Pine Island My first recollection of this place goes back to my preschool years when grocery shopping with my mother. Thursday was her shopping day and, not yet ready for school, I was brought along with her and our next door neighbor. Olga Petterson was this lady’s name. Olga did not drive, so my mother kindly offered to take her with us to the A&P Market on North Elm Street. For me this was a fun excursion, getting to ride in the back of the shopping cart as my mother and Olga pushed me up and down the aisles of canned goods, cereal, frozen foods, dairy, and fresh produce. It seemed as though nearly every time we drove to the grocery store, Olga would talk about the fun she had as a teenager, going on and on about a place she referred to as Pine Island. “There’s not enough good, clean fun for teenagers nowadays,” she used to tell us, “That’s why they’re always in trouble.” Then she would go on to describe the dances at Pine Island and the thrilling rides to be found there. My initial impression was that Pine Island was some sort of long gone playground or dance hall, until later that day when my mother admitted somewhat reluctantly that the place was still there and still open for business. It was an amusement park, I was told, the kind popular at the turn of the last century, featuring hair rasing rides like roller coasters, Dodgem Cars, Ferris Wheels, and tethered airplanes that raced around a tall pylon. To me this seemed as though it would beat riding around the A& P in a grocery cart hands down. “Can I go there, Ma? Can I go? Can I?” but Ma was her usual evasive self, wanting to first run the matter past my father. “Maybe, but we’ll have to ask Daddy to see if he thinks you’re old enough.” “When?” “Oh...sometime,” “How ‘bout today when he gets home from work?” “Well, maybe.” Pine Island Park had opened in 1902 and was owned and operated by Manchester Traction Light & Power Co. as a means of raising revenue by keeping the trolley cars busy on weekends during the summer months. Amusement parks dotted the landscape at this time, with nearly every major city having its own. There was one at Salisbury Beach, reputed to have had the steepest roller coaster in New England. Old Orchard Beach, Maine had one, as did Canobie Lake in Salem, NH, Mount Park in Holyoke, MA, Nantasket Beach and Revere Beach in MA, White City in Worcester, Whalom Park in Lunenburg, MA, and the York Beach Amusement Park in York, ME. There were even larger amusement parks at Coney Island, Palisades Park, and in San Diego, Belmont Park. As was so typical of my older sister Alice, she filled me in on many of the details which my mother and father had overlooked. “There’s a spook house there too,” she explained, regaling me with how frightened she had been when there as a five year old some years prior. She described riding along through its darkened depths in a cart as skeletons, witches, and monsters popped out of the shadows, scaring her senseless. That was it! I was sold on the place and wanted to go there as soon as I could, badgering my mother incessantly about allowing me to go to Pine Island to see The Spook House. Apparently at some point over the weekend when I wasn’t around, Ma broached the subject to my father, and he was agreeable. This was near Labor Day 1953 My father gave me the details of what was going down. “Okay, Sport! We’re going to Newfound Lake on Monday. After we get back home and have supper we’ll be taking you to Pine Island!” WOW! I could hardly wait to get there to go on the rides and see The Spook House, but unfortunately I would be forced to wait a bit longer. After our excursion to Newfound Lake, we returned home for dinner, arriving at Pine Island by 7 o’clock, only to find that the place was closed and no one was around. “GEE WHIZ!” I said to no one in particular as my dad turned our ‘47 Plymouth around and drove us home. What we hadn’t known was that Pine Island was closed on Mondays. Dad promised to make it up to me by taking us back there the following night, which he did, though for a four year old, a day can seem like an eternity. As I soon discovered, the anticipation was better than the actual event. For one thing, I was only allowed on rides set aside for very small children such as boats that cruised slowly in a circular, shallow pool. While I may have been almost 4 years old, I thought of myself as capable of more challenging rides. Dad agreed to allow me on the Ferris Wheel and Merry Go Round, so long as he could accompany me. While this may have been a better alternative, I still craved more, but the roller coaster was completely off limits. This was because of an incident related to me by my mother, which also explains much about her reluctance to take me here in the first place. Pine Island Park, 1936 She had come here on a weekday with my two older brothers, Tom and Bob. Both of the boys, though only 6 and 8 years old, had pleaded with her to allow them on the roller coaster, known far and wide as The Wildcat, a request to which she was naively agreeable, having no idea about what would be in store for them. The problems started as soon as their lead car crested the apex of the first and highest slope. Without warning, Bob stood up and attempted to leap out of the car. A struggle ensued, with our mother grappling to pull him back into his seat, though by this point they were in a free fall mode until their car lurched violently up the next slope, knocking the two of them back into the seat as Tom roared with laughter. Funny to him, perhaps, but traumatic to our mother, so much so that she never went on any amusement park rides for the rest of her life. Meanwhile back to the future of 1953, I still had not seen The Spook House, and so far as I knew, it would not be off limits to me. Alice and I wandered all over the park. She pointed to the spot where she thought it had been, but there was noting there. Eventually she asked one of the park’s attendants. “We’re looking for The Spook House. Isn’t it somewhere around here?” The attendant paused and looked over to where my sister had pointed. “The Spook House.......Well, I think it used to be right over there in that empty lot. I think it burned down about five years ago.” I was furious! Unable to ride the roller coaster....and no Spook House too? My disappointment was so great that I hauled off and punched my sister as hard as I could, causing her to double over, the wind knocked out of her. She complained to our parents about this, but they just laughed and told her to get over it. I ruminated about the burnt down Spook House all the way home, and my sister kept rubbing her sore ribs for the rest of that night. Fast forward to Pine Island in the Summer of 1957. I was allowed to come here only once a year. While we often drove past other amusement parks such as White City and Whalom Park in Massachusetts, I was always told, “No. You have Pine Island,” though if it had been left up to me, I would have gone to all of them, and Pine Island would have been at least a monthly event instead of the yearly one I was permitted. That summer, on a weekday afternoon, my mother had taken me here, and by now I was allowed to go on a few of the more challenging rides. I had done the airplane rides, Tilt- A-Whirl, Ferris Wheel, Merry Go Round, and Dodgem Cars. Shortly before we left for home though, I stood near the park’s entrance gazing up at the white latticework of the roller coaster. There was a loud, clicking sound as the cars were towed up the first slope to the top. Then, as the cars plunged down and up again and around a series of tight curves, there were screams of terror echoing throughout the park. I could not contain my enthusiasm, pleading for my mother to let me go on that roller coaster. “The only way you’ll go on that roller coaster is if you go alone!” she snapped, still very intimidated over her experience on that very same ride with my brothers in 1936. Not allowing her time to change her mind, I jumped at the opportunity, and a moment later, was sitting in one of the cars as the attendant pulled a padded steel bar down and locked it firmly in place across my waist. I recall him pushing a large lever forward and the cars lurched ahead until caught by a latching mechanism which towed us to the top of that giant hill, which now appeared to have been an awful lot higher than when I had viewed it from the parking lot below. I had no idea what I was in for. To this day I have never been so scared in my life, and at that precise instant I developed an empathy for what my older brother Bob had experienced some 21 years prior. Plunging down that first slope, I found myself weightless, floating around in the seat and thankful for that padded steel bar keeping me from being forcefully ejected. Next thing I knew, I was slammed back into the seat as the cars soared up the next hill. Then I was smashed against one side of the car, then the other by an invisible hand as we went through as series of tight turns, eventually slowing down and coming to rest at the same spot where this ride of terror had begun. Feeling a tad queasy, I slowly pried myself out of the car. Unsteady on my feet and dizzy, I quickly pulled myself together and met my mother in the parking lot. “How was it?” she wanted to know. “Okay,” I told her, though I had been so scared by that first ride on a roller coaster that I never went on another one for five years. By the late 1950s times were changing, and amusement parks were on the way out. Pine Island had endured a number of catastrophic fires, eventually closing by 1963, though a drive in theater continued to operate there until the mid 1970s. Currently Anthem-Blue Cross is located on the site of what was once a Mecca for seekers of fun in the not so distant past. One by one, like light bulbs burning out on an aging movie marquee, amusement parks across the country have closed their doors for good, though a few still remain here and there like monuments to another era when families played together and stayed together. In the majority of instances, the land can generate more revenue when developed into shopping malls and office complexes. Disney World Orlando, Florida April 1998 My 7 year old son Joe and I are sitting on a park bench at a replica of Hollywood and Vine while his sister and mother are shopping nearby. We had gone on some major rides here, all of them high tech and mind boggling in their innovations. “So what do you think of this place, Joey?” I asked him. Joe just yawned and then gave his opinion. “It’s okay.” “Okay?” “Yeah, Dad. It’s okay. If this were my place, it’d be bigger and there’d be more rides.” Somehow, I don’t think Joe or those of his generation would have appreciated Pine Island at all.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 13:09:20 +0000
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