Well since this is my blog and I wrote a very short story about a week ago I thought I would post it. I hope you like it but if you don't then feel free to tell me how stupid it is:) I really don't mind, but I hope you might be touched by a part of it or connect with one of the many metaphors. Enjoy it or hate it, its your choice and right to do either or both! We all have a choice.
He met her on a very sunny bright day. The park was nearly closed now and had fallen into disrepair but it was still a place she loved to go. She loved the chipped paint and the rusty metal that littered the place. Broken neon tubes were here and there and some of them might have worked if anyone had cared to turn them on at dusk. The workers, the ones that were left, passed their time by staring out of the gates and deserted booth and wondering how they came to this fate, almost waiting for the final death of the park so they could bury it and carry on with their empty shallow lives.
"Coffee?", she asked.
"Sure." he said. They started to walk towards the rusty metal gate.
"They have never seen the beauty in this place. I see this and can imagine what it used to be like, years ago, but I can see it." He turned to her, "Really? I kind of thought this had always been almost closed and falling apart."
"Not at all. I can see that at one time this park had a lot. Well before in more innocent times when it was fun to get a snow cone and ride a ferris wheel." It was her turn to look at him now. "I bet they used to have ponies to ride too."
"Why do you still come here?"
"Vestiges of my childhood," she started, "Some of my happier moments were spent around a place like this. It makes me sad to see the shape it is in but at least it exists, the one I know of was gone years ago."
"You have a thing for the past?" He looked sideways at her.
"Not really that so much but I like things that have a past to them, a history. I could live in a ghost town if the ghosts wouldn't mind."
"I used to know of a couple, when I was a kid I used to walk down a set of railroad tracks and they went through a place that used to be a town before the highway was moved five miles away and no one came through there anymore. The houses were all empty and they still had mostly dirt streets. The buildings had wood floors in them even. It was really nice to walk the streets. It was almost like someone was having a party and everyone in the town went to it and left the town for a few hours. It was just sitting there waiting for the people to come back and pick up their lives again." He smiled as the memory washed over him.
"I can almost see that if I close my eyes. It sounds nice. Would you take me?"
"I can't."
"Why? Is it because I just met you and you think I'm odd?"
"No, not at all,lightning burned it down. With no one around for miles the fire just burned everything, there isn't much left but a few foundations now. What makes you think you're odd?"
"Well if I had just started talking to me I'd think that, especially in a amusement park that has seen its better days."
"Ever been down route 66?"
"YES!"
"It is great to see some of those towns but can you guess what I like most about them?"
"Let me think for a second," she put her finger to her lips in concentration. "The old motels?"
"You are good, I love the signs, the big neon, rusted, broken signs that were in front of the motels."
"Why?"
"Same reason that you like broken amusement parks I guess, brings back memories. I like to think about what things used to be like in their prime. I can show you things like that if you'd like to see them."
"You know the way to a girl's heart don't you?"
"Not really but when you see the only person in a park like this you start to wonder if you have something in common with her."
"Do we?"
"Too early to tell but I think we might."
"My grandparents were like that. I don't think I ever heard one of them say "I love you"
"Really? That is sad."
"OH NO. They loved each other so much that they never had to, they just knew it. They felt it was an honor to be with each other. They just knew when they needed space, they knew when they needed each other, they knew just what the other one needed, sometimes before they knew it for themselves. It was incredible!"
"What does this have to do with abandoned parks and ghost towns?"
"A lot if you think about it for a second." She smiles like she knows something he doesn't know. "He was a few years older and worked at something every single day. After years and years it took its toll on his body and it was hard for him to physically take care of himself. So she took care of him and never uttered one word of complaint. She thought he was still the best thing that ever happened to her and insisted on doing all of the things he couldn't anymore, and he never complained about his increasing pain or disabilities. He could still work with his hands a bit and used to carve her figures from wood. She took the tenderest care of him and protected him and he would give her a wooden horse or a rose or whatever he had carved for her. She would always act surprised and act like it was the most precious thing she had ever gotten, and in a real way it was."
He wiped his eye a bit.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to make you sad."
"No! Oh no not at all, that is beautiful, but what about the park?"
"Taking care of him was very hard on her and after a few years she fell sick and died shortly after. He refused to eat much and kind of grieved himself to death a few weeks after. I was there to clean out the house and go through everything to take to the salvation army and see what the family wanted to keep. I found a lot of pictures from when they were young, about our age. They were so full of life! Young and vibrant! From when I knew from them growing up they were always older and I never thought of them as young like I was. But it was them, you could see the same eyes the desire they had for each other, it was still there when I knew them."
"I see what you are saying now, it taught you to appreciate the way things were at one time and not to see them like they are now and how good they could be maybe?"
"Yeah, sort of but that sums it up."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"You know."
The End
