Of the Park

The park lies in the middle of the neighborhood, and is so old that no one knows how it came to be. The park existed before people had eyes, while they ran around in darkness. The park existed before people had mouths, before they could talk. The park is older than talk, older than stories, so it does not have a story of its own, more — it does not have one story. The park has always been holy ground for children. Long back, in the darkness, the adults became frightened, they did not trust the rabbits who ran at their feet, and they ran out of the park. Adults did not trust that the light would come, that the park would protect them from the winter or the hot, so they ran off to build houses. The children stayed. The children knew the light would come, but did not mind the dark at all. It was in the dark that the children told the best stories.

The children do not know how the park came to be, so they make their own stories. The park doesn’t mind. The children tell of how the long strip of land was the body of a whale, that stayed on the drying earth when the great waters left. Some children believe there was a night when the moon fell out of the sky and rolled down the block, smashing the houses adults were trying to make. Other children say the park is a piece of sky itself, the only piece that fell, and the soft earth is the topside of the sky we never see when we look up now. A few children will not tell you about the beginning, and it does not mean they are unfaithful, they merely haven’t asked the rabbits yet. All the children are right. The one story all children know and believe is how the adults returned, and built houses, and called the children inside.

The rabbits are the only ones who stayed with the children. The squirrels came later, with the adults. You can see it in the way a squirrel will run away from you, but a rabbit will let you get close. The rabbits run too, but only because they do not like anyone to know they can talk, and they leave the telling of stories to the children. The children are more like rabbits, because you do not see adults run.

There are more stories for the park, stories about the giant spiders that live in the sewer duct; the top of the one pine tree that broke off when a boy tried to climb into the sky; the penitentiary inmate who escaped and hid in the park but was dead the next morning; the boy that could hit a softball out of the park and over the houses.

Some adults pray, before their meals and before going to bed. They pray to what they call “God.” The greatest maker of sadness is how the adults have been controlling the children since they called them inside. Nights, the children are kept away from the park. Many of them are forgetting. Soon the rabbits may not talk to even the children. Some children, when they pray, still pray to the park.

A Woods Bros. Realty Calendar has a picture of the south side of town, circa 1929, with the then newly established Woodsshire area as treeless, with only four surrounding houses. Over the decades, one long block was never built on, and became Woodsshire Park. Through the city’s developing history, Woodsshire was always a residence for doctors and lawyers, with the country club the next block over. The four block long, six street wide neighborhood now contains seventy some houses. The large houses are some of the older and more expensive homes available, and lived in by primarily the elderly who never moved out, with a few retired persons who have come in, and some young couples who are fortunate enough to have a profession that maintains early wealth.

The Woodsshire Homeowners group meets once a month. With a new volunteered organizer and treasurer, they discuss manners of keeping the neighborhood clean and stately. Group decisions include supporting neighbors who have had recent emergencies (a rotation of meal providing), and hiring grounds keepers for the park.

Every July third, Woodsshire residents gather for a potluck picnic. While the adults set up card tables and bring out Corningware casseroles, Tupperware Jello and potato salads, and buckets of fast food fried chicken, the children participate in a parade of decorated bikes. After the picnic there is volleyball and square dancing.

In the last five years, Woodsshire Park has gone through some major changes. Landscapers have torn out most all the bushes, and many trees have been cut down, diagnosed with Dutch Elm’s disease. New trees and shrubs have been planted in arrangements according to landscape decorating professionals.

Anyone who played in the park knew it was more than a park. There was a labyrinth of caves in the bushes, and the view from the pines was one stretched over the city. The bushes were ovens for baking goods of the imagination. Trees were spaceships and challenging cliffs. Sometimes we would let the older kids (who rarely came out) organize us into games. Capture the Flag was fun, but during that we were still just kids trying to get a white kerchief. Alone, we picked up sticks and they transformed into magic staves, lightning swords, super bows. Alone, our clothes and skin changed, because no one was watching but the park. The park did its share too, changing to whatever land we needed.

When I reached high school age, the world outside the park took precedence. If friends visited, they were no longer the kind who would want to go out into the park and pretend in it all day, into the night. If they were those kind of friends, children still, they did not say. The adults who made the decisions about the stateliness of the neighborhood exploited the funds to change the park. The lower branches were cut from all the trees, although I never knew heard even one story about any child falling from a tree and breaking a bone. Only the children ever climbed the trees, and the trees did not throw us. But now there would be no more tree climbing. The bushes were torn out, and there were no places to hide. Now the park looks like the land in the new suburbs, the ones that are only a week old — treeless, flat, with newly smoothed dirt impressed by the treads from bulldozers and back hoes — the signs of adults trying to decorate their destruction of the sacred nature of the ancient land.

The adults do not speak of it. They do not talk about the park.

Of the Park

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