Social media is a mixed bag, but it can revive some decades-old memories. Today I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when this image arrested my attention, bringing back to me the sound of a fog horn, bowling balls, a horse race, and more.

My parents had that 1968 sound effects record, which I played on my mother’s Sears record player. Of course I wanted to revisit those sounds of yesteryear, and, sure enough, YouTube had them.

It was eerie to hear the bell buoy and foghorn from decades ago, with the lonely calls of seagulls. As a child living over 450 miles from the nearest ocean, those sounds fired my imagination. I wouldn’t hear a seagull in person until I was in college and flew about 1,300 miles to visit my girlfriend, who was doing a summer internship on the Atlantic coast.

One of my fond memories of my honeymoon with Wendy in 2016 is listening to the seabirds in Astoria, Oregon at the Cannery Pier Hotel.

Another sound effect on that record that evokes old memories of mine is Ten Pin Bowling. Both of my parents were in bowling leagues when I was little, and I remember being in the nursery at the Hilander Bowling Palace and hearing the rumble of the balls and crash of the pins. I’ve been bowling many times since, most recently in Philadelphia, but recordings of my performances would have fewer crashing pins and more sounds of the gutter.

There are sounds in the YouTube playlist, taken from a 2014 re-release, that did not appear on my parents’ record. Under the Canopy begins with elements reminiscent of Louis and Bebe Barron’s “electronic tonalities” in Forbidden Planet, shifting into jungle sounds.

The sounds were recorded by Ralph Curtiss and Walter Gustafson. I found out that Curtiss had recorded Ann McGovern’s children’s story Too Much Noise in 1967, adding various sound effects to his narration. I also found some online copyrighted images of Ralph Curtiss creating sound effects for fairy tale books. If I have found the right fellow, he was born in New York City in 1918 and died young at age 54 in 1973.

It turns out I’ve heard Walter Gustafson’s sound effects many times, as he did the ones for the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television movie of 1964. More titillating is that two years earlier he did the sounds effects for the sexploitation film Satan in High Heels.

Oh, my. A plot synopsis is: “A carnival burlesque dancer robs her junkie ex-husband, goes to New York, gets a job at a high-class club where she becomes the mistress of the wealthy owner. She seduces his son and causes a murder.”

Grayson Hall, best known as Dr. Julia Hoffman on Dark Shadows, is striking in her role, although she later disavowed the film, which has higher production values than many sexploitation films. It notably includes an S&M production number by star Meg Myles and also has Norma Ann Sykes, known as the English bombshell Sabrina, performing for a leering audience.

There is a reason Sabrina wore unfashionable long dresses: at age 11, she had contracted polio and calipers and surgery left her with a damaged right leg. That reminds me of how Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, had extensive burn scars from an accident when she was 18 months old, and would drape her long hair over the scars on her neck and shoulders. Perfection is always an illusion.

In 1965, Walter was the sound designer for Tom Glazer’s album Noisy & Quiet/Big and Little. That children’s album started out with some recordings of household sounds. I think I’d rather listen to Meg Myles.