Half a Century of Six Flags

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It isn't unusual these days to see a "Six Flags" amusement park in several places across this country — from coast to coast.

You'll even find them in foreign countries.

Some have always been "Six Flags" parks. Others began their existences with other names and under different management, but they were later absorbed into the "Six Flags" corporation. In all, there have been nearly three dozen "Six Flags" amusement parks.

But the very first one opened to the public 50 years ago on this date in Arlington, Texas, about 25 miles west of where I live today. It officially opened for business on Aug. 5, 1961 (the day after Barack Obama was born).

That theme park was known then — and it's still known — as "Six Flags Over Texas," a name it took from the fact that six different nations ruled Texas in its history — Spain, France, the Confederacy, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the United States.

It was modeled after Disneyland's concept of dividing the park into several sub–sections (theme parks within a theme park, you might say) — but Disney focused more on general themes like Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland.

My grandparents lived in Dallas, and my family visited them often when I was growing up. Outside of the Texas State Fair, there really wasn't much to bring families to Dallas when my parents were children, and I don't think things were all that different before I was born, but "Six Flags Over Texas" changed that.

My mother and my grandmother could hardly wait until I was old enough to take to "Six Flags," which was constantly adding new things in the 1960s and 1970s. When the day finally arrived that we went to "Six Flags," I think they were more excited about it than I was.

And, after they took me the first time, it became a regular thing for us every summer.

(Incidentally, although its primary days of operation have always been from late spring to autumn, "Six Flags" is open for seasonal events today, like its annual Spring Break kickoff, which got started in the 1980s, and its Christmas programs.

(I can't remember if it was open during the Christmas holidays when I was a child. We didn't pay attention. We were busy with other things.)

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I loved the rides — some more than others — and I loved the food. And, on especially hot days, I loved the cool of the park's theaters, where song–and–dance shows (often featuring area college students as performers) were repeated frequently every day.

It really was a wonderful combination of entertainment and a crash course in history. As a child, I was attracted by all the things that attract children, but, in hindsight, I have often wondered if maybe the seeds of my interest in history were planted on those day trips to "Six Flags" — an interest that, I am confident, led me to study journalism in college.

Sure, there were the kinds of rides you expect to find at an amusement park. There were roller coasters and bumper cars and a miniature train that went all the way around the park, but there were also several theme–specific rides.

(I remember that the Oil Derrick Tower, which represented the 20th century oil boom in Texas, was the first thing you could see as you approached the amusement park from any direction, looming as it did high above everything else.

(It was visible for miles along that relatively flat terrain, and it was the landmark I watched for — because I knew, when I saw it, that it was really happening. It wasn't an abstract concept.

(I've only been to Disneyland once, and I was a teenager when I did that, but I presume that is how kids feel when they catch their first glimpse of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.)

Many of the rides featured guides who provided an historical narration. OK, sometimes it was modified a little to give the guests more of a sense of being in the moment — a little jam on the bread, as Andy Griffith said once on his TV show.

Sometimes, as I say, the narrators took a little poetic license, but that was all right. The stories they told — to borrow a line from Mark Twain — were mostly true.

And I wasn't going to quibble — because I was only a kid, and I was having fun the way kids do.

I never stopped to think about how the tour guides' stories might be subtly influencing how I thought and what I knew — or what I thought I knew.

But they did — in ways I am still discovering. Even today, when I'm watching, say, The History Channel and something is said that contradicts something I heard in one of those narratives, I do a kind of mental double take.

I don't mind, though. I had fun, and I am thankful for the memories — and whatever actual knowledge I picked up along the way.

The Pause That Refreshes

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Several years ago, I was spending a weekend at an old friend's home, and I happened to notice that one of my favorite films was scheduled to be shown on TV.

"Have you ever seen 'One Two Three?' " I asked my friend.

"No," he replied, "but I've seen its sequel — 'Four Five Six.' "

We got a good laugh out of that one, but, unfortunately, we didn't watch the movie — and I regret that because I would have liked to share it with him. Perhaps one day I will.

Anyway, my thoughts have turned to "One Two Three" today because it was the (fictional) story of a Coca–Cola executive.

And it was 125 years ago today that Coca–Cola was first served in a drug store in Atlanta.

At first, Coca–Cola was sold as a medicine. In the late 19th century, it was believed that carbonated water had health benefits, and it was because of those perceived medicinal benefits that its developer wished to market it.

As hard as this may be for some folks to swallow, it was developed by a Georgia druggist named John Pemberton, a Confederate veteran.

The invention of Coke actually came about because of Pemberton's military service. He was wounded in battle and became addicted to morphine — and embarked on a search for a cure for his addiction, eventually coming up with Coca–Cola.

For the rest of Pemberton's lifetime, Coca–Cola was marketed as a medicine — a tonic, I suppose, intended to relieve a number of ailments.

Today, of course, it is the leading soft drink company in the world.

Well, I presume it is the leader. It always was the leader when I was growing up, and I don't think it has been displaced by anyone.

But competition has been around for a long time. Both Pepsi and RC Cola have existed for more than a century. As a result, I suppose, I always felt (well, at least since I first saw the movie) that the title was a reference to the three titans of the soft–drink industry.

Coke was the first of the colas, though — chronologically as well as in the marketplace.

In my household, in fact, "coke" was a generic term.

In other households, such drinks are called "soda" or "pop." My mother seldom drank Coca–Cola, but she used the word "coke" to refer to any soft drink.

When my mother said "Would you like a coke?" I knew she wasn't speaking only about a Coca–Cola. I knew she meant any soft drink that was available.

I always felt that "One Two Three" was one of Billy Wilder's best comedies — and that is saying something when you think about all the movies that he wrote, directed and/or produced — but it was often overshadowed by the others that he did.

The story had several joking references to the rivalry between Coke and Pepsi (which, I gather, was a fact of commercial life by that time), but I don't actually recall any references to RC Cola. Perhaps that is because Royal Crown (as it was known) was more diverse, dabbling in other flavors (and, hence, other markets) at the time that "One Two Three" was in the theaters.

It got its title from a phrase that Jimmy Cagney, playing a Coca–Cola executive in Berlin in the early 1960s, would say when he wanted something (usually several things) done quickly.

"One, two, three!" he would say, snapping his fingers with each word.

That movie will observe the 50th anniversary of its premiere later this year, and I plan to write about it at length when that time comes.

But, for some reason, today I feel compelled to write about one of its lesser–known yet memorable performers.

Her name is Liselotte Pulver. She played Cagney's sexy secretary, and her character served as the bait in his plan to retrieve his employer's new son–in–law from his East German captors.

Cagney deserved and received much praise for his performance, but the sometimes frenetic pace of the film was too much for him, and he went into virtual retirement when it was over.

There were other performers in the film who, for various reasons, seemed to get more attention than Pulver. Pamela Tiffin, who played the boss' daughter, may have been perceived by some as sexier than Pulver. She was quite a bit younger. And Horst Buccholz, who played her East German fiance/spouse, was a rising star when "One Two Three" was made. He made his American debut in "The Magnificent Seven" the year before, and he went on to appear in several American films before his death in 2003.

Cagney, of course, was an old pro — with a film resume that went back more than 30 years. Arlene Francis was, too, although she spent many years on television, not the silver screen.

Pulver's career, I gather, was spent mostly in her native Germany. Most Americans weren't familiar with it.

But Pulver was a refreshing element in the story — a true pause that refreshed.

And that was appropriate, I suppose, for a movie about a Coca–Cola executive.

Some Random Thoughts About Mom and Freedom 7

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I have mixed emotions today.

Today is the 16th anniversary of my mother's death in a flash flood. It is always a grim anniversary for me, and I am always glad when it is behind me.

But today is a milestone anniversary of another sort. May 5 will always be a grim day for me, but it is less grim than usual today because of that other anniversary, the milestone.

Half a century ago today, I guess you could say that America really entered the space race.

There had been other events in man's reach for the stars — slightly more than three weeks earlier, Russia's Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and America had been dabbling in unmanned spacecraft for awhile — but it was on this day that Alan Shepard (in the Freedom 7) became the first American in space. It was a short flight, about 15 minutes, but it was really the foundation for U.S. manned space travel in the 1960s and 1970s. The lessons that were learned in that short time made everything that followed possible.

(I'm not sure how the space agency arrived at the name. The number 7, I have been told, came from the fact that the capsule that was chosen was labeled #7 in a group of capsules — but seven, after all, is considered a lucky number. Coincidence?

(As for the Freedom part of the name, well, I haven't heard any stories about how it was chosen, but that's one of those American–sounding words, like liberty and justice and democracy.)

Nearly a decade later, Shepard was the commander of Apollo 14 and became the fifth man to walk on the moon. He would have been the seventh man to walk on the moon if the previous mission, Apollo 13, had been able to land. But it was prevented from doing so by a design defect.

My mother had Shepard's pioneering spirit, I think. She was a community activist when I was a child — and she was part of the successful local movement to switch our county from paper ballots to voting machines.

The people who live there now probably take it for granted that they can cast their votes on voting machines, but it was not always that way.

When my family moved to my home county in Arkansas, paper ballots were still being used there, and the people who held office held all the cards. They knew all sorts of ways to manipulate votes with those paper ballots, and I remember hearing my parents speak with their friends about their wish to break "the machine."

Thanks to the efforts of my mother and her friends and colleagues, the vice–like grip that the old–fashioned kind of machine had on my home county was broken forever.

I think Mom would be pleased to know that her achievement has lived on and thrived. Elections there appear to be more open today than at any time in her lifetime.

I think she would be proud of that — and, if she could have chosen the day that she died, she might well have chosen the anniversary of the day that the first American traveled in space. I don't know.

I do know, however, that I'm proud of Mom. Always will be. And I miss her very much.

Riding For Freedom

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It was on this day half a century ago that the "Freedom Riders," civil rights activists of all races and faiths, embarked on bus rides into the segregated American South.

The intention was to test the Supreme Court's decision the previous year in the Boynton v. Virginia case. The details of that case are not all that important; what is important is that the ruling essentially declared that segregation in public transportation was against the law.

I am no legal scholar, and someone who remembers those times might have a different take on it, but I always felt that ruling was not intended to be a social statement — well, not entirely. I felt it was mostly about the conduct of business.

It was made within the context of interstate travel, but it wound up having a much broader application to American life.

Segregation in places like waiting rooms and diners that served buses with passengers who crossed state lines was a violation of a mid–1950s ruling by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC had not been enforcing its ruling, though, and Boynton v. Virginia was the Court's way of telling the ICC to clean up its act.

(It is also important to note, I think, that the majority opinion was written by Justice Hugo Black, an FDR appointee who is considered one of the most influential justices of all time. For a short time in his youth, Black was a member of the Ku Klux Klan — apparently, for much the same reason as the late Sen. Robert Byrd.)

Civil rights activists saw an opportunity to draw attention to their cause, and they set out on the "Freedom Rides," starting on this day 50 years ago.

They drew a lot more than attention. The reactions in the South were violent, brutal. I grew up in the South, and there are many things about this region of which I am proud. But its history in racial relations is not one of them.

Later this month, when PBS broadcasts a documentary on the Freedom Riders, I presume you can see archival footage of burning buses and passengers who were savagely beaten by mobs in the Deep South.

(If you don't want to wait nearly two weeks until PBS shows its documentary, NPR has posted photographs from LIFE magazine.)

The footage I have seen is horrific enough. I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been to witness in person.

The destination of the original Freedom Riders was New Orleans, but, as Katy Reckdahl writes for the New Orleans Times–Picayune, they didn't get that far.

However, they inspired a movement that involved more than 400 Freedom Riders on more than 60 excursions into the South in 1961.

Angela Tuck writes, in the Atlanta Journal–Constitution, that the Freedom Rides still resonate with us in the early 21st century.

It is interesting to note the ways that some people are observing the 50th anniversary.

Last week, Aaron Barnhart of McClatchy Newspapers drew a distinction between this anniversary and the sesquicentennial of the start of the Civil War.

Civil rights leaders whose names were hardly household words at the time, much less today, have been reminiscing about their experiences.

So have folks who were, for all intents and purposes, participants in, not facilitators of, the rides.

PBS has chosen some college students — from Virginia, Georgia, Utah, Kansas City, all over — to re–trace the footsteps of those original Freedom Riders for an American Experience program.

And, as Gail Kerr points out for Nashville's The Tennessean, the Freedom Rides have other implications today.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Freedom Rides played a significant role in accelerating the momentum of civil rights in America.

And, although I am not proud of chapters of my native region's history, I am proud of the lessons we learned and the progress we made because of them.

Fifty Years After the Bay of Pigs

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It was 50 years ago today that the ill–fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was launched.

A bunch of Cuban exiles, who had been trained by the CIA, attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in a plan that had been hatched in the last year of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. In the spring and summer of 1960, while John F. Kennedy was wrapping up the Democratic presidential nomination and Richard Nixon was doing the same on the Republican side, the CIA recruited and trained anti–Castro exiles in south Florida.

Kennedy, I have heard, was not told of the plan until sometime in July 1960. As Ike's vice president, I presume Nixon already knew of it — but the relationships between presidents and their vice presidents were much different then than they are now so Nixon may well have been as much in the dark as Kennedy.

Yet the final decision rested with Kennedy, who ultimately approved the plan even if he wasn't as well informed as he would have liked, and it was carried out 50 years ago today. When it failed, some critics blamed the absence of adequate air cover. Others said the invasion never should have occurred at all.

Kennedy didn't blame the previous administration, although it always seemed to me he had a legitimate case for doing so.

Instead, he took responsibility, observing, "Victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan."

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That was not the end of it. The cumulative effect of the Bay of Pigs and other operations undoubtedly played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro became more paranoid about U.S. attempts to overthrow his government, and Cuba entered into a partnership with the Soviets, building the bases that would house the missiles.

That event required delicate negotiations before it was finally resolved in the United States' favor.

What began today definitely did not end in America's favor — and, I suppose, whether what has happened in the last half–century has been to America's benefit is a matter of opinion.

Cuba, after all, still exists. The men who invaded the Bay of Pigs on this day 50 years ago failed in their mission, and most paid for that with their lives — some right away, others after lengthy captivity.

But Cuba's former communist ally, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Someday in the future, some (or all) of the small countries that once formed the Soviet Union may re–group — but today (and for the last two decades) that menacing presence half a world away that forced generations of Americans to go through "duck and cover" drills in their elementary schools is not there anymore.

There have been other changes since the invasion.

Michael Vasquez of the Miami Herald observes that Miami's St. Thomas University came into existence because the Universidad Santo Tomas de Villanueva in Havana closed down the day of the invasion.

Back in Havana, ABC News reports, the emphasis is on how the tiny island of Cuba stood up to the big, bad United States — and has continued to do so for half a century.

Prensa Latina, Cuba's official news agency, says the "mercenary aggression" at the Bay of Pigs exposed American "lies" for what they were.

Outside of Cuba and south Florida, though, I haven't heard of much being said on this occasion. Communism long ago stopped being perceived as a global threat, and modern attention is on Islam and the Middle East, dirty bombs (not missiles).

I'm not really sure what to make of that. Does what happened at the Bay of Pigs on this day in 1961 have any meaning anymore?

The Exception to the Rule

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Today is January 20, the midway point of the presidential term.

Barack Obama took the oath of office on this day two years ago, and two years from today, either Obama will take the oath again or his successor will take it for the first time.

(Technically speaking, I suppose, it is possible that a former one–term president could be elected in 2012, but there are only two of those who are living and they are both in their 80s, which makes the election of either one a pretty remote possibility.)

Then the president, whoever he or she may be, will give an inaugural address. We've been doing this on January 20 since the 1930s, and we will do so for the 20th time on this day in 2013.

Inaugural Day is always a day of pageantry, of pomp and circumstance, and there is always a big buildup for a president's remarks, but they are usually ceremonial and symbolic, and rarely are they truly memorable.

John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, delivered half a century ago today, was different.

The most obvious difference, I suppose, was the presence of his famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

It has become as familiar to Americans as any other iconic presidential statement from American history.

For some politicians, I guess, those words would have no real meaning beyond the power they had to move the listeners. But, spoken by Kennedy, the line carried a credibility that came from the knowledge that the man who said it had been injured and nearly lost his life in service to his country.

It was possibly the most memorable thing Kennedy ever said — and that would be saying a lot. Perhaps no other president — with the exceptions, I think, of Lincoln and FDR — said things that have been more widely quoted or remembered over the years.

Kennedy inspired many of the young people of his day to go into public service — including a young man named Bill Clinton. The inaugural address he gave 50 years ago today was one of his most inspirational and enduring speeches.

As Nathan Rott says at NPR.com, Kennedy's words continue to inspire people in the 21st century.

They even inspired one of my favorite moments in the finale of The West Wing, one of my favorite TV series of all time, when the outgoing president and the incoming president had a brief conversation about the new president's planned address.

The outgoing president made a general inquiry about the speech, and the incoming president told him it was good "but there's no 'Ask not what your country can do for you' in it."

"Yeah," the outgoing president replied, "Kennedy really screwed us with that one, didn't he?"

Loosely translated, Kennedy set the bar so high on this day in 1961 that practically no future president could clear it.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes that none of the presidents who have followed have been able to match it, and he is right.

"Tethered to its time and place," Dionne writes, "it still challenges with its ambition to harness realism to idealism, patriotism to service, national interest to universal aspiration."

That "Ask not ..." line was a damned good one, most people would agree, and it justifiably occupies a significant role in presidential oratorical history. Kennedy's call to public service still speaks to us, echoing across the decades.

But there are other words he spoke that day that carry special relevance to the times in which we live.

"[C]ivility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof," Kennedy said. "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

It's ironic, I think, that Kennedy's brother–in–law, Sargent Shriver, died a couple of days before this anniversary.

All of the Kennedys played roles, whether visible or relatively invisible, in JFK's administration, but Shriver, as director of the Peace Corps, helped Kennedy carry out one of his very first acts as president.

It might be interesting to know what Shriver's opinion of JFK's inaugural address was after half a century, but I doubt that he mentioned it before he died. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years.

In spite of Shriver's achievements, both during and after the Kennedy administration, I suspect he might be inclined to agree with Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, who reminds us that "[t]his is no age of Camelot."

Sidoti seems to be thinking of the expectations that surrounded Barack Obama's recent journey to Tucson for the memorial service for the victims of the shooting. I felt — as did many others — that Obama tried (even if he did not always succeed) to strike a centrist tone in his remarks.

Other observers were disappointed because they felt the speech didn't go far enough, and others were upset because they felt it went too far.

In the modern polarized political climate, Sidoti suggests that the speech is "outdated." And, I suppose, to an extent, it is. Kennedy was speaking to the Americans of the early 1960s, not the Americans of the early 2010s.

"Yet some of the most memorable imagery in Kennedy's story line," Sidoti writes, "remains potent in a nation searching for renewed purpose and vision."

In the context of history, yes, 1961 was quite different than 2011.

In 1961, a Barack Obama could never be president. In many places, he couldn't even vote.

America's adversaries were different. The challenges of the immediate future were different.

But it wasn't really so different. America was then, as it is now, a work in progress. And Kennedy recognized that. He knew that the optimistic, idealistic goals of which he spoke could not be achieved immediately.

"All this will not be finished in the first 100 days," he conceded. "Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

And as his address came to a close, he issued a challenge to the people of his generation. It still has relevance today.

"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."