Things I’m Glad I Got To Do
By Neal Wooten
Times change so fast it seems, especially as we get older. And while I may never experience the technological wonders that the future will no doubt deliver, I’m thankful to be old enough to have experienced many things lost in time to the younger generation.
I still have the memory from when I was a small boy of going to Canyonland Park. It was my first encounter with cotton candy, and it was love at first bite. I remember taking the chairlift down to the canyon floor then up the steep wall, across the street, and back into the park. It was groovy… or awesome… or dope… or whatever your generation uses.
The Hamilton Drive-In closed when I was a teenager, but I went a few times as a small boy with my family, and several times after I turned 14 and bought a motorcycle. It was like another world behind that giant screen with rows in semicircles, each one a little higher than the one in front, and gawky metal speakers. With this pandemic and who knows what might come next, I predict drive-ins will make a comeback.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 24 years since the final June Jam. The first one was the year I graduated from high school, and although I lived away after that, I still came back every year. The music was great, meeting people from all over was wonderful, and the fireworks were awesome. And don’t get me started on the sunburns and Porta Potties used by a thousand people before you. Ah, the memories.
Now that everyone can play countless high-definition video games on their televisions, computers, and I-Phones, arcades have all but faded away. But from the time I was 13 until I was 17, every quarter I could get my hands on found its way into one of the machines at the Silver Ball Arcade in Fort Payne. Grand theft all the autos you want, but nothing beats the classics like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Frogger, etc.
Sequoyah Caverns only closed eight years ago, so I hope most of you got a chance to take that tour. I used to bring friends up from Montgomery to experience those incredible looking-glass caverns and it never got old. I also remember learning in school that it was an official fallout shelter. They explained that during our nuclear war drills. I didn’t care for those, but I’ll take those over live-shooter drills any day.
Now these places and events only exist in our minds. As Dr. Seuss said, “Sometimes you will never know the value of something, until it becomes a memory.”