Last week, I found myself in a nostalgic email exchange with a woman named Julie from Nisswa, Minnesota, population 2,032. I’m sure she didn’t expect to get an email from a distant coworker in Arizona asking her weird questions about whether Deer Forest and the A&W were still there and most importantly, did the giant slide still exist? She was kind enough to let me know only Deer Forest was gone, there was still root beer and the giant slide was waiting for me if I made it up north for a visit.
As kids in the 1970s, we’d beg to stop in Nisswa on our 3-1/2 hour car ride to visit our grandparents at their cabin each summer in the much tinier town of Longville, population 153. To be fair, Longville did have a root beer stand, but it wasn’t A&W. There was a souvenir shop with a taxidermied black bear in it holding a sign that said “please don’t touch me” who looked like many folks had ignored that advice over the years. A freezer in the window showcased the biggest sunfish, bass and walleye pulled in from the area lakes in the last few weeks. They sold novelty items like fake dog poop and what looked like a spilled can of soda but wasn’t, which were the funniest things we’d ever seen as kids. And every Wednesday, Longville hosted a turtle race in the center of town, which might not be the kindest thing, but that didn’t occur to me as an eight-year-old trying to win a free root beer for having the fastest turtle.
But for all the cool stuff Longville had going for it, there wasn’t a giant, colorful fiberglass slide. I’m not sure when we’d start pleading our case to stop there. Probably shortly after we drove through Brainerd, past the Paul Bunyanland Amusement Park that taunted us with its Tilt-a-Whirl and Scrambler, but also upped the ante that my chronically car-sick sister would yack in the car before we reached the cabin.
When you are a kid, there are things so terrifying and exciting, it’s hard to know how to think about them. The first time we stopped at the slide, the metal stairway to the top made my knees tremble just climbing up that high. I could see cars whizzing by on the highway down below. I carried a piece of burlap fabric, pulled from a box at the bottom of the slide, spreading it out at the top to sit on, to help me slide faster and to keep my bare legs from rubbing against the sides as I flew down to the bottom.
I’m sure I sat there for several minutes, perched nervously on the edge of the slide, working up the courage to push off as I watched kids and adults fly up in the air, shrieking with joy as they swooshed over the hilly bumps in the slide before gliding to a stop on the artificial turf carpet at the bottom. I suspect one of my parents probably sat next to me or behind me to get me started, reminding me to keep my legs on the fabric and my hands on my knees until I made it to the bottom.
And like so many things in life, once you try it, you realize you can do it and it’s not so scary anymore, even if you’re not as fast as the bigger kids or you forget what your parents told you and let your leg drift off the carpet the third time down and get a small friction burn on your knee. You run back up the stairs, trying different sections to see if they are faster, hoping to slide a little farther when you reach the bottom, over and over until it’s time to get back in the car.
My niece is graduating from college this spring, and it’s hard for me to imagine she’s all grown up now. As her school days wind down, she’s worrying about the job she’ll get and what life will look like for her without the familiar routine of classes and homework. I imagine her standing at the top of the giant slide, burlap in hand, ready to choose a section, and bravely push off toward her new adventure. And even if she gets a few bumps and scrapes along the way or has to run up the stairs again to try another section, I know she’ll discover it’s not as scary as she thought it was going to be.