{"id":806,"date":"2009-10-09T23:24:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T04:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=806"},"modified":"2009-10-15T23:02:54","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T04:02:54","slug":"happy-the-tiger-constan-carwash-riverbanks-zoo-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=806","title":{"rendered":"Happy the Tiger, Constan Carwash \/ Riverbanks Zoo: 1979"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy01_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy03.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy03_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy04.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy04_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy05.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy05_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy_extra.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/10\/happy_extra_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Happy the Tiger<\/i> was a constant media and \"personal\" presence when I was growing up.  I see from her plaque that she arrived in Columbia when I was three years old, and passed away when I was 18.  In between those times, I must have seen her dozens of times, either at Constan Carwash on Gervais Street (where these pictures were taken), or at any number of events at which she appeared.<\/p>\n<p>My memory is that her cage was behind the car wash in the area where you pull your car around to put it on the wash tramline.  Such a thing would never fly in today's hyper-correct environment and I think that's good in some ways, and bad in others.  I have no way of knowing how truly \"happy\", \"Happy\" was, but at any rate her situation doesn't seem to have affected her lifespan, and she  got \"modern\" quarters at Riverbanks.<\/p>\n<p>The plaque says that Marlin Perkins handled Happy's acquisition, but I'll bet he was somewhere nice and cool while \"Jim\" did the dirty work!<\/p>\n<p><b>UPDATE 15 October 2009<\/b>:  Added a picture of Happy I forgot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy the Tiger was a constant media and \"personal\" presence when I was growing up. I see from her plaque that she arrived in Columbia when I was three years old, and passed away when I was 18. In between those times, I must have seen her dozens of times, either at Constan Carwash on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[8,5,17],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-attraction","tag-historic","tag-personalities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}