Wandering Hither and Yon

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses
…
And suddenly the memory revealed itself.

Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time

As with those cliched madeleines, my friend’s brief reference to an animal park visited in childhood sent me spinning back into my own childhood.

In the late 1960’s, during our frequent weekend visits to my Grandparent’s house near Baltimore, Md, my Brother and I would sometimes be treated to a day at a tiny amusement park called The Enchanted Forest (history). I still remember my excitement as the family, packed into my Grandparent’s two-tone gray and black Oldsmodile 88, pleasantly filled with the rich heavy smoke from my grandmother’s cigarettes (a smell I always loved as a child), would drive along the then rural two lane highway that cut through those still undeveloped woods. It really did seem like a forest to me back then, both dark and mysterious. And then the sign would appear, with the giant King sitting atop it, pointing the way into the gravel parking lot. As you left the car, heading towards the castle entrance, you would be able to smell the scents coming from the snack bar, all deep fried and delicious. The park itself, by today’s standards, was pretty pathetic, but at that time, to me and my brother (and others, apparently), it was magical. There was a safari ride, where “safari” looking jeeps, pulled carts filled with families through the “Jungle”. You would drive by a native village, populated with scary looking headhunters (and probably not very “pc” representations, either). And at one point in the “ride”, you would start to cross a stream in which resided some robotic crocodiles, but the jeep would mysteriously come to a stop, and they would move menancingly towards you. The driver of the jeep, dressed in khaki, would draw a gun and “shoot” the plastic reptiles who would then recede back into the water as you lurched foward. The “Ali Baba” exhibit is another that still stands out in my mind. You went through an “underground cave” (if I’m remembering correctly), and looked at various scenes from “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves”. I remember a lot of gold coins and jewerly, and swarthy looking men, dressed in middle eastern garb, scimitars drawn, sitting atop their ill-gotten gains.

Days spent there would always end too quickly for my brother and I (perhaps a metaphor for our childhoods in general), and I can hardly imagine the patience my parents and grandmother must have had to follow us around that park, probably multiple times, each secretly hoping that we would soon tire out and could be whisked quietly back to that long lost oldsmobile to sleep contentedly as they drove us home.