SPRING 1997


...Spring in the year 1997 was a little boy kicking an old tin can along the street. It rattled noisily as it crossed a patch of sidewalk and then slid into the pale grass. It was sweetheart and holding hands weather, marble and steelie and hopscotch weather. The lawns were collages of muddy ruts and footprints. Water gathered at the edge of the streets; it formed little rivers and lakes which joined to flow into the sewer. Branches lay spattered from the night's storm. Kids rode and ran, rollerskated and skipped rope amidst barren limbs and branches. At PARADISE PLAYLAND, spring meant fresh paint; rides were repainted and converted and rebuilt after the fire the previous Labor Day. New concession stands were being built and there was the smell of fresh planking and the feel of the roughened edges under your hand. Wood curls fell to meet their shadows and lay in the early morning grass; there was the sound of hammering and sawing, the squawking of machinery, the pressure of thumb on oilcan. PARADISE PLAYLAND was preparing for the Fourth of July and the coming season...


[p. 3, PARADISE PLAYLANDby Paul Powlesland, NO-EYED MONSTER #17, Summer 1969]


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