By helicopter no less. In 1960s several shopping centers had helicopters overloaded with ping pong balls, and the ping pong balls had specials for those stores in their shopping center. A few were outside of the realm, as sponsors. The Corpus Christi crowds pretty big.

Two of them my family loaded up in Rambler station wagon and sped across town for were at Parkdale Plaza, the other at Airline Gulfway shopping center. Ironically, the Airline ping pong ball drop was larger than Parkdale, even though Parkdale had more stores. And MORE parking! The ping pong balls stamped (gee who did the stamping that must have been huge pain in the ass to do!) but the stamping on the revealed the prize! And the prizes!!!! Black & white televisions by Zenith, Maytag washers, dryers, enough candy that area dentists got rich!

Some people brought fishing nets on long poles, others used open bags. Most times was about 5000 ping pong balls dropped. The helicopters seemed to tease people also looking at the crowds below, fly past once or twice, sometimes just hovering with everyone looking up! The "drop" area roped off too so lot of people shoved into area. When they dropped, the helicopter blades forced them down, and the helicopter had climbed to a little higher spot, taking into account wind if any.

On the ground, I was a kid, and funny to see adults scurry around, bumping into each other trying to catch the balls in air, or crawling on ground for them like doubloons. Organized chaos. Even my mom, who was notorious for driving her shopping cart over kids and adults, even employees and clothes racks at K-Mart on South Padre Island drive when they announced a Blue Light Special, momma barreling thru crowd grabbing them, shoving in bra. Eww, momma, really?

Late brother Tommy & me ended up with almost all Icees on our ping pong balls, nothing wrong with that! Dad got a small hand held Motorola transistor radio from Sears across street on Airline one time. At Parkdale Plaza, the ping pong ball drop was held sometimes in conjunction with other events like dinosaur show. Guess they had big captive crowd why not, sometimes they do two a day! MONEY FROM THE SKY! Woolco would crow. All in all the ping pong ball drops are special to me as it got my whole family, poppa, momma, Tommy & me, out of the old neighborhood for a time to forget about the poverty. Free Icees ha ha, yummy.

PHOTOS: Photo #1. Sidewalk sale, uh no one was on sidewalks, they in parking lot looking up. And "all children must be accompanied by adults" Yeah, right! 5000 ping pong balls, $1500 in prizes? Yup

Photo #2. A helicopter unloads hundreds of ping pong balls with specials in first wave. Sometimes the helicopters (especially Airline) would fly by, circle, then come back to drop more!

Photo #3. Woolco MONEY FROM THE SKY! ad from 1966 at Parkdale Plaza, wished it was clearer but you get the drift as to what is going on here. Icees from the sky!

Photo #4. Hey no cheating with the bag on the left, and lady on right, there is one right in front of face she doesn't see, better watch my momma she is a bowling ball will come thru there to grab it.

Photo #5. With Woolco, Pickadilly Cafeteria and more Parkdale Plaza in background, the Sinclaire dinosaur display, along with kiddie fishing tournament popular to bring in hundreds of people to Parkdale Plaza. Remind me to tell you about learning to drive in Woolco parking lot Sunday morning when was 8 years old.