible that Mickey is also there, though it’s odd that the photographer would not take a picture of him. Maybe he hates rodents.
TokyoMagic!, that lady has already eaten the chicken that was on her head, but the salad was stuck in her teeth. A LOT of salad. Once she tried to bring in a bag of spaghetti and meatballs, she’d just cut a corner in the bottom of the bag and squeeze out a portion every few minutes. It worked OK but was a mess.
TokyoMagic!, it did not even occur to me that the two photos might merge. It came out amazingly good!!
Bu, I once bought a Disneyland map from a woman who used to work at the Hills Bros. Coffee Garden, and she said that Walt often stopped by in the mornings for a pastry. “He never tipped!”. Was tipping ever a thing at Disneyland? Maybe at the better restaurants (Blue Bayou, etc), but not at counter service places, as far as I am aware. Especially back in the early 1960s. It is a bit sad to see just how few people want to see the Lincoln show. I admit that I have had several opportunities to do so and did not go in. A Mr. Lincoln roller coaster is a great idea. The vehicles could be shaped like stovepipe hats.
Melissa, yes, that merge looks amazing, I would have never guessed that it was possible. Coffee comes in these little plastic pods, not from plantations.
TokyoMagic!, Goofy owes Pluto $20 (gambling debts) and Pluto is tired of waiting for his money. So he is in fact taunting Goofy.
Stu29573, yes, “confused but grumpy” would describe my normal disposition. I like the idea of being so in love with 1967 Town Square that I would not require any rides… but after about 20 minutes, I’d get antsy!
Mike Cozart, while I am not happy about the removal of those flower beds and sidewalk trees, I get it… the park is often so crowded - nearly every day. And Main Street can get very congested, as I learned recently. When there’s a parade, forget about it! A “cash wrap area”, that’s a new one on me. Ditto a “shotgun” style dining room, not sure what that means. You have to eat at gunpoint? I suppose it was not a bad idea to leave the Victorian decor, better than tearing it out I think. Unless it looks terribly out of place?
Kathy!, I’ve said this before, but when I was a kid, the characters were big and scary to me. I did NOT want to go and meet them!! I love it when people show up twice in photo merges. I see the reflection of the ghost!
JG, I don’t think I had a buzzcut by 1967, because by then I was a hippie! Sure, I was kind of young, but I was very cool and ahead of my time. I don’t think I ever set foot inside the Hills Bros. place, unsurprisingly. Though my dad did love his morning coffee.
TokyoMagic!, all credit goes to you, I don’t think I could do a better job of merging the two photos. Funny that the two characters were still in that same general area. And I can say that they were there even more recently than 2017 (thanks to a fellow blogger who might want to remain anonymous)!
TokyoMagic! everybody hated those two trees, stealing our CO2 and thinking they were so great.
JG, maybe that construction next to Pluto was necessary due to all of his “staking out”? Mr. Fancy has two screens, well well! And here I sit with only one, like a chump.
The merged picture tells the whole story. Everybody looks confused and hesitant because they don't know what to make of the two identical families. It's probably one of those cases where a set of male twins marries a set of female twins and they produce a generation of eerily similar double-cousins. Meanwhile, the twin families are equally confused because the two giant dogs aren't dressed alike.
IIRC, the other day I got something I'd ordered by mail, and it turned out to have been shipped from Twinsburg, Ohio. Kind of a bittersweet reminder that I never managed to send my mother and her sister to the annual twin convention they have there while my aunt was still with us. Even so, it made the package feel kind of special.
@ Melissa-
"... eerily similar double-cousins" was a part of the first attempt at the lyrics from the theme to The Patty Duke Show, but identical cousins evidently won-over the producers-!
Shouldn't you have received a 'pair of packages' from Twinsburg-? [And I presume you already know that Twinsburg was named for two of its founders, identical twins Moses and Aaron Wilcox...] And, why not-?
Nanook, the order actually DID arrive in two boxes! :)
@ Melissa-
Who could ask for anything more-??!!
Time for me to go back in the Delorean. Like 1969. IF Major doesn't mind, I posted a summary of those days working there on Daveland's Blog. And included in that are a few pictures of the interior. To think that masterpiece of woodwork has been removed (destroyed) is heartbreaking. I recall a friend who worked there at the time the Egg House remodel was going to happen took the crystal ball which hung at the bottom of the main chandelier as a souvenir. No trace of the original interior is left it seems. I worked in the kitchen so if you were in that "shotgun" room, you'd have seen me through the serving window. Yes, once Main Street could be uncrowded like this during the off season. The park was likely closed Mondays and Tuesdays and Hills may not have been staffed until the weekend.
https://davelandblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/fond-memories-of-hills-bros-coffee.html
KS
Tokyo!, Pluto has spotted the flowery bag of fried chicken and is aghast at her brazen breakage of the Park rules.
Excellent job on the merge! I didn't even realize the two photos were that closely related. With both Pluto and Goofy in the same scene (are they really in the same scene?), we can get a better idea of what people are looking at. There must have been some sort of skit going on between the two dogs.
Melissa, yeah, I was wondering if both dogs were there at the same time, too. It sure looks like it. Disney excels at dog and pony shows. And thanks for the French lesson; I did not know that.
Major, I think TM!s merge probably shows us what the whole scene is. So I'm guessing Mickey isn't there after all.
Nanook, "Who could ask for anything more-??!!" Those would make good lyrics to a song. Kinda catchy; has a certain rhythm to it.
Melissa, it would be pretty disconcerting to run into people identical to ourselves; POD PEOPLE? Or are WE the pod people? Would we even know? I have to admit that I frequently forget that Goofy is a dog; I think of him as an odd-looking human for some reason. Did your mom and her sister want to got to the annual twin convention? If so, it’s too bad that they didn’t get there, but I’m sure they had plenty of other joys in life, including YOU.
Nanook, I’m trying to imagine how “identical cousins” would happen, and I sprained my brain. Easy to do. You know more about Twinsburg than most people, I’d wager. Moses and Aaron Wilcox. Were they on a bubblegum card? That’s my ultimate metric for greatness. Sorry, Beethoven.
Melissa, was it one mitten per box?
Nanook, I mean, three boxes has to be better!
KS, thank you for the link to the Daveland summary, which I’m sure I’ve read before, but who can remember it all? The photos are super fun, and it sure sounds like another example of Disneyland being a great place to work if you were a young person. It is truly a bummer that they would destroy a room that was so beautifully appointed.
JB, I have managed to sneak a whole fried chicken into Disneyland, but “piece by piece”. A leg in each shirt pocket, breasts in each back pocket, etc. Sure, there are oil stains afterwards, but it’s nothing a little club soda won’t get rid of. I hope. Having two characters near to each other draws in crowds, but also distributes them a bit so that one person isn’t overwhelmed. Instead, they are very very whelmed. “Who could ask for anything more?” could never been the lyrics to a song, I’m sorry. It just can’t be done.
Major, as you say, it's hard to know who is real and who is the imposter.
I was walking home one afternoon and put the key in my door, and as I turned the lock, I saw my reflection in the window and realized at that moment that I was Gary Oldman, playing me, in a movie, that the real JG was watching on Netflix.
I was very whelmed.
Then I woke up.
I don't put pepperoncini on my hot dogs anymore.
JG
Major:
A “shotgun” house is one that is very long and in many cases stand at the front door and open all diving doors and see right out the backdoor…. Like looking down the barrel of a shotgun. They were very common type residences in the 19th and early 20th century. Since the interior two Hills Brothers dining rooms went the length of the “cinema” block skirting the backside of the Main Street facing buildings they were long kinda like two shoeboxes end to end ….. or like a “shotgun” house. How many of you remember the etched glass double doors that allowed HILLS/EGG HOUSE/TOWN SQ CAFE guests to exit from the two dinning rooms either into the Market House “cake room” or into the Tobacco shop ?? The etched doors in the tobacco shop building are still there and are now used to bring back stock into the shop.
Disneyland calls the fixtures with cash registers and bags a CASHWRAP . In fact that may just be a general retail term..
Ken, thanks so much for sharing those memories and photos from your Hills Bros. days! Your colleagues sound and look like a great bunch of kids. Restaurant work can be grueling, but it also has its fun moments. And those costumes were pretty cute!
Major, that’s a very good point; if they’d really had a desire to go to the convention they probably would have been done it by themselves years ago. Patty and Cathy Lane’s fathers were identical twins, but that still doesn’t explain it. I guess genetics work differently in TV Land. If coffee comes from pods, that must be why there are so many pod people around the coffee garden.
Nanook, the Wilcox brothers must have been a real pair of characters! if I ever had the opportunity to name a town, I’d probably choose the dumbest name I could think of just to make people say it. Weaselville? Infectiontown? Albany?
Mike, “cashwrap” has been standard shop talk in all the retail jobs I’ve had. But you never know; Disney may have invented the term!
JB, every time the Gershwins ask me who could ask for anything more, I always answer, “Me, that’s who!”
Major-
"Do I hear four-?? And how's about 'linquent is to 'delinquent' as 'whelmed' is to 'overwhelmed'-? (And then what about 'underwhelmed'-? My head is starting to hurt).
@ Melissa-
Poor Albany-! 'Cashwrap' is SOP in retail everywhere. Again - maybe it started with Disney - but somehow I think not.
"There's a big pile of coffee creamer on top of the Hill's Bros. roof."
JB, I thinks it's a Disneyland Matterhorn Macaroon.
I love those things with a good cup of coffee! (Major, you won't like them...they're filled with sweet coconut.)
TokyoMagic! Your merged photo looks fantastic. Thanks for taking the time to put it together!
Thanks, all, for the fun and laughs...you got me through a crazy day at work. You never let me down.
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