You Know You're Old When You Feel Nostalgia...

[teddy_radiator]

sempraseverus' superb drawings of carousel animals has me thinking of the days when the Myrtle Beach Pavilion was a magic place you went to ride rickety amusement park rides, take a turn on the Full Menagerie Herschel-Spillman carousel, and listen to the German Band Organ. When I was a little girl, I used to stare at this for hours.

Now the Pavilion is only a memory, but the Organ and the Carousel were taken to another tourist attraction in Myrtle Beach called Broadway on the Beach. If you're ever there, go and listen to this lovely old organ which by the looks of it here, has gone through major renovations. At the Pavilion, it was sadly allowed to fall into a terrible state of disrepair. Now it's all shiny and beautiful. It is the sound and vision of my childhood, and even through my jaded teenaged years, I would stop and watch the band organ play. The top is just a nice set of shots, the bottom vid shows it in all it's jingling, turning, cherubic, bleating glory:

This one is sort of long, but worth it just to see the closeups!

Comments

[severus49.livejournal.com]

Sigh! It makes me long for the days of my amusement parks of old. Living in PA, you don't have beaches close, but you go to amusement parks locally. We used to have four of them when I was little, White Swan which was on our way to the airport, West View - which I lived about 15 minutes from, and watched steadily go downhill till the early '80s, Idlewild which was over an hour but had this neat old park beside it called 'Storybook Forest' with Mother Goose lifesized displays that you could walk through, and Kennywood Park, which was about 45 minutes from where I grew up. West View was within walking distance from my aunt and uncle's house and it was famous for the Dips. Kennywood is still there, and still tops on the ACE list (American Coaster Enthusiasts) though the undesirable kids, the lines and the prices have made it off limits for families to go; And Idlewild is still there, much bigger, a half hour from where I live (we love it), and now voted the Number One Kids Park in America (But, honestly, I think the bees voted that one, because you can't get near garbage cans due to the infestations!)

I'm glad some of those places are still there, but I miss going 'round the sharp bend in the road that the Dips at West View abutted, and watching the people fly past us in the coaster cars. Sadly, some things you can never get back...