Bits And Pieces

The Demise Of An Amusement Park

     I felt particularly sad about the news last week.  The demise of Riverview really made me feel I was witnessing the end of an era.

     The park owner had declared that there weren't any thrill left in rides like the Bobs or Parachute Jump when a 16-year-old could drive a car at 80 miles an hour.  Now I'm inclined to disagree--a car driven at that speed on our streets is walking hand in hand with the undertaker.

     A 60 second drop by parachute was a safe thrill.  A ride on the Flying Turns meant high speed without danger to life or limb, and a swing down the twists of the Bobs was breathtaking enough with only harm to your own stomach.

     It's really sad somehow that the fun of an amusement park is not enough for today's youth--I just can't believe it.

     When we moved to Chicago over 19 years ago we always made several trips to Riverview during the summer months.  Pop and I flipped a coin over who would get bilious holding our preschoolers on the merry-go-round.  As they grew older we rode the roller coasters, laughed in the fun houses and finally graduated to the Bobs and Parachute Jump.

     Just this year, with the kids scattered we still took sons 2 and 3 to spend a fun Saturday running from ride to ride with one an excited 9-year-old who had never known the wonders of Riverview until he came to live with us.

     Last week I told Bill they were tearing down his most favorite park.

     "Gee," he said whacking a closed fist into his other hand.  "Just when I'm almost big enough to go on the grown up rides all by myself.  We can't ever find another place half so good to have fun."

     There's actually nothing like an amusement park to bring youthful memories flooding back.  The remembrance of a number of favorite rides, of picnics in the shadow of the roller coaster or early dates where dancing the moonlight waltzes was the pinnacle of a young romance. 

     Amusement parks were plentiful around Cleveland, Ohio where I grew up.  Lodges, business groups, clubs, even churches all held their summer picnic at one of these places of rides and fun.

     While our elders guarded the picnic lunch or attempted the less plunging rides, we were turned loose with a stamped hand that gained us admission on any ride any number of times--or given a string of tickets that had us pondering the weighty decision where they might be used best.

     Along the shores of Lake Erie, a long forty or fifty miles from our home, was Cedar Point.  It is there today only bigger and better maybe due to its miles and miles of uncluttered white sand beach which added swimming to the day's fun.

     Here was a roller coaster called the Cyclone to end all thrilling rides.  A framework of wooden curves, dips and plunges that were built partially out into the lake so some of the exciting dips seemed to drop you and your stomach right into the lake.  There was also a fast, steeply banked curve that made you positively certain you'd wing right out into the empty space of the lake that was all around you.

     Or there was Noah's Ark.  A wooden, high sided ark with animals nodding or moving about the deck or nosing out an early type porthole.  There was even Noah himself topside with a spyglass.  This was a fun house complete with trick mirrors, slanted floors and rubber cage bars.  Endless mazes of passages that passed snarling, snapping animals or air jets that blew up the ladies skirts all the while the ark rocked gently back and forth.  Fun places, things of which memories are made.

     Sure, we have a Santa's Village, keyed to the fairly young, or a Fantasy Land left in this area or there's an occasional carnival to offer some loop the loop rides or a Ferris wheel, but the many acre fun lands are slowly disappearing.  Gone like the tent enclosed three ring circus or those big air shows.

     I'm all for improvement, but so far nothing has been offered to take the place of a really fine amusement park.

     But possibly with the swing of the pendulum the old time amusement park will return.  You know they say if you keep clothes long enough they will once again be in style.  So maybe a new generation may still have the fun  of anticipating a day at such a park--just wait for me I'll get my cane, adjust my hearing aid and come too. 

Written October 20, 1967