23. Sylvan Springs Park

Our school picnic every year was a carnival. We had a parade from the parking lot down the road past the national cemetery and into the little county park. Carnival rides, picnics, and exhaustion awaited us. I remember, as a girl scout, being a color guard at the front of the parade in 5th grade. I carried the flag and got to hand it off to Nikki about halfway. We had to practice the handoffs without stopping the parade.

We set up in the main loop, families spreading blankets and grabbing up picnic tables. The Tilt-A-Whirl and Scrambler and all those take apart put together deliver on a truck rides were back a bit further. We had ride bracelets, of course, color coded string attached to our wrists with a metal clasp of the same color. Craig always thought he could counterfeit them and sell them on the side, but he never did.

We rode the rides and had lunch with the families and I don't think anyone ever got a sunburn because of the huge pin oak trees shading the whole place. The first two years, that was the extent of it, but in fifth grade, having changed out of the girl scout uniform and into more standard kid attire, having ridden the rides more times than I could count with Jenny Jennifer Misdy Nikki Christy, I walked away from the carnival with Misdy and over a little hill.

Misdy lived right behind the park, so it wasn't a surprise for her, but it was like discovering a mysterious little world. Over the hill was a bridge, a stone bridge, and beyond that, steps down into a stone courtyard. I stood at the top of them, taking this sharp little breath and staring at the courtyard. A spring ran through it, with tiny stone bridges and little alcoves and a spout in the wall on one end where the spring came out. Misdy knew about this place and it of course became a place of legend and fantasy. It was perfect for play about elves or fairies, and even at 10 I wasn't too old for that sort of thing. We went back to the carnival, but the next time I went over to her house, we spent the whole time in the courtyard.

I moved after fifth grade and didn't look back. Visits to St. Louis involved tourist destinations like the zoo and downtown hotels, not little county parks with mysterious stone courtyards hidden in the hills. I forgot all about it until I came up for a college visit with my high school boyfriend. I drove him down to Sylvan Springs Park and showed it to him, in the dark, on the way back to my grandmother's house after a trip to Ted Drewes (of course). We stood there in the stone courtyard, the spring no longer active, warning signs on the trees to keep us from drinking the poisonous sulfur laden water. Graffiti on the stones. The place in disrepair. But I'll hand it to him. He saw what I saw.

On the way back to the car he said simply, "if you come up to school here, be careful."

I took Mike by the park once, to see that the little courtyard had been partially restored. It was a World War II era biergarten for the troops stationed briefly at Jefferson Barracks (which my old grade school practically sat in--we could watch national guard troops do their thing while we were at recess). It was a place for parties, and a private group had restored it after a different generation of teenagers had used it for their own parties.

We took Sophia when she turned 4--I took pictures of her there in the biergarten. I could see on her face the same sort of wonder I must have displayed the first time I saw it. I guess I need to bring Maeve over this autumn. It's nice to be able to share something like that with them after all these years.