Williston’s Landmark Pizza Hut, 1992

Every so often I get a VHS urge; I have boxes of old VHS video tapes that I’ve gotten from relatives, exes, rummage sales, and who-knows-where.  Many have no labels, and many aren’t what the label says, so I put them in my VCR and fast-forward to see if there’s anything interesting.  I’m always surprised at the obscure things that are already on YouTube, but for the most part I’m digitizing interesting and iconic commercials and posting them on my YouTube channel.   These two caught my eye — see if you can see what they’ve got in common:

These both aired in different slots during a 1992 episode of Jeopardy! — that time period was during the oil bust, but Williston was still the “big city” to a lot of communities in the Bakken and eastern Montana.

Apparently, though, it was still small enough that the best way to tell customers how to find you is based on the Pizza Hut’s location.   Of the two, I would have guessed furniture would outlive the fickle, ever-changing world of communications, but while Kotana is still around selling radios — still right behind the Pizza Hut! —   Thrift House Furniture is no longer on the map;  I Keating Furniture looks like they’re the current furniture shop two blocks west of Pizza Hut.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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