A Joyous New Park
When I was a kid, I loved playing outdoors. You would be hard pressed to ever find me sitting in front of a television; or find me “vegged” out on a couch.
Truth is…it took a good old fashioned cold, or bout with the flu to keep me inside. My bike was my passport to anywhere, and my friends were my army of fun and adventure.
When we lived in Lafayette Louisiana, there was a massive city park about a mile from our house. It was the coolest. Imagine a structure about 25 feet tall, in the form of a giant rocket, with a staircase up the center that led to a lookout platform. Sprawling off of the main structure in every direction were slides, catwalks, poles, swings, monkey bars, balance beams…the works!
I loved that park, and so did my friends. There was even a 7-11 store right across the street that provided the necessary post park play slurpees on the way home. Life was good!
Now that I am grown up…well, I’m older anyway; my wife and I enjoy taking the children on road trips to find fun parks.
When Christian, Julieann, and Lindsey were younger, the park in town was still in pretty good shape. We lived on Magnolia Street and just loved to walk the children to the swings and play set. Funderburg Park was terrific as well, but the one in town was walking distance for us and was the better option.
Well, as the years passed, the park wore out and we started looking for other places. Since we had moved, we began to drive to Funderburg, but the playground is close to the driveway into the park instead of being out in the field; something that I still do not understand.
With six children, it became un-nerving to constantly keep the children in the play area and away from the road. I still cannot understand why a child is drawn to the boring flat road when they are in the presence of massive and fun colored plastic!
Anyway, the other day we went for a drive, and just happened to drive by the old park. As we turned onto the road by the Community Center we saw something that was completely unexpected.
There, right in front of our eyes was a glorious new park! Right about here is where Cheryl and I went nuts (the children were pretty excited as well!)
Man it was great; all that wonderful colored plastic offering slides, and climbing things, and towers, and talking things, and bouncy cars, and everything. Not only was the park beautiful to our eyes, but it was covered with beautiful children as well! There were people everywhere.
Some of our friends were there with their children, and we got to visit as our children played together. I even got my skateboard out and had a little fun in the old tennis court area. I still think that this would be a terrific location for a skateboard park!
Well, it was great, and everyone out there thought so as well. From now on our road trips to seek out a park will be a good bit shorter…we only need to drive a short distance across town. As you would expect, this new park is definitely on my list of favorites in Monticello.
I would like to thank those who are responsible, whoever you are, and say that anything that strengthens our families…strengthens our community!
Oh yeah…and just so you know; at one point I lost Gabbie in the chaos of children playing on the large and massive colored plastic, and I found her walking towards the boring flat road…go figure!
Jason, father of six