Kiddieland in Melrose Park is set to close after 81 years. The reasons have to do with the price of real-estate and a family feud -- a year round Costco will make more for the landlords than a seasonal amusement park. A lot of people are making a last pilgrimage to the site. Like others, Kiddieland has been a childhood mecca for three generations of my family. The photos below were taken with my cell-phone camera. Sorry for the shoddy quality.




The Tilt-A-Whirl used to test my intestinal fortitude as a child. The blue half-spheres still swing young and old alike upon their rusty grooves.

This is my daughter's fourth or fifth time at Kiddieland. We go once every summer. It's hard to quantify "fun" but the kids seem to have their $23 dollars a ticket (for the whole day and all the rides) worth of fun. With shorter lines, I wonder if the fun-quotient isn't the same or better than the thousands you'd pay for Disneyland or hundreds you'd pay for Great America. My daughter and her friend liked the water-tube-slide thingy so much, they went on it ten times -- not something that would be likely to happen at Disneyland where there might be an hour wait for a ride.




The "Little Dipper" -- an ancient wooden roller coaster -- is the stuff of nightmares if you are under six. For anyone else, only the general ricketyness is of concern.




This is currently the stuff of my nightmares. This hot dog is wrapped in the American flag and showering itself with ketchup and mustard in an effort to pretty itself up and make you want to eat it -- a very self-defeating act for a hot dog. I cut off the bottom part of the wiener because, well, this is a family blog and some things are just too disgusting.

Kiddieland is full of retro detail like the hot dog above -- must have been the cool thing in condiments at some point. Or was there a point in time in the last eighty-one years that people didn't know to put ketchup on their hot dogs and needed that self-same hot dog to point the way to fully condimented bliss? Were their periods, say during WWII, when patrons would only trust an American hot dog as opposed to a German frankfurter?

Another retro detail (sorry, no picture): a large tin thermometer that is also a vintage advertisement for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco that greets you as you begin the log ride. (See also.)







Enjoying the Scrambler as it scrambles. Sadly my favorite ride, The Polyp, was closed. That's right, they aren't just for Ronald Reagan's colon -- Who wouldn't want to ride a polyp? If only they could stay in business, Kiddieland could invite children to ride the "Malignant Melanoma" or "Weeping Staph Infection."





Dig the Buck Rogers style space pod with attached guns that make old-style "wooga-wooga" noises. This area of the park (which really only has two areas) has a number of retro-futurist "spin your child" rides.

The only thing I can think of that has the same non-corporate, home-made, and purely "for the heck of it" vibe as Kiddieland is Circus Bruno. I don't know if Circus Bruno still exists.

Or perhaps Kiddieland just seems more charming now because it's closing?




We stayed their seven hours and the kids would have stayed longer. I have never tested my daughter's staying power at Kiddieland -- I always give up first.




As a kid I wanted nothing more than to ride in the mini-trolley car on the right. I would run out of the gate and zoom right for it -- disappointed if the front seat was taken. The trolley or new-fangled "moto-bikes" would then spin benignly at a speed of 5mph while all the kids made clanging/beeping noises. It's a bit hard to see the allure.

Yet, there is a whole aesthetic that I was introduced to as a child at Kiddieland -- something to do with the flashing lights on the bumper cars, the shined chrome on the fins of the merry-go-round convertibles, the sleek Zephyr-like lines of the mini-railroad that travels through the parking lot -- something about that old-time amusement park aesthetic is something truly magical, home-grown, and as American as ketchup on hot-dogs. There's a lot about Kiddieland I don't like as a parent, namely the fact that I have to be there all day, but I also can't deny that something of Kiddieland is stuck in me. So when they finally take down the multi-colored mini Ferris wheel that is made up of five kid-sized cages there will be the ghost of at least one little boy who was stuck at the top, all of fifteen feet in the air, and thought: "ohhhh gosh, I"m flying!"