. . . by scaling heights and enjoying (?) a bowl. But the highlight was a breakfast bagel at the Ol' South Pancake House.
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
Dear Emi,
That was entirely awesome!
Some of the children in the neighborhood near that park where you were playing helped to design it. They drew pictures and gave their ideas to the builders.
When I was a boy, we lived just a few houses away from there. There was no playground equipment then. Sometimes we played football and flew kites in that same place. Grandpop once made a box kite that was almost as tall as he was. It flew very high and then broke the string that was holding it and flew away. I think he got in the car and found where it landed a very long way away.
I remember one time some of my neighborhood friends and I went there after a heavy rain and played football in the mud! It was great fun.
We called that place "down behind Tillery's" because it was behind Tillery's grocery. I remember Mr. Tillery who owned the store. I bought lots of baseball cards there, and they had cold drinks in bottles in a cooler surrounded by ice. You picked the drink you wanted by looking at the bottle caps.
The playground where you played is at the top level of "down behind Tillery's". There are two more levels. The last one has a brown stone wall that overlooks the zoo down below. You can see a long way. We called that wall "the Alamo" and pretended to defend the wall against many attacks.
We have a picture of your dad when he was a little younger than you are now, jumping off a bridge at the zoo that is made out of the same brown sandstone as "the Alamo".
From that lowest level, there was a rocky path that lead down the hill to the zoo. I don't think we used it when we took little Steve to the zoo that time. It was too steep a climb for him. Or maybe it was just too steep for Grandmother! The path is still there, but it is overgrown with bushes and trees. And nowadays the zoo has been remodeled, and at the bottom of that path you find a fence that keeps people from entering the zoo at that spot. But we might try following the path sometime anyway. Just for the adventure of it.
Once when he was little, John Dan took his dog Phoebe for a walk in the snow. Phoebe was heavier than he was, and he could not stop here even though she was on a leash. Finally, at the top of that same path, she stopped. He put his arms around her, held tightly to the leash, and waited for someone to come to the rescue. When Grandpop found him, he had written SOS in the snow.
Near the top level there where the playground is today, there is another path with steps that leads down to the Forest Park Swimming Pool. It doesn't look the same as it did when I was a boy, but it's still there. I learned to swim there and spent many hours there. The old version of the pool was a huge circle that was shallow around the edges and got gradually deeper toward the middle. In the center there was a platform with diving boards on four sides.
I think it was near the top of that path where Mary Ann and John Dan (and maybe Lisa, too?) knew where to find a Magic Rock. No matter when they visited that spot, there was money underneath it. I still don't know exactly how it got there, but I looked for it a few years ago and couldn't find it.
1 comment:
Dear Emi,
That was entirely awesome!
Some of the children in the neighborhood near that park where you were playing helped to design it. They drew pictures and gave their ideas to the builders.
When I was a boy, we lived just a few houses away from there. There was no playground equipment then. Sometimes we played football and flew kites in that same place. Grandpop once made a box kite that was almost as tall as he was. It flew very high and then broke the string that was holding it and flew away. I think he got in the car and found where it landed a very long way away.
I remember one time some of my neighborhood friends and I went there after a heavy rain and played football in the mud! It was great fun.
We called that place "down behind Tillery's" because it was behind Tillery's grocery. I remember Mr. Tillery who owned the store. I bought lots of baseball cards there, and they had cold drinks in bottles in a cooler surrounded by ice. You picked the drink you wanted by looking at the bottle caps.
The playground where you played is at the top level of "down behind Tillery's". There are two more levels. The last one has a brown stone wall that overlooks the zoo down below. You can see a long way. We called that wall "the Alamo" and pretended to defend the wall against many attacks.
We have a picture of your dad when he was a little younger than you are now, jumping off a bridge at the zoo that is made out of the same brown sandstone as "the Alamo".
From that lowest level, there was a rocky path that lead down the hill to the zoo. I don't think we used it when we took little Steve to the zoo that time. It was too steep a climb for him. Or maybe it was just too steep for Grandmother! The path is still there, but it is overgrown with bushes and trees. And nowadays the zoo has been remodeled, and at the bottom of that path you find a fence that keeps people from entering the zoo at that spot. But we might try following the path sometime anyway. Just for the adventure of it.
Once when he was little, John Dan took his dog Phoebe for a walk in the snow. Phoebe was heavier than he was, and he could not stop here even though she was on a leash. Finally, at the top of that same path, she stopped. He put his arms around her, held tightly to the leash, and waited for someone to come to the rescue. When Grandpop found him, he had written SOS in the snow.
Near the top level there where the playground is today, there is another path with steps that leads down to the Forest Park Swimming Pool. It doesn't look the same as it did when I was a boy, but it's still there. I learned to swim there and spent many hours there. The old version of the pool was a huge circle that was shallow around the edges and got gradually deeper toward the middle. In the center there was a platform with diving boards on four sides.
I think it was near the top of that path where Mary Ann and John Dan (and maybe Lisa, too?) knew where to find a Magic Rock. No matter when they visited that spot, there was money underneath it. I still don't know exactly how it got there, but I looked for it a few years ago and couldn't find it.
I love you.
Granddaddy
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