A Boys View of Playland :: Amusement Parks Essays

A Boy's View of Playland Most everyone enjoys an amusement park. Whether we delight in being jolted and swung by some wild ride, or enjoy the quieter pleasure of munching a candy apple while the younger ones squeal their way round and round, we feel a natural attraction for such a place. But none that I have seen as an adult, from Disneyland to Six Flags, measures up to my boyhood memories of Whitney's Playland at the Beach in San Francisco. Playland was wonderful because of the rides, the exhibits, and most of all, the people. Obviously, exciting rides are a boy's first love in an amusement park, and Playland offered almost more stimulation than I could stand. The Fun House featured a giant rolling barrel to run and tumble through, a huge flat wheel that flung riders into the wall, and a hardwood slide about four stories high. Near the Fun House was the Diving Bell, a converted Navy rescue cylinder that descended thirty feet into a shark-filled tank of seawater and exploded back up again, creating a miniature typhoon every five minutes or so. But nothing matched the Ride in the Clouds, a scarlet roller coaster whose roar and clatter were audible a block away, even over the pounding of the surf. Walter Sparks and I had to work up our courage a long time before we dared ride that one. Finally, though, we found ourselves in the second pair of seats from the front, rumbling up past the sign that said "RIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK," and watching the panorama of sky and sea. Then the coaster tipped over into a heart-stopping dive, plunging down, down, until we had knifed underground into a roaring tunnel that blasted us skyward again. The next peak offered almost as good a view as the first, if only our eyes had been open. When the ride was over we stepped shakily out, grateful to be alive and ready to brag in school on Monday. Quieter, but no less interesting, were Playland's exhibits. A favorite was the Crime Does Not Pay building, which contained grisly artifacts from man's brutal past. I would linger in the gloomy halls of