I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando. But we've been friends for over 40 years. We grew up together in the San Fernando Valley. These are the stories of our experiences as adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from back in the day. And don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. Okay, speaking of kids snot, what's the one thing When you say kids not the first thing
I think of is playgrounds. Absolutely. Without question. Oh man. You know what? I never. And here's the difference is that you experienced playgrounds as a child. I experienced playgrounds as a child, but then I experienced playgrounds with my children a second time. And the fear of the kids not is much greater for a parent. If you put. any piece of playground equipment under a black light. Yeah, I wouldn't want to see it. That would be all kinds of nightmares,
right? I wouldn't want to see it. There's protozoa and I don't know. Mesozoic protozoa. You know, it really is disgusting. And as a parent, it was like so much, because I remember when we were kids, it was like, I fucking cared. You just, you know, whatever. You don't think about germs. When you're on the slide and you're in line for the slide, you're on the jungle gym and you're the, but in as a parent, we were carefree. We were, we were fancy. We were fancy
free. Extra free of fancy. I was, I was extra fancy because I was extra fancy. I was fancy. First up. Okay. You were a Jim Dandy. You were a Dandy fancy, fancy Dandy. Yeah. You were a fancy pants, fancy Dandy. Okay. Hold on. Seen my pants. I had no things, you know, um, when I think to back to these, um, to the playgrounds, I think about the one thing that was the bane of my existence, which was the, the monkey bars. Why is this? You did, did you not have, I'll
tell you why. I'll tell you why. Did you not have the upper body prowess? Did you not have the strength? Wait a minute. Let's just not go right there. Were you not a monkey? I'm, well, I'm not a monkey, but here's the thing. I have super stretchy joints. You do. Yes, you can vouch. Yeah, yeah, you've got like double jointed. Your head's double jointed. Well not only did my thumbs bend backwards, so did my shoulders and all joints. My shoulders will
dislocate. Your head can spin around like beetles do. You can't pull yourself and hold yourself in the same way when your ligaments are stretching that way and I always felt like an utter failure on the monkey bar. Imagine how you looked. I looked worse than I felt. I'm sure you were. I'm sure. I looked horrible. I looked ridiculous. And I would follow the good and make it across. I couldn't make it across the goddamn monkey bars. And it really upset me. Was, were you
like, were other kids- I didn't want to go near the monkey bars. Were other kids like egging you on to go into the monkey bars? I didn't get egged. No? I wasn't getting egged, really. That's a whole nother problem if you were. I never really got egged, but I, it was an internal struggle is what it was. That's fair. It was a real internal struggle and I thought- So the monkey bars were not your jam. They weren't your jam on toast. To this day, I wish I could
just cook. But I wasn't licking the monkey bars as a child. You know what I was licking? I really hesitate to let you finish that sentence. The merry-go-round. You were licking it? The spin around, run across, spin it as fast as you can fucking go. With the big thick metal bars and the hot metal. Was there sand under that merry-go-round or did we have merry-go-rounds that were asphalt? The one that, well I was on a strange one because we had our merry-go-round.
quicksand so it was really frightening. That'd be so cool. Imagine you're like, you're spinning, you're like, ah, I'm going down. And then your buddies on the merry-go-round have to like throw you a rope. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Like in Princess Bride. In Princess Bride or in the ROUSs. Yeah, Princess Bride, yeah. That was in the fire swamp. Yeah, in the fire swamp or in Blazing Saddles. In Blazing Saddles, you've got quicksand as well. Yeah, so lots of quicksand
in great movies. Now, here's the thing. If you don't have sand, surrounding your merry-go-round when you come flying off because of the centrifugal force centrifugal Centrifugal I know what you're I know what you're going for centrifugal Um, you go flying off. Yeah spinning force. Yeah, gravitational every kid did every kid flew off that thing at one time or another now Okay in the valley when we were growing up,
uh in the 70s and 80s what? What does it get like in the summer? 174 right in the shade and you and back then no air either no oxygen no oxygen no because it was smoggy outside we were sucking smog but no those things were lost a Tibet menu zero oxygen and bad quality air there were the merry-go-round was made out of a metal that got as hot as the Sun yeah and so you're singeing your balls skin Were you not wearing pants? If you weren't wearing
pants on the merry-go-round. It depends on how you sit on the merry-go-round. But the best part is you always had multiple people on the outside spinning that thing like a mother... You duck. Multiple people on the outside spinning your balls. Yes. And not as a... Oh, that wasn't the merry-go-round you were on. That was a nine-year-old. That was a different merry-go-round, I'm remembering. Yeah, that one was on Sunset Boulevard. Coney Island. Okay, so... You're spinning around
on them and you have people on the outside running. They run. Run, run to get up to speed. And then you would get to speed and then everybody was still kind of like take two hands and like hit one of those bars. And like fling it. Yeah. Foo, foo, foo. Yeah. And that thing would start spinning at 800 miles an hour. Yeah. It was like astronaut training. And if you could hold on, you were the man. Yeah, you would hold it. You wanted to go center. You always wanted
to go center. Oh, you couldn't. The outside was just... Yeah, you would get flung. Oh my God, you'd get hurt. You'd get flung fast and far. Yeah, but center, you're just... Center is where you want to be. You felt like you might take off and you're off to the moon. The trick about center is you got to spot because you're spinning around. So you got to spot something, head turned spot, head turned spot, and then you get off the merry ground and you walk sideways
for five minutes. What? What else was on? So I used to go when I was really, really young, we lived in Receta, we grew up in Receta. Just like Tom Petty's song. Tom Petty's song grew up in Receta? No, there's a freeway running through her yard. Yeah. Free Fallen does tell the story of growing up. Of living in Receta. It was a long day. And we did actually grow up in Receta and there was Receta Park up on. Rosita and Victor. You know who else grew up
in Rosita? Well, he didn't grow up in Rosita, but he moved to Rosita at a young high school age. Let me guess. It was, uh, Christian Slater. Daniel LaRusso. I was so close. From the karate kid. Yeah. They moved to Rosita. Go ahead. Continue. Ralph Macchio. Machado. Ralph Machicho himself. Ralph Maraschino Cherry. I love me some Machado. Ralph Machu-chu-chu. Would you continue? So, Recita Park had a great playground when we were growing up. And there was this big ass long
slide made out of the same metal that the merry-go-round was made out of. Right, that metal, it was like sheet metal. It was like thin, cut your ass off sheet metal. So, you know, I was a fairly timid child. And my mom tried to get me to go up on the slide and I just didn't, it was too, it was very high, climb up there, seemed very high. She'd be like, Eric, get your ass on that slide. Like that, I never heard. I don't wanna. I never heard you talk like
that. Clearly you have, because that's exactly what she sounded like. And go have some fun. Uh-huh. Quit being a douche. I was gonna say pussy. Okay. Well, that's more of. She could have used either for all I know. Okay. But eventually I got up the, I mustered the mustard to go up and get on that slide. The gumption, if you will. But I got up to the top and then what happens, you get that first stage where you climb up and you're like, I'm ready to go.
And then you get up to the top and you look down, you're looking like, I'm not going. You didn't go down the slide. No, so now I'm, but okay. But now, a mile long, it was a mile long. I'm on a hindsight. How big was that? I, for you then it was a mile long. How big do you really think that slide was in hindsight? Honestly, pretty tall. I mean, this was a big structure. You're gonna look this up. This had to be- I think this exists only in your memory. I don't
think this is real. This is like a 50 foot tall slide. Okay, no, maybe not. But it was big. It seemed big to a 7. How old are you? Seven, six, seven years. Seven, six, seven. I was not six foot seven. And a super, super pussy. I was six or seven, not six foot seven. and a super puss. So wussy wuss. Super pussy! So I get, Okay, I continue. Dun, dun, da, da. Yeah. So I get to the top of the slide and I'm like, now I don't wanna go. But I can't climb
back down and I don't wanna slide down. So now- Cause you don't want the other kids to know you're a super pussy. Oh, well they already know. It's, it, the word had gotten around. Okay. Uh, can't climb down. You're at the top. Because you're looking around. You're terrified. Other kids want to go down the slide. Are you visibly scared? Oh yeah. Are you crying? I'm trembling. Oh, you're trembling. But are you crying? Were you crying? No, no, no. Was your
face visibly fearful? It was contorted. Yeah, it was definitely contorted. I was like, I don't want to deal with it. Okay. Did you say anything? Just I want to come back down, but I can't because now there's kids on the glad are trying to get out. Did you say I want to get back down? I was saying how the fuck would I know what I did 40 fucking thousand years ago? I want to paint a picture. I didn't want to go down the slide once I got up the fucking
stairs. Okay, so what did you do? Well I had no choice. I had to go down the slide because the kids would not let me walk back down the stairs. It reminds me of... The Christmas movie where the Santa Claus kicks the kid in the face and pushes him down the slide. So I finally get up the gusto to go and I go down the slide and it's way more fun than I thought it would be. Not terrifying at all. Except. This is a dumb story. I thought you were gonna have a
horrible time. I was looking forward to some injury. No, well there was. Oh, okay. It was fun. Oh, it was a blast. Okay, you enjoyed it. But. It was summer. And you burned your ass. I, oh yeah. I was in shorts. And the slides in the 70s were made out of not only that, the searing hot metal, but there was nothing, the craftsmanship on these playground, on this playground equipment was shit. Wait, hold on. I don't know who's making this stuff. I take
umbrage with that statement. Is that the right word, umbrage? I'm willing to believe you. I think that's the word, umbrage. I take issue with your statement that the craftsmanship was bad. If the craftsmanship, craftsmanship was so bad. How did they have a 30 foot robot who was built into the slide? Oh, well, let me tell you, no, it was it was standing. The robot was like the arms were the slide and all but When I was up on the top of that slide,
not wanting to go down, it was flimsy. The kids, yes, so the kids were shaking it from below. The whole thing is moving. I feel like if I don't go down the slide, the fucking thing's gonna tip over and I'm dead. I'm gonna be in a twisted wreck of fucking hot metal. Now see, if you had ended the story with that, I think you should just change the story right now. I ended it in a twisted wreck of hot metal, yeah. Yeah, that's what I wanna hear. Okay,
go ahead, finish this. But I did, I went down the slide. So wait, so what happened? You went down the stride and then what happened? I went down the slide and it was fun, but I was in shorts and it was super, super hot. No, Eric, I just told you how to end this story. Please end the story properly. Okay, so you're at the top and you fall down the slide. What happens? At the... End of the slide, the whole thing crumbles. Oh my god. Twisted. Oh my god. Molten
metal. Oh my god. Fucking death trap. And then all the other kids that were on the ladder, they fall in on top of you. They do, and then there was a guy. And then you're like, they light fire the second they hit the. They do, and there was a guy next to us trimming the trees that day, and he had a chainsaw. He came in to help, but he still had the chainsaw going. So he took my left leg off. Oh my God. Yeah, that they then tried to sew back on later on.
Right, backwards. Which they did. One foot going one way, one foot going the other way. And that's why I can never tie my shoes properly to this day. That's a good story. All because of the fucking playground. See, that's how you end the story. That's the bullshit. Okay, so next time you tell the story, that's the ending. The sharp edge is everywhere. There's nothing
that had it. Love that, love that. Oh man, you just got. You're either your life to bits either your Wrangler jeans got torn or your or your flesh got Just shredded and then mom would get the Bactine now. I remember the L Bactine was key I also iodine too. We had a lot of iodine back in there. We did iodine and Bactine Yeah, you're everything neosporins bullshit compared to the iodine and Bactine or alcohol We would just get straight up alcohol. You
could have a cut down to the bone whiskey and whiskey and a little Bactine. And a little Bactine, forget it, you'd be fine. My mom would drink the whiskey, and then squirt the Bactine in. Do you need stitches? Nah, you'd be fine. I didn't have any problem with that at all. I have no problem. You know, the thing about the plastic, I think the first time I really saw a lot of plastic in our day was at the McDonaldland. Oh, the Playland, or what do they call it?
Was it called McDonald's Playland? McDonald's Playland? Can you name the McDonald's characters? Yeah. You knew what I was gonna ask you? Yeah. Okay, I can name Grimace. Grimace was my favorite. Grimace was great. He was just a big purple fucking... Yeah, what was he? A ghost? A monster? What was Grimace? He was just a big purple fucking jujube. So, but they were they represented on the playground at McDonald's? The characters? I don't think so. No, I think because the McDonald's
playground members like the ball pit. Oh, the ball pit. Was there a... Dude, talk about Germ City. Oh, by the way, it... When COVID happened, all the ball pits closed down. Every ball pit across the fucking universe. That you would frequent. Well, cause I went to, that was my thing. Ball pits are my thing, yeah. I would actually rent out places so I didn't have to be in with the rest of the kids and I'd just get deep in the balls. I get balls deep. And
it was brilliant. And I knew I didn't have any of that kid snot germy. While your balls deep. But. And then they brought him back. Now you got to the germ pits again. Do we not learn anything? Wait, wait, you just, that's the thing about you're basically just picking up your child and you're hocking him in a bunch of fucking balls that have snot. And, and feces. Here's the thing about the ball pit. That's amazing. Some of those ball pits are so deep that children
can be submerged. Completely. Little Freddy is still in there from fucking six years ago. He never made it out of the ball pit. You know they drain and rake lakes all the time. Yeah. But they never rake the ball pit. They drain the ball pit. God knows what's on the bottom of those things. Bones. I mean dead boys and girls. Yeah. There's dreams. There's hopes and dreams. Yeah. There's just teeth left. Oh, wow. Maybe a skull. Okay, but can you name
any of the activities in the McDonaldland playground areas? Oh, yeah, there was had a... There was that Sky Habit Trail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Habit Trail. Yeah, because you wanted to climb up and crawl through the Habit Trail. Yeah. The Habit Trail was the gym. Again, Germ-Arabia. You know what the biggest problem... Germ-Arabia. Here's the biggest problem with that Habit Trail thing in McDonald's Playland, is there'd always be kids going through it, and I swear...
it was always somebody hotboxing that thing. You would get behind the kid who just- What are you saying, there's a kid farting in the habit room? Yeah, because they just had like 29 chicken McNuggets and a chocolate shake and they're like, I don't remember this. And just all of a sudden you're caught behind it. You can't go backwards. Sound a little bit like an elephant, the worst one. And you're choked off from this kid just- And then you pass out.
Yeah. Head down. He's giving you a Dutch oven in the habit trail. And so I stopped doing that as a kid because I'm like, at least I want to breathe fresh air, the ball pit is better than that. You didn't think, you thought thoughts like that as a child, like you don't want to go in the habit trail because there was a kid farting in there. It just smelled bad from kid. Here's the thing about kids. Kids just smell bad. Yes. Because they don't shower enough.
They're moving constantly and sweating constantly. It's difficult for a parent to wash a kid's hair enough for them to not stink, and kids stink. So, you know, in that habit trail, as they're going in and there's no oxygen, because there's no, I mean, you're socked in those habit trails, so you just, it's humid. It gets very humid. It's musty. It's damp. So you get these dirty kids going through. It may not have been fart. It may have just been body. You
get it. Child body. Child body combined with moist humidity. Setting in and it's never a good combination. It's disgusting. Can you imagine there must have been a guy? I don't know what his name would have been. They cleaned the McDonald's Playland. His name was Ray. He probably had to scrub all the balls No, they never scrubbed the balls. Nobody scrubbed the balls. Maybe they disinfected. I don't think they disinfected I think they probably power washed. I think
what they did was they used the same stuff. Good strong nozzle. The ball pits, they use the same spray that they use and the bowling shoes at bowling alley. They just, they have the industrial size can of it and they just spray the shit out. Yeah, that's probably what it is. That's probably what it is. But you know, look, McDonald's, I mean, that was a great place to go get your kit. Yeah, because you get your, yeah, you get your- Happy meal. Happy
meal with your fries and your- Love the happy meal. Yeah, your burger and your- Were you a burger or a cheeseburger? Oh, cheeseburger. cheeseburgers are killing. Yeah, why not? The cheese gives the cheese. Because, and the thing about, here's the thing about McDonald's cheeseburgers, the combination, this is a weird thing. The flavor is so stuck in my head. Just describing it, I can taste it. Oh, 100%. It is this though. It is, because the meat is an indescribable
middle part. Donkey. Yeah, of donkey. Yeah. Who knows what it is, right? So it's irrelevant. It's donkey abs. It's irrelevant. It could be soy, it could be actual beef, it could be byproducts, it doesn't matter. The thing that you really taste when you think about it is those soft buns that were steamed or something. They taste like steamed soft buns, similar to the buns you get at Dodger Stadium at like, in front of the Dodger dog. Then, here's the big key.
Ketchup and mustard, that yellow mustard they use with the ketchup, with those thinly sliced and diced onions. Yeah, those onions made it, yeah. And those three pickles. The combination. If you had four pickles, it wouldn't be the same. Would never be the same. The onion, what? An onion, it tastes different. They did taste different. It tastes different, when they cut them up that. That combination of flavors though, I can taste it right now, talking about it.
I kinda want a McDonald's cheeseburger. Did you wanna take that cheeseburger in the ball pit? I don't think food is allowed in the ball pit. I don't think you can take food in there. I can see the paper on the, man, I wonder what it would be like to go back and have a McDonald's cheeseburger right now. Well you know what I wanna go back to, is I'm thinking all the way
back to even way before that. Early early playground times. What's what's one of the most rudimentary one of the most basic things you remember from playground stonehenge What the fuck playground you going to stonehenge oh I know swings oh Wasn't what I was thinking but let's talk swing. Yeah, we hadn't talked swing. Let's talk swings. We'll come back to what I was Thinking like what do you want to do when you're on a swing? swing really Yeah, but what's the goal? What's
the real goal? When you're a kid and you're on the swings, I'm going over the top. Oh, yeah. Which have I that's what all I thought about when I was on this. Can I get over the top? That's amazing. OK, so swings. Let's let's talk about the sort of the basic swings we had when we were kids just had like kind of a plastic e leathery sort of seat. Yeah, it was like a vinyl. That's it, right? Yeah, that's it. That's all you had. And you're hanging
chains and literal chains, literal chains. Yeah. Then. But you had, then you had the like the little kid ones that had like the little legs. Yeah, and they had the little seatbelt. The little seatbelt. Yeah. And then the little play, yeah. There was always the little kid ones, yeah. So you didn't, the little kid wouldn't fall out. Right, and they were a little higher up, so you would put the kid in it, and yes. Yeah, but you know, but once you, then you
graduated to the one that was just the single piece. Who cares about those? I don't give a shit about that. I wanna talk about the big swings, because here's the thing you can do. I wanna swing this like a barka lounger. The swing. Like really comfortable, like a lazy boy. You can like. recline all the way. Yeah. You're, you're, I'm talking, here's another thing I did on the swing. As much as I wanted to go all the way over the top, I wanted to
spin it. Because remember you would see you put your feet on the ground and spin and spin and spin and you would wind the chain up all the way to the top. Yeah. And then what would happen after that? Yeah. It was the let go and then spin. Yeah. You would get going so fucking fast or spinning. billion miles faster than spinning on the fucking merry-go-round. It was amazing. That was fun. I kind of want to go do that right now. Yeah. I want to swing.
I want to swing. I'm curious about the merry-go-round. I am curious about the merry-go-round. I wonder what that would be like to do today. I'm not going near the monkey bars, as you know, uh, but slides love a slide. Everybody loves a slide, except for you. Cause you were a pussy. One time I didn't want to go on the slide, and now I'm a person. Yeah, but I love the swing. And usually we had sand, but again, I think at Our Lady of Grace, I think we were at asphalt.
At our school, at our grade school, no, everything was asphalt. So if you came off, if you wanted to do like- The jump off. Yeah, you read my mind! The jump off. Exactly. So what, does everybody know what we're talking about? Yeah, that's the jump off. You get high enough. You get high. then you get on the swing, then you get, you have to, to get high enough, you really had to have somebody pushing you. You could pump it. You could, you could pump it, but
pumping it wasn't as effective. I could pump it. Yeah? I've read stories. I can pump it, get high enough. I've seen Betamax footage. If you're getting pushed. I've seen VHS. And you try to jump off, you harm yourself. Yeah, well, you're getting high, man, and then you just let go. But you gotta let go at the right. at the right spot, but how many times, the fact that we didn't break ankles back in the day is unbelievable. Well, I think we did injure
ourselves, but we just would limp until it got better. Well, because you know what we knew? We knew that there was always gonna be Bactene, and we'd be fine, because Bactene cured everything. Bactene, your parents would just spray it on everything, and it wouldn't even clean the
wound. My mom used to buy Bactene in a five gallon drum. Yeah, of course, and my mother used to put, I had... I had knee pads on the uniform pants on the outside and the inside because I would just rip through them basically every day because we did the most foolish thing of all time, which is we would play kickball on asphalt and slide into second base. We would slide on asphalt. On asphalt. Do we have no brains? I mean, I would come home bloody. You
had no respect for denim. I had no respect for denim. You don't respect the denim, do you? I didn't respect denim. I do respect wood, but not denim. And I remember coming home bloody, like always bloody. And I remember my mother just being like, what the hell? And that's why they had to buy the family size Bactean. And the big band-aids, not the little, like the ones that would cover your entire leg. The bandage. The bandage, yeah it was bandage.
It wasn't even a band-aid, it was a bandage. Yeah, it was a wrap. And yeah, so I had knee pads on the outside, knee pads on the inside. We would slide. That was, so that was my favorite playground that we had was like sports. When we got to play, I loved kickball on the playground. That was so much fun. Kickball was great. You had, it was just like baseball. You had somebody rolling the ball, they would bounce it in. It was that, that ball was about the size. What
do we use? Like a basketball. Wasn't it the red ball? No, it was, it was a rubber ball and they were kickballs. Was it the pink rubber ball? But we did use a volleyball for kickball because the distance you could fucking get out of volleyball was un-fucking- And it was nice because there was no pain in the foot. I did love kickball. That was my favorite thing of all of Recess and Lunch. You know, things like kickball, softball, those were later on the
playground. Yeah. But early, early playground, I was asking you earlier, like, what's one of your earliest memories of- one thing you did on a playground as a kid. Sex. He said. Jesus Christ. And that's the end of this podcast. Yeah, well hey, if you're both seven. it's consensual. Who's really in trouble there? I don't know. listening to the Sons of San Fernando. Don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button
in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Drop us a review, we'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to support the Sons of San Fernando, the best way is to share the show. We'll catch you on the next episode.