Family Night at the Park

As I was sitting here earlier this evening, thinking about how weird I still find it that it is light out at 9:45 at night, and I was struck by memories that I haven’t thought about in years. When my brother and I were kids, we used to go to Family Night at the local park almost every Thursday night during the summer. This wasn’t just a typical park with some playground equipment. Oh, no. This park had amusement park-type rides, a petting zoo, a train, a giant slide, miniature golf, and a baseball diamond that serves as the home of the Colt World Series. (This became a HUGE deal once I hit middle school – before that it just meant big crowds at family night).

The memories bring mixed feelings, because while they were some of the best times I had while they were occurring, things simply are not the same as they used to be and that is sad. But that’s not what I want this post to be about.

We did not do the same activities every week that we went. We didn’t always ride the train, and we didn’t always play miniature golf. But my brother and I always rode the roller coaster in the kiddie area…over and over and over. I’m sure it was lots of fun for our parents. We also always rode the Scrambler with our parents. The last ride of the night was always the giant slide.

When we were little, we would have to ride down with one of our parents. We would all get in line and get our tickets; you know the kind – the red paper tickets with the work TICKET printed on them. We would paw through the crate holding the burlap sacks that we would ride down, convinced that the sack would determine the speed at which we flew down the slide.

After carefully selecting our virtual magic carpet, we would begin the trek up the metal staircase to the top of the slide. The walk always seemed to take forever, although I’m sure now it would seem like nothing. To my nine-year-old self, it appeared that the slide rose ten stories off the ground. I never minded the walk because I was always so excited to race down that slide. And I could look around the entire park grounds, watching the rides circle with their colorful light bulbs.

Once getting to the top, we would carefully select our lane. We would try to get next to each other because how else could you tell for certain who won? We would pile onto the sack, our parents seated behind us. The slide attendant would tell us when we could go, and we’d be off. Faster, I would scream, using my arms to try to speed us along, as everyone was laughing hysterically (or maybe that was just me). You knew it was a good trip if your butt came up off the slide on one or more of the hills. Once we got to the end, we would argue over who won.  Was it the pair that got to the end first? Or who slid the farthest past the end of the slide? Did it really matter as we grabbed the sack and ran up the metal staircase again?

After we had our fill of the slide (or more likely, when our parents would buy no more tickets), we would end the night with a trip to the ice cream concession window. My favorite was some kind of blue ice cream, and may have been Smurf related (does that give you any idea as to how old I turned on my birthday?!), but I can’t recall the name. Regardless, we would slowly eat our ice cream cones as we walked back to the car, satisfied with another successful Thursday Family Night.

I have no idea what prompted these memories tonight, and I’m now awash with emotions I wasn’t expecting. But I’m happy to have gone on this trip down memory lane with you, even if life has moved on from such simple times.