Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

When I was a small girl a trip to the park was as thrillingly looked forward to as a trip to Europe would be for me today.

I never knew about the park until I was around nine years old. Jack, my little brother was almost seven
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One day grandma said if we behaved ourselves she would take us out to the park the next day. We behaved by pestering her the rest of the day with a million questions about the park. She really knew as little as we about it, what it had to offer.

We couldn’t wait for the next day. Were they all so long in coming? Like forever! That night we did finally sleep. When we came tumbling down the stairs everyone was still at the early morning breakfast table, hadn’t gone to work yet it was so early.

Out first questions were, "Are we going to the park now, are we?"

Grandma got so fed-up she finally told us if we didn’t stop bothering her we’d not go at all! We kept quiet but we followed her around, stayed close on her heels she could have fallen over us if she had turned suddenly!

After Uncle Bryan and Pete and Auntie had left for work, she began to wash dishes, and then make beds. Were we ever going to get on the way?

She said she would make us a picnic to take. We watched every move she made. The whole idea was a novelty to us. We had never gone to many places with grandma. The carnival and occasionally a tent meeting were about it. In the good old day, they were plentiful.

I stood on one side of her, Jack on the other as we watched her make egg sandwiches and jelly sandwiches, but ruined them for us as she used biscuits in place of the white bought bread we loved but so rarely had. But we didn’t let that spoil our anticipation. We were hopping up and down to go. She made a big jug of lemonade and packed it all in a small box and told Jack to get his little red wagon to put it in. That did it. I was embarrassed to be seen pulling a wagon; we wanted to run, skip, play in our exuberance all the way there!

Finally we were on our way; Jack and I bouncing all around and grandma pulling the little red wagon. What a picture we surely made. Especially as we passed some very well to do homes on our thirty-three blocks trek to the city park.

I’ll never forget my first sight of that park. When we came to it, we faced a small stream with a rustic bridge over it made of tree limbs. That very small stream was really the old Wild Cat Creek that meandered all over Kokomo and was a big fast moving and deep body of water and sported a big scary gravel pit on its journey through Kokomo and a lot of other towns as it finally met and joined up with the other smaller streams on its way to the mighty Ohio River to the south.

We crossed the bridge and walked under huge old trees, some so old they had plates on them telling their age. One had a hollowed out stump, large enough for several to stand in, and the tree still lived all leafed out in the springtime! I stood in it many times when I was older when we teens used to go to the park to swim every day for two or three summers.

Grandma was heading for the play ground but we had no idea what a playground was. On our way we passed a big cage below the path we were on, where we could look down into the cage and see three big brown bears. They’d stand up and spread their large paws with huge nails to us, begging for a treat. The road went on down around to the front of the cages but we stayed on to the playground straight ahead. When we got there we three stopped and looked down into a deep saucer like depression and seemed a hundred running, screaming children were down there among swings, slides, teeter-totters and some things we had no idea what they were! We lost no time breaking away from grandma, hell-bent to the swings. Grandma found a table and seated herself, placed her box on it and let us go, protesting, "Be careful! Can’t you sit a while and rest?

We learned our first lesson of give and take that day. We learned if we didn’t give up a swing or our place, our turn, then there were kids who would take it from us. It took me all summer to not give. To stand up for myself. Jack never learned it. Not until he was ten years old, another time, another place!

How I longed to play on those wonderful slides and swing in peace; be left alone, not picked on by little bullies.

When I got older I swore if I had a kid that acted like some of those in the park, I’d spanked him till he’d have to eat standing up. I meant it. I still do.

We did have a great time that day, and the biscuit sandwiches were more than welcome. We were begging grandma to spread out the picnic long before she planned on doing it. Even the old lemonade which I hated was so good.

When we were ready to leave, the word ready can’t possibly describe how we felt. Jack and I would have stayed at the playground forever, moved there if we could have.

We went by another road to the bridge and there found more wonders. One was a drinking fountain of sulfur water. I loaded up on it, but neither Jack nor grandma would even try it. The rest of the day I breathed sulfur into everyone’s face!

In a large barn-like shed was a monstrous steer, looking so real as to be frightening. Down between his front legs was s tiny misshapen calf. Those two specimens had been born on a farm around Kokomo. Much later on uncle told me the big steer had died or had to be put down, I don’t recall exactly, and he had seen it when it was alive! The calf was a full term one, but deformed, looked like everything but a calf. When the two animals died they were taken to a taxidermist and donated to the city park.

That was about all our City Park had to offer. A few years later the Wild Cat was dammed up and far around to the left of that bridge as one went into the park, was the only place to swim and loaded all summer with all ages who loved the water.

High up on the hill above the pool was where we all went to sun ourselves and play, flirt. At the very top of that hill was a road, and there was the Country Club.

That day when we left the park reluctantly two tired little kids were ready to eat a real meal and go to bed early for once.

Years later when I was sixteen, my best friend and I ventured down to the playground and very very few children were there. It didn’t look as large as it had that day Jack and I had stood at the top of the hill and looked down into it.

We went down and both of us climbed to the top of the largest slide and she refused to go down, looked too scary and she went back down the steps. I got on it and slid fast half way down screaming all the way and was so afraid, I braced my legs against the sides to stop my self and had to inch my way to the bottom where I fell in the sand there, when I reached the end of it! I burned the back of my legs too. How could that be fun for children I was left to wonder.

We stayed in the pool part of the park from then on and never saw the playground again and the bears were long gone, but the steer and calf were there for years and the old hollowed out tree may still be there.
That was long ago in the Good Old Days.

Today everyone goes to fancy theme parks and Disneyland, big city zoos, but I bet children do not get the wonderful thrill we got, when it was a real treat, an outing, to go to the City Park.

That was so long ago, it is not possible so many years have passed!

It was truly then, The Good Old Days

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