When my sister and I were little girls, our parents used to take us to the neatest places. I remember one of our absolute favorite places to go was an amusement park at the coast called Pixieland. It was at the entrance to Lincoln City as you came down over the hill on your way to the beach and we always begged and pleaded to go there for lunch and to play. I can still imagine the aroma of fried chicken and fresh baked scones that wafted on the air from the parking lot! The Pixie Kitchen was the restaurant at the entrance to the park and when you walked in the door there was a row of exaggerated circus mirrors along the hallway that made you look super tall and skinny, super short and fat, or all wobbly and crooked when you looked into them. If you got a seat by the window in the restaurant, you could watch the Pixie Train go by as it rambled along the tracks around the park. I always got a kick out of the name of the train, which was "Little Toot" because that's what my parents used to always jokingly call us. My favorite ride at the park was the Log Flume ride where we climbed to the top of a big ramp in a log-shaped cart and then barrelled down the slide splashing through the water. There was a ferris wheel, a big tree house to explore in, a children's zoo and a frontier village. There was a big hat-shaped building where they sold the fresh baked scones and there was a cheese barn where you could sample freshly made cheeses. There was an opera house where you could see live shows and a candy kitchen where you could buy every kind of candy imagineable! My favorite was always the box of rice candy where you didn't even have to unwrap it because the wrapper was made of rice paper and it would melt in your mouth. I always thought it was magic. The park was long gone, even before we grew up, but every time we passed the spot on the way to the beach, we thought about all our fun times there.
Another neat place near the coast that our Daddy used to take us was called Deer Park. It was a wildlife park of sorts, where they had all kinds of domestic and exotic animals and a huge petting zoo where you could feed the animals pellets you bought out of dispensers set up around the park. Our favorites were the deer and llamas and goats. I remember the llamas were sometimes mean and if you teased them, they'd spit at you. Our Daddy used to stand as close to the fence as he could and make faces, taunting them. I remember one llama hauled off and hocked the biggest loogey you ever saw and it landed right on the front of Daddy's shirt. We laughed and laughed. Another time, I remember we were feeding the goats and there were so many of them that they just surrounded you, trying to get at your hands full of feed. Daddy was feeding a bunch of goats and a big Billy goat came up behind him and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and started eating his money! That was hilarious, although Daddy didn't seem to think so at the time.
There was this place closer to home called Enchanted Forest that we used to beg to go too. It also had rides, a train and a western village to walk through, kinda like Pixieland. I remember there was a village based on storybook characters where you could walk into the Old Woman's Shoe and slide down a big slide, and the Crooked Man's House where the floors were all slanted and the windows were caddywampus and you couldn't stand upright. There was a big house shaped like a witch's head where you walked into her toothless mouth and stared up at her big, pointy, wart-covered nose. The park was always real dark and eerie to me, almost like it was haunted, because it was nestled inside a huge pine forest, thick with trees. I'm pretty sure it's still there, but it's been years and years since we last visited.
Mom used to take us to the neatest nearby parks and we'd play for hours. She'd pack a picnic lunch and we'd make a day out of it. Once, when I was really young, and before my sister had come along, we had a picnic in Marion Square Park, which was situated right at the foot of the Marion Street bridge downtown. As kids growing up, we never knew the park by it's real name. It was always Bum Park, or Hobo Park to us then, because of all the homeless men that slept there on the benches throughout the park. Tacky, I know, but that's what we called it. One weekend my parents and I were having a picnic at this particular park and my Daddy invited a homeless man to our table to have a plate of fried chicken and baked beans. He sat right alongside me and scraped his plate clean! I think it's a skateboard park now, and I'm not sure if the homeless still sleep on the benches or not, as I haven't been by there in ages.
Another neat treat was when Mom would take us to feed the ducks on Mill Creek. There was this cute little drive-in called Duck Inn where you could get corndogs and burgers, ice cream cones and the best krinkle-cut fries ever. There was a big yellow duck on the sign and it bobbed up and down like the duck was dipping his beak in the water. The creek ran along the back of the restaurant and you could sit on picnic tables on the creekbank and feed the ducks. Mom always stopped at the bread store and bought day-old loaves of bread and we'd toss it to the ducks, who gobbled it up and quacked for more.
I'd love to be a kid again and be able to do all these favorite things over and over. We had so much fun growing up and I'm so thankful for all the memories our parents gave us along the way.
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