Flashback Friday...."This used to be my Playground..."

On the morning of Erin's Baptism,
Jeremy & and Kelly swore that they saw me walking the go-cart track out by the mom and dad's house.

Later that day, I learned what no one wanted to tell me.....

.......that my old playground was getting tore up.

So, that following Monday,

I had to go out and take a walk down memory lane and visit my old stomping grounds one more time, before it all got pushed into the ground.

No one can really tell me much about how the track came to be.

What made Uncle Ralph decide to plant this track in the middle of the pasture/field?

I guess I'm gonna have to go visit Don and see what he remembers about the when, the how and the why. 

What I do know and I have been told is:

It was on Uncle Ralph's property.

It was originally a track for horse racing.

There were bleachers at some point.

There was a concession stand.

There was lots of noise. (insert go-cart racing sound...and turning of head in circles here).

It was an oval track with a run off that you could turn back around and enter the oval again.

It was the official meeting point of the Tilton/Vandercar gang of kids.

I have found no pictures of the actual horse or go cart races, but here's a few that if you look really closely, you can see the track...our playground in the background.

If you look just over mom's right shoulder you can see the white asphalt in the middle of the field.

You can see the shape of the track off in the field and there seems to be power poles and maybe some sort of a stand?? (in the upper left of the picture)

Beyond these ridiculously cute and goofy boys, you can see a small building that was the concession stand. A concession stand!!!! There was enough people there to sell concessions, yet I have no idea who made, sold or worked it. 

I do know that years after the track closed, my brother may have used the rafters as a hiding place for "things." Also, looks like a power pole near the track...this may have become a basketball hoop for the Tilton boys, later on.

the curves.
I was amazed that so much of the track was still intact.

But, for me, it was just there...my entire life.

The horse and go cart racers had long abandoned it by the time I came along.

It was just there, for me....a really cool playground.

My personal asphalt track...to ride around

and around

and around

and around

and around

and around

and around

and around

and around.

On foot, on my bike, on my motorcycle.

Around and around and around.

In fact, if I had a dollar for everytime I walked, ran or rode around and/or across that track....

well...I might still live near that track ; )

One of my favorite memories is when Kendel and I decided that we were gonna dig our way to the other side of the world. We figured that if we dug straight thru the earth, we would eventually end up in China.

So, on a very hot summer day, we started digging.

And what better place to plan our journey thru the center of the earth...?

Of course the center of the go-cart track.

We dug and dug and dug.

I'm sure I supervised more than I dug.

But we both were out there for quite some time.

It was hot.

And then we saw it.

You know on a hot day, when you look across the field...how you can sometimes see the heat waves in the air? How the horizon looks like there is a blur and fumes/vapors, how the air is wavy...??

Well, when we saw that...and then it hit me.

It hit me that I had forgot about hell.

I told Kendel to "STOP DIGGING" because we were getting close to HELL.

I pointed to the wavy air and convinced him that it was because the heat off of hell was making the air extra hot.

I vaguely had an idea that hell was "down" and seeing the heat waves in the air, I thought...oh, no, to get thru the center of the earth...we will have to go thru Hell...and I did not want to go to hell, no matter how much I wanted to get to the other side of the earth.

Needless to say, what took us hours to dig...

got filled up in a matter of minutes...cause we were afraid of going to hell.

I am not making this up.

I blame my older brothers for my over active imagination

and I'm sorry to say that Kendel was the one who heard and got sucked into many of my magical thinking theories.

"This used to be my playground..."

If it was your playground too, tell me your stories!

Directions to here:

And yes, of course, I took a piece of the track to add to my collection of special "rocks."