The original Ghostbusters [imdg.com] was released in 1984. I was six. I don’t remember when I first saw it, maybe as early as 1985, or maybe 1986 or even 1987. In any case I was to young to understand some of the jokes —like Ray’s dream, somehow it was funny but I don’t understand what he was actually dreaming about, and because it was burned into my head from repeated viewing before I was old enough to understand it took a lot longer than it should have to understand that scene. No doubt we rented it from one of the local video stores, maybe the one in Pantops shopping center or maybe the one on 5th Street Extended, of course we also rented a second VCR and setup it up to make a copy. I remember watching that copy it times on summer breaks or on days I was home sick from school.
Sometime between the time Ghostbusters came out and the end of the 80’s an incident occurred at Berry Steam Plant in Alabama where my grandfather worked. Not for the first time an alligator crawled into the discharge pipes to enjoy the warmth on a cold day. I don’t recall all the detail of the story as my grandfather told it but, basically, the plant could not use the pipes with the gator in there and they called animal control or whoever it is you call, but it was taking too long and they needed to use the pipe. So, a bunch of burly steam power plant workers went out and wrestled this alligator out of the pipe and back down to the pond or river.
To commemorate this someone at the plant —I don’t know if it was my grandfather or someone else— had some silk screen shirts made with a Ghostbusters inspired logo of a gator caught in a ‘prohibition’ circle with a slash across it. Around the circle it says “Berry Steam Plant”. And the gator is wearing a hat (I don’t know why, but I imagine it’s just the type of hat a typical burly power plant worker would wear back in the day?).
I remember my grandfather giving us all shorts, I think I had a green one, and there were red ones too. Anyway, I while ago when I was at my mom’s I ran across what it probably the last one of these shirts, a red one. And I brought it back to Singapore to keep.
