Fifty years ago the iconic Giant Slide opened at the Minnesota State Fair.
The story of the Giant Slide begins in California in 1965 when Fred Pittroff saw a slide at an amusement park in Santa Cruz and decided he wanted to make a bigger one.
"He said the most popular ride they had there was the slide," he said. "I looked at it, then my father-in-law, he used to be in the scaffolding business so I had all the understructure and I talked to one of his engineers and he drew a slide to go on top of it."
Over the next 20 years, Fred and his late wife Beverley built 42 Giant Slides between the U.S., Canada and Australia. His daughter Stacey Pittroff-Barona got right to work taking tickets, folding mats, counting money and more.
"I've worked ever since I was really young," she said. "There's always something to do and it's a good babysitting tool I think."
They've added to the Giant Slide family along the way — literally. Stacey and her husband Rob Barona met at the state fair when he worked at the stand at the corner. The couple was married at the top of the slide in 1996 in front of thousands of fairgoers, then, of course, slid down. Rob does off-season maintenance work.
The 100 steps for the five-second, 175-foot journey through peaks and valleys back down, has stood the test of time. The Giant Slide has been a part of the Pittroff family for 5 decades, and there's a chance it's been a part of yours for just as long...
"You have the merry-go-round, all the kids rides, but this is the only ride that parents can ride with the kid," Fred said. "If you come to the fair and see the slide, you'll notice that 70 percent of the people are grandparents with their kids."