Children's Fairyland

As I told Sebastian on Tuesday night, "today was a Joss day, and tomorrow is your day" which, being interpreted, means that we did nothing and went nowhere on Tuesday and Joss took great naps and was a delight. By then Sebastian was bouncing off the walls and we had to run around the block just so that he would be able to settle down. Until this trip I don't think I realized how much vertical energy he was getting out on the trampoline!
Wednesday we went to Children's Fairyland by Lake Merritt to flavor his day a little.
It was all as I'd remembered it, with magic keys and nursery rhymes and Willy the Whale whose throat you can climb down to view the fishies swimming around inside. I guess the park was begun in 1950, and this chapel has to be from the early days. I can't imagine something this frankly religious making it in a secular theme park these days. I wonder what my jewish friend Thea and her parents thought of it when she dressed up as Bo Peep for a performance here in the early 70's?
Sebastian ran around and played and rode rides. His favorite place was a little western boomtown overrun with squealing kids, all trying to push each other into the jail there.
He rode the merry-go-round a few times, and we went on the little train there. We saw a guinea pig, two donkeys, very overweight goats, and a llama. They took down my favorite attraction, which was a small pond with motorized bumper boats in it. Since they were too small for adults and since the kids couldn't or wouldn't have ever gotten out of them willingly, they had two guys in hip waders who shoved the boats out, loaded and unloaded kids, and turned them around when they got stuck. It was a great comedy to watch.
He was, as always, a good sport. The place was overrun with kids from at least three or four day camps, all crashing about in their matching t-shirts like electrons around their leader nuclei. It was barely contained mayhem. I was feeling plenty self-righteous that Sebi wasn't running around unsupervised like this, squealing and cutting in line. Then I remembered Maddie and Will . . .

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mohr im Hemd

The Trip Home: A Report Card

Gumdroppapalooza