Whalom Park – For a Whale of a Time!

This slogan has been embedded into my head since childhood. I remember nothing else about the commercials, just the slogan. Whalom Park was a great part of my childhood. We used to go every year right before school started. August would roll around and the excitement would start to build until, at last, it was time to go! You would enter the park and that mixture of grease and popcorn would hit your nose and you knew you were there. The wooden rollercoaster was my first rollercoaster. I will never forget the tchunk, tchunk, of the chain catching the cars and starting the slow climb up that first great hill. The Scrambler, The Whip, the Ferris wheel were all must rides as well.

I like to think that my love of roller coasters started there, though I suspect I am genetically predisposed. My grandfather worked on the rollercoaster back when he was a young man. He would tell me tales of walking the tracks to check the coaster, the people who would ride it and how many times in a row he had ridden it. There was nothing better that than fear/excitement/anticipation of cresting that first hill and whoosh down you would go. At the end, the last dip would take you down back to the ground and you could look over and see the lake. Then you got in line to do it all over again. Safety? Of course. There was a bar that was approximately above your lap and it was covered with foam rubber and duct tape. None of us ever fell out! It makes the constraints on Six Flag coasters look like overkill.

The picture in the paper this week of a backhoe tearing down the old wooden coaster brought me to tears. I do not post it here because, even writing this now, it brings me to tears. I think this is compounded by the fact that I lost my grandfather earlier this summer. I know that nothing ever stays the same, but still tearing the park down to make way for condos seems particularly tragic.