The Chronicle tagged along in 1962 when a couple visited Playland Park on a date.
Chronicle reporter Martin Dreyer and photographer Ted Rozumalski followed a couple around Playland Park. Dreyer’s short write-up from the Chronicle’s June 24, 1962, Sunday Texas magazine follows along with a series of photographs taken by Rozumalski. This page also includes other photographs taken at Playland Park from the Chronicle’s archives. They are not dated and didn’t include caption information.
The girl goes “Ahhhhh!” as the roller coaster blasts off into orbit. She shrieks at a plunge toward earth. And all the while she clutches her boyfriend, who is happy about the whole thing.
Amusement park, Houston. Playland Park, out South Main.
Tinkle and tinsel, clatter and glitter. The soar and swoop and swirl of rides. The flying hoofs of merry-goround. Spin of wheels and the cry of barkers. “Knock ’em all down and win a kewpie doll.” “Guess your weight, lady.” “Step right up, step right up ...”
And you gorge yourself with cotton candy and popcorn and pink pop, take pot shots at elusive targets, shuffle along laughing with the gleeful folks, and maybe shrink with mock fear in the House of Horrors.
Night of fun at Playland. Fun for the old and the young. The young such as Beverly Landrum and Bruce Gillikin.
Beverly, 17, goes to Sam Houston High. A senior. And she’s captain of the Houstonettes’ Drum and Bugle Corp. Bruce, 20, is a college man. A sophomore at Sam Houston State Teachers College.
They’ve been going together for two years. Steadylike. But the amusement park visit was their very first.
A Chronicle photographer was there, too. And looking around for likely subjects, he naturally tagged on to Beverly and Bruce. In these pages he
captures their moods as they romp through Playland.
UPDATE
Before anyone ever heard of the Texas Cyclone there was the Wild Mouse.
Out on South Main, not far from where the South Loop traverses the area today, sat Playland Park. For more than 20 years, the amusement park was a gathering spot for thousands of Houston teenagers, the setting for many a first date probably.
The park was the work of the Slusky Brothers — Sam, Louis and Abe. Opened in 1941, it had many of the amenities typical of amusement parks back then: a midway, carnival games and all the cotton candy your stomach could handle. A stock car track opened in 1949.
It was at that track in 1959 when one of those cars sailed over a metal fence and killed three bystanders, including Sam Slusky. About three years later, one person was seriously injured when he fell 60 feet out of a roller coaster.
By the late-1960s, the tired amusement park was sold with an eye toward redevelopment. The calliope eventually went silent, the tilta-whirl stopped and the rides were dismantled. AstroWorld would soon open go up within sight of the place. And with that, a new generation of Houstonians would have their own palace of fun.