When Sequoia Park rocked in the 'Summer of Love'

I spent the "Summer of Love" -- and the two summers that preceded it -- rolling single day to Sequoia Park in Eureka. And, while I was just a child, I knew something really cool was going on amidst the redwood trees in the mid-1960s.

The redwood ampitheater stage was still fairly new and rock bands would plug in and play over there all the time. There were benches were people would sit and listen to music, smoke dope and drink wine. Last I was there, only grass and a tiny gazebo remained. I tend to think the city, in a very art-centric area, could've afforded to pay for redwood to keep that stage in tact, but it was easier to just tear it down.

Actually, I spent most of my passing through Sequoia Park. I lived out in Cutten and had to bicycle through the park on the road that used to allow cars to drive from the back entrance down to the duck pond. We'd haul ass on our bikes -- sting-rays with those banana seats -- against traffic. Then, we'd zip onto the trail adjacent to the road that's still there.

Our destination was always The Park Store -- owned by Rex Bohn's late father. I'd ride over there a couple times a day just to buy Gooscicles (I preferred cherry, but settled for blueberry) or Topps Baseball Cards. In the 1960s you could get 5 cards and a piece of gum for 5 cents. We raised the money to buy cards and sweets by rummaging for empty soda bottles we'd return for the deposit. (My friend was good at putting one six pack on top of a basket at old Shear's Market or Cutten Store and then convincing the clerk we'd brought in 4, 5 six packs.)

Sequoia Park didn't have redwood chips and soccer-mom-safe kids' rides back then. There were two really, really long slides. There'd be a line waiting to ride them and the climb to the top scared some people to the point they had to have somebody help them back down. How tall and fast were those slides? I broke my leg when I was 6 simply by flying down one of them and slamming my foot too hard at the bottom. I broke my fibula in my right leg. Seriously. The slides were out about 20 feet off of T Street where there's nothing but grass now.

We used to take wax paper with us to the park. We'd tear a big strip and sit on it to turn the already long, fast slide into a thrill ride.

The slides were actually close to the old train engine they parked at Sequoia Park when they took out a cherry (hey, it was the '60s) ride. There was room for a dozen kid to grab onto rings hanging from chains and just fly around and around and around in circles. I never did it, but it must've been seriously dangerous because it was one of the first rides to disappear.

There were two sets of those really big swings then, too. There was nothing as thrilling and life-altering as swinging as high as we could on those swings. We were 9, 10, 11 years old ... the older kids were expanding their world listening to psychedelic rock and smoking dope. We were finally free of our parents swinging so high we touched the trees with our feet ... and nobody was there to say, "Be careful!"

There were always kids who'd do crazy stuff like jump out of the swings when they were just flying way above the ground. Not me. The urban legend that I completely believed was that the teen-aged bad-asses could swing so high that they'd actually fly all the way and over the top of the bar ... which, I later figured, most surely defied gravity.

In the 1960s, there was a big sand box type thing on the east side of the park. Before that, the sand box was a public swimming pool. That was before my time. The pony ride -- ponies that just went around and around in a tiny circle -- was there until the mid-1960s. I dug those ponies. I really dug the tiny train that circled tracks that seemed long and elaborate out behind where the bathrooms still stand.

If you walked behind the dirtiest bathroom in town in the early 2000s, you could see a trail and that trail is where the train tracks used to run. It didn't cost a dime to ride that train, so you can imagine how busy it was all day ... every day ... all summer.

The "curly slide" was wrapped around redwood trees over on the west side by the hideous bathrooms. The little tube slide made of plastic slightly amused my kids, but I told them it was nothing like standing in line to get on the "curly slide." The wax paper came into play there, too. That somebody was smart enough to build it in and around two trees that still exist over by the big rock that honors war veterans was mind-boggling.

The merry-go-round was as hellacious as we wanted it to be. It was right in the middle of where all the play things are now ... or were when I last checked in on the ghost town the park had become.

During the summer, the heavy metal merry-go-round would be filled with kids. There'd be a band covering psychedelic rock at the amphitheater. It blew my mind before I was old enough to know my mind could really be blown. It wasn't as though anybody cared who else was on the merry-go-round. We didn't wait for friends. We didn't take turns. Some kids with strong stomachs could spin and spin and spin for an hour and never get off. And, nobody was there to shout, "Take turns kids!"

There were always bigger, stronger kids to grab hold of the merry-go-round and spin that monster 100 mph! I was afraid of injury and could see how easily somebody could fly off simply as a result of the force created by the thing spinning so fast in such a small, tight circle. Still, I remember later, say in 1967, when I was one of the guys who straddled the upside-down U-shaped bars, held on with both hands, and had the big kids spin it with us leaning backward, toward the ground, heads tilted to the sky.

It was simply out of this world. Families barbecuing at the stone barbecue pits. Music playing. Kids sipping wine and getting high.

Another urban legend, or scary story, had a kid slipping off the merry-go-round and somehow falling underneath it ... while it was spinning at warp speed. That thing was sturdy and the ground was hard. I can't imagine the injuries a kid would've suffered. But, then again, we didn't spend a second thinking about hurting ourselves. If we were supposed to worry about hurting ourselves, we figured the people who ran the park wouldn't have put such bitchin' scary rides there.

Then, one day, we showed up and there were wood chips ... and these tiny bouncing horses. The grass and dirt was covered with foul-smelling wood chips.

Then one of the big sets of swings disappeared. Soon, the big slide was moved -- and shortened. Of course, the law of averages resulted in a car finally hitting a kid on a bike on the road behind the zoo, so the road closed. The park folks didn't realize that while they were protecting us on that road, we were congregating at the top of a dirt hill above the duck pond on our bikes trying to test fate.

That's how boys started becoming men, I guess. We put ourselves in dangerous, exciting, precarious positions ... and acted like it was no big deal. We'd push our bikes to the top of that hill and then roar down -- with no idea whether or not a car was coming! We never met a car, but we always hit the steep portion of the hill that led to the pond going faster than hell. We could barely maneuver the corner at the bottom, which was the whole idea.

See, we didn't need dirt bikes and road bikes and racing bikes. We had one bike and it was good for all terrain. So, as they removed the adrenaline-rush rides, we came up with our own ways to rock.

Sometimes a driver would bitch us out, but it was generally accepted that boys on bicycles were all crazy brave and bulletproof back then. I clearly remember having to struggle to keep control of my bike on the way down the trail, then barely keeping the damn thing on the road ... then rushing back to do it again. And, there were guys who were far more brave than I was who threw in jumps, wheelies and all kinds of stuff that would result in closing that road, blocking that trail and lawsuits through 2025 these days.

Sequoia Park used to rock, but ... then again ... so did we.

(Contact Ted Sillanpaa at tsillanpaa1956@gmail.com.)