The Fun House

When I was little, the park had a "Fun House."  It was a fiberglass shack with big rolling barrel.  A hamster wheel for kids.
Cartoon character knockoffs greeted you on the side.
Say "hello" to Woody Daffy Duck Pecker  and Bob's Porky Pig Boy.  Or maybe Bat Boy.  Or a toddling Freddy Krueger.

You were supposed to run in place, like this:

I never got the knack of it...

I had better luck on all fours...

...until a bigger kid (or kids) showed up and spun the barrel the other way.  

Soon I'd be heading for the swings. 

Dumb ol' Fun House!

It's Tough to be a Snake.

I was born without the "snakes are creepy" gene.
Silverfish are creepy. Centipedes are creepy. Worms are creepy.
Not snakes. Since I was little, they were colorful ribbons of wonder. As a kid, I didn't get why people disliked them.
I knew some snakes were trouble. Rattlesnakes, for example. They sometimes wandered into our quasi-rural yard and promptly got whacked by my dad's shovel. I felt a little bad for them, but their fang baring, tail buzzing shtick (and the fact that they could hurt you) didn't make them sympathetic.
What shocked me was that some neighbors gave any snake the shovel. I couldn't believe it. They know those aren't rattlesnakes. I thought. Why are they killing them? That's mean!
I checked out some snake books at the library. I discovered the truth.
Most of the world hated snakes.
The books pointed out that most were harmless, and in fact, beneficial. People either didn't understand this, or didn't care. One book had a realistic drawing of a man attacking a harmless one with a shovel. This upset me. That's not fair, I thought, fighting tears. The snake didn't do anything wrong!

Hermit Crabs

When I was little we had pet hermit crabs: Edgar and Allan.
They were slow moving, mellow creatures. My brother and I spent hours building Lego houses and mazes for them to explore.
One day I made the mistake of holding Edgar in the palm of my hand. Guess what happened?

The Christmas Snake

When I was five, I couldn't understand why people didn't like snakes.
They came in different colors. They were funny. They could move without legs! What's not to like? Yet each time I asked for a "pet snake" I was told no.
Then Christmas came. I remember the odd, lumpy package and what was inside:
A plush toy snake! A big one! He was longer me! He was pink and wore a ribbon around his neck. A felt forked tongue stuck out at his mouth.
I was thrilled. I had no idea you could get a plush snake. I'd seen stuffed bears, ducks, bunnies and even elephants. I'd never seen a stuffed snake before. I loved him!
His name was Boa Constrictor, my parents said.
I slept with him each night like he was a teddy bear, making sure his tail was under the covers so he didn't get cold. I felt safer with him. Any ghost or monster would think twice once he saw Boa Constrictor guarding me!



Bonus pic:
After I drew the pictures I found a picture of me and my beloved boa.
Thanks, Mom & Dad! He was a hit!

The Crack Monster!

A Sesame Street cartoon terrified me when I was small:
A girl stares around her room. "The cracks on the wall started looking like a camel..." a voiceover sings. The cracks morph into "Crack Camel." He gives her a ride. She meets Crack Monkey, Crack Chicken... ...then Crack Monster! He threatens them.
The heros fight back. He crumbles, leaving his outline and "beams of wood."
Crack Monster scared me for years. I was sure he'd appear on my bedroom wall at night. Even regular cracks made me nervous.
Recently I Googled the cartoon that had scared me so long ago. I couldn't find it. I did find others who were had been freaked out by the the cartoon when they were young.
They too, were seeking the old cartoon. Nobody's found it.
I wonder where it went. I wonder if I'll ever see it again.
Come to think of it, I wonder how the kid explained the broken plaster to her parents...


*there is a parody of sorts on You-Tube. Made me laugh.

"T" Animal

Click for bigger picture

Another piece from my preschool days.
There's kid logic for you. Put four legs, a tail and a head on something and you have an animal.
I wonder if this was based on something I saw on Sesame Street?

Little Africa

I was ten, and excited to be on my first camping trip. As the bus of girl scouts groaned up the 405, I wondered what it would be like. The campsite was called Little Africa. I wondered why. Would there be a jungle? Zebras? Elephants?
Little Weedlot in the Middle of Nowhere would have been a better name. Gravel as white as moon rocks. Clumps of blonde grass... ...few wimpy oaks. This was no jungle. This wasn't even the woods.
It did have a stream. This excited us. Then we saw the duck. It was dead, slumped on the rocks as current flowed around it. Nothing like a dead bird to keep you out of the water.
On the last day I found the cage. It was the size of a garage, rising from the weeds like it grew there. Steel bars as thick as a broom stick grew from the cement base. It creeped me. A dilapidated trailer stood nearby. One girl claimed it had belonged to a former owner. She'd kept tigers in the cage, but they escaped, clawed into the trailer, and killed her. Was it true? I thought, Even if it wasn't true, why was there a cage? Who or what had lived in it?
It spooked me. The thought of it chilled the skin on my back. The chill followed me home.



Note: The park still exists, under a different name. There's very little online info about it, except brief (and favorable) campground ratings. I used a Google Earth photo to get the the tones for the background of the second image. I don't know if the cage is still there.
I never found out what it was for.

Grandfather Clocks

Grandfather clocks didn't terrify me when I was a kid, but there was something spooky about them. So tall and imposing. Part casket, part evil Victorian robot.
They'd stand there, patiently ticking, as if to say no, I'm not waiting for a chance to pounce on you or anything like that.
Then came the striking. First a snap like a twig breaking. The clock hissed.
A deceptively friendly chime played. Then the hour chords. Deep and angry, like the clock was mad at you. Or telling a morbid story in clock language.

Even broken ones made me nervous. They looked down on you with angry faces. What if they fell on you? Or started striking on their own?

The Old Man Who Likes to Kill Children

Click picture for larger image

He lived behind the school, my fellow first graders said. In the overgrown yard of trash and weeds, facing the play field. He was purple, had a shotgun, and picked off kids that got too close.
It seemed plausible. There was evidence. The distant jar lid was, in fact, a the badge of a hall monitor he cooked and ate. The sun bleached BBQ potato chip bag was the last meal of some careless kid. The doll's head? It wasn't really a doll...!
A scaly, gall infested tree guarded his fortress. It had a menacing scowl and a sap oozing eye that glinted in the sun. A rusty barbecue stood in the distance, waiting to smoke the next victim.
We'd sneak up to the yard in groups, looking for evidence. Looking for him.
"There he is!" someone would shriek. Or perhaps "I see his gun!"
Everyone screamed. Everyone ran. We'd escaped serious peril. Fooled him again!
I reported him to the yard duty ladies. A purple kid snatcher! They didn't believe me. At the time, I couldn't understand why.

Nina

Nina is my niece. She's ten months old and trusts nobody. Visitors and strangers alike get the "Who the hell are you!? Stay away from me!" look.
I was just like her when I was little:
Strangers were scary! It was unnerving when a they got in my face. Who were they? Sometimes they smelled: mothballs, coffee breath, hairspray, to much cologne... Why did they have to get so close?

Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (from Wham-O)

It was a tube gloop. Multicolored gloop.
According to the commercial, just put some on the end of a straw (provided) and you can blow beachball-sized balloons which "last and last!"
They didn't tell you it smelled like rubber cement spiked with insecticide. Or that any balloons you made would be runty lopsided blobs. If you were lucky you'd get something the size of a baseball. Rough it up and it'd deflate, shriveling into a scrap of gunk. The texture reminded me of peeled skin after a sunburn.

What was I doing wrong? Was it a skill I lacked? A special blowing technique?
Where were the big balloons from the commercial?

Now, decades later, I think I've figured it out. I should have been sniffing the fumes. Then maybe I'd see big floating blobs.
p.s.
thanks to Sally C. and Linda for inspiring this post.

Evil Tiki part II

One of my earliest posts was Evil Tiki.
Nutshell story:
My dad painted a picture. It hung on my bedroom wall when I was little.
I found a creepy tiki in the grass and was terrified (it didn't take much).

For fun, I digitally enhanced said tiki to make him look extra menacing:


A few weeks back I typed "Evil Tiki" into Google Images to see if my childhood nemesis would show up. He didn't, but look what did!

Yes, this mask is called "Evil Tiki". Note the needle teeth, glowing eyes and the eyebrow arch.
My dad should ask for royalties.

Evil Bunny Rabbit Apple Pie Trees

When I was about three, McDonald's ran commercials featuring "McDonaldland", a tacky Oz-esque wonderland overflowing with burgers, fries, and mutants. I hated it. Ronald was creepy, Mayor McCheese was a burger headed freak with a quivering nose, and Cap'n Crook looked like the scary old neighbor who you weren't supposed to go near.
The "Apple Pie Trees" were the worst. They were supersized evil clowns. They'd lurch around and grin at the camera with a mouths big enough to bite my head off. They terrified me. Each time the commercials ran, I flipped.
My dad tried to calm me down. "Those trees are just costumes," he told me. "Actually there's bunny rabbits wearing the costumes."
This notion proved almost as disturbing as the Apple Pie Trees. Bunny rabbits grow that tall? my three-year-old brain wondered, And why do they dress up like trees? To scare people?
Who knew bunny rabbits could be so mean?

Update:
Click here to see a commercial with the Evil Trees.

The Bouncy Board

When I was pre-school aged, my family would take us to a little airport called Meadowlark.
It was cool because it had a snack bar and a picnic area where you could watch the planes taxi and take off.
Also cool was what I dubbed the "Bouncy Board". It was a low wooden platform made of creaky old wood. Springy wood. My brother and I jumped on it like a trampoline. No trip to Meadowlark was complete without a jump on the Bouncy Board.
The fun ended the day an old timer pointed out that the platform covered an old swimming pool. My brother and I had been stomping on half rotten wood over a concrete hole!
Whoops.
Here's an aerial view of my old, ah, stomping grounds.

It's from this site. Bouncy Board details added by me.

Scary Tree

A comely tree on Sally Cruikshank's blog reminded me of something that happened when I was little.
I remember looking at a peeling eucalyptus tree from our back window. A scary face stared back! I knew it was only an illusion, but it was so sinister looking that I didn't want see it, ever again. I suggested we permanently draw the blinds. My parents didn't agree. I'd have to devise my own avoidance tactics. For days I avoided the window (a large one in the living room)- I wouldn't even face the same direction.
A week later I asked my dad to check on Scary Tree. Perhaps the bark that made his features had peeled off. My dad glanced out the window and gave the all clear. "Looks like a bunch of peeling bark now", he said. I looked out the window-

He was still there! Mean and angry looking as ever! Cold fear surged through me. How could Dad miss it? My preschool brain thought. Doesn't he see it?
I forget what became of Scary Tree (this was over 35 years ago). Either he peeled off or I got distracted and forgot about him. As an adult I find it amusing, but boy, did that thing scare me when I was a kid.

The Divider

"What's that?" my preschool-aged self pointed to what looked like a pull down door in the middle of the back seat of my Dad's car.
"That's the divider. It cuts the back seat in two," Mom said.

I dared not open it. I thought it would unleash a ferocious set of mechanical jaws. They'd chomp the seat, and possibly me, in half!

Months (possibly years) later I summoned the courage to face the beast. The stumpy block of upholstery that swung in place was something of a let down.

Buoy!

Buoys fascinated me when I was little. Maybe because they were floating out of reach- like a toy on a high shelf. Maybe it was because I typically saw them on vacations or days at the beach and associated them with good times.
Each year my family would go on vacation at Mission Bay in San Diego. Four buoys were visible from the beach. I named them, gave them personalities and wrote stories about them.

Swim Area wore his name. He was the youngest, the cutest, and the shortest lived- he was replaced by a clunker called "No Boats".

Orangey floated further away. He was the friendliest. In my stories he was friends with the gulls, dolphins and seals, who often delivered him news.

Sailortilt lived near a bridge and floated to the side. He was the oldest and wisest.

Blockade floated furthest from shore. You could barely see him. He was the mysterious type, but he had an important job: he kept an eye out for the bad guys. Buoy security.
Back to the real world...
My brother liked them too. When I was seven we coaxed my dad to row us out so we could see the buoys up close. When the boat bumped into Orangey my brother and I shouted "Buoy!" and patted "him" as if "he" were a dog. My dad was horrified. "There's bird shit on that thing!" he said.

Evil Tiki!

When I was a little girl, this picture hung on my bedroom wall.

Based on an Edward Lear cartoon, it looks cute and innocent.
Than one night, when I couldn't sleep, I gazed at it and saw...

...A SCARY TIKI FACE STARING BACK AT ME!

Terrified, I flipped the other way and squeezed my eyes shut. Could there really be a demonic tiki hiding in the grass? I wondered. Maybe I just imagined it. Please be gone in the morning, Evil Tiki. Please be gone...


A crude enhanced version is provided to the right of the original in case you still can't discern what the hell I'm talking about.
Next morning, I timidly peaked at the picture. He was still there!
And he looked mean. Was that blood on his cheek? Did he eat kids? (When you're six you have to ask the important questions.)
I complained to my folks but got little sympathy. My dad had painted the picture and probably wasn't flattered that his little kid was afraid to look at it.
They couldn't even see Evil Tiki.
"There's just grass there," my Dad assured. "I painted it myself. There's no tiki."
Grown ups! I thought Didn't they know that evil could lurk in pictures, disguised to adult eyes? They'd be sorry when Evil Tiki came out of the wall and ate my brain!
I begged them to paint over Evil Tiki, or paint something new (I suggested an octopus), or move the picture to another room. No luck. They knew I was forever finding scary faces in woodgrain, ceiling curds, peeling bark and the like. Had they replaced it, I'd find some new thing that spooked me. The painting stayed put.
Days afterwards I slept facing the opposite direction and got a sore neck. I piled an army of stuffed toys between me and Evil Tiki for extra protection. It worked. Evil Tiki stayed in the painting, glaring at me in contempt.
The painting still hangs at my parents house. It's been over thirty years, but each time I look, there's that green bastard staring back at me.