Fond Memories

Opening day of Palisades Park

Vince,

Words cannot convey how grateful I am to have found your website. I'm enclosing my fondest childhood memory.

Opening day of Palisades Park; the feeling of an early Christmas morning - before you creep down the stairs for that first time.

The car being warmed up as house lights are turned off, and doors locked.
Piling into the old Ford; anticipation bouncing in your stomach like a pink rubber ball.

The car flies through the city on airplane wings - soon to put down on the runway of the ferry from New York to New Jersey.

We walk along the wooden deck, listening to the aged organ grinder play "Cruising Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon," while his red-capped monkey darts from person to person - an appealing little beggar; tin cup held out in search of gifts of copper and silver.

The salt water parches our lips, and burns its scent into our nostrils as we watch the roller coaster, the Cyclone, perched atop the Palisades.

The long drive up the road, cut like a ribbon into the cliff's side, adds to our apprehension.

And then - the screams; blood-curdling, filled with terror, escaping from the throats of the Cyclone's present victims.

We enter the park on trembling legs, filled with the eager forebodings reserved for children alone.

They are all gone now: the ferry, the organ grinder and his little monkey, the arcades, the roller coaster, and the French fries in cone-shaped paper cups; salted beyond the taste of the ocean.

Cold stone buildings now stand where once the Cyclone roared. People in houses across the street no longer hear roller coaster screams; just the dignified silence of tall, dead buildings.

In the words of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved Paradise, and put in a parking lot."

Lu Havranek