Life was a lark

                              As a kid, one of the wonders of summer was going with my pals to Willow Grove Park.  It was before the days when parents were afraid to let you out of their sight for fear something evil would happen.  We'd walk down Oak Road, over Springhouse Lane, cross Easton Road and hop the trolley at Royal Avenue in Glenside.  (This was before Bishop McDevitt was even there).  For a nickel (maybe it was a dime), we'd ride through the towns, past the War Memorial Park, through Ardsley, then Abington (including almost passing the house I now live in) until we got to the park.
                             Once you left the trolley car you walked under Easton Road's tunnel and emerged to the wonders of this lively and lovely mecca of fun.  If you drove there with your parents (and sometimes my Mom and Dad would go) you entered off Old Welsh Road and drove by the huge white markerwith a clown depicted and parked in a massive lot.  No charge, of course.
                             You usually had discount tickets ------- Sealtest Dairies was a constant provider of strips of them ------ and I remember that I seldom paid full price there for anything.  I got my discounts at the White Pharmacy in Glenside.  Once you hit the midway you had so many choices to make.  Would you risk the always dangerous Thunderbolt (almost once a summer somebody fell from it to his or her death) or the almost as scary Scenic?     Or would you settle for the Alps, a lovely mountain ride that paralleled Easton Road but was a quite tame ride, thanks to the brakeman on each train.
                             Would you take girlfriend into the tunnel of love to perhaps steal a kiss?  Maybe hop in the Tilt-a-Whirl Where centrifugal force would toss her into your arms?  Or would you go into the fun house and stand in the rotating barrel until you fell over, laughing like a hyena?
                             There was a large white swan boat on the man-made lake, or you could rent a peddle boat and tool around the lake by yourself.  Either way it was a trip on water without going to the Jersey shore. After the park closed that swan boat rested for many years on Easton Road, opposite the Air Base, at the home of one-time owner Max Hankin.
                              My wife tells me that her grandfather, Donato Cianci, would take the trolley from South Philly in the 1920s to catch John Philip Sousa's concerts there. He'd really pack them in and the stories of his performances there are the stuff of legends.
                              My parents took part in some of the marathon dances they staged in the park in the 1930s, but they never lasted.  There were professional dancers who traveled the circuit winning prize money at numerous similar parks.  Still it was a challenge for young people, and they attempted it.
                              The park hosted Dick Clark's Bandstand ------- or was it Grady and Hurst?  I don't recall which, but I do remember being there as the place was mobbed with my fellow teens.
                              The park came to an inglorious end, of course.  It staggered along for a while as Six Gun Territory, a really bad idea, themed around the Old West.  And then it was gone.  Remaining was the world's largest bowling alley placed, as it turns out, over springs so that not that long after, the lanes began to warp.  So it, too, was finished.  And what did we get?  A mall.
                              It's a nice mall and my wife and I shop there frequently, but it's still a mall.  It's still stores; it's not much fun. In my creative writing class, we talk about the chapter in my "Glenside Kid" book about Willow Grove Park and most of them never even heard of it.  A few recalled seeing the carousel at one entrance (small in comparison to the real ones at the park) and some old photos, but they never really connected.
                            I often wonder how different our area would be today had the owners not been so frugal and kept Willow Grove Park in tip-top shape.  I see that it worked at Dorney Park, Sesame Place, Hershey Park, Six Flags and others and wonder why it couldn't have worked here.
                           Our area may have become a first class resort destination.  There may have been stimulators to the economy, more hotels, restaurants, a convention center maybe all of which meant jobs, lots of them.  The park would have been updated to keep up with the competition ------- a water park, perhaps?  It was once within our region's grasp.
                           That ship sailed, of course.  But I can't help wondering "what if?"