Belle Isle

I grew up in the forties and fifties on the east side of Detroit. My favorite park was Belle Isle. It was a magic place, nine hundred and eighty two acres in the middle of the Detroit River. My daddy used to take me there to ride in the pony carts or on saddle. We always visited the Children’s zoo where you could put a nickel in a machine, turn the key, and get a handful of food for the goats or whatever.

By the boathouse, there was a stand selling frozen custard near an elephant in a big, circular cage. Daddy always bought peanuts for him. We walked through the Conservancy (we called it the Flower house) to see the wonderful displays that changed every once in a while and were particularly spectacular during the Christmas season. We sat at the band shell for free concerts, and went through the Aquarium. Although the displays of fish from around the world seldom changed, they were always fascinating.

You could use the locker room and change clothes to swim or sit on the beach. I would be warned not to go into the water for at least an hour after eating. Since our walk around the island included stops at almost every hot dog and ice cream stand, I seldom got to swim and confined my dips in the Detroit River to knee-high cool offs.

Sometimes, we stayed until after dark to watch the colored lights play on the water dancing out of the big fountain. What had once been a casino in the old days was a restaurant and we often ate a final meal there before going home.

Daddy never owned a car, so we rode the bus. I never remembered the trip home. I was usually asleep.

There was a golf course, canoe rides, bicycles you could rent, and a Boat Club and the Yacht Club. While I did not use those facilities, I appreciated that they were available.

Time goes by, and life changes. When I became an adolescent and fell in love with horses, I saved my lunch money all week to accumulate the two dollars to ride a grown-up horse for one hour. My friends, Shelby and Carol, often went with me. When you signed in and paid your money, they asked, “Western or English?”These conditions include bone buy generic cialis fracture, sprained muscles, injured ligaments, and tendons. But what exactly these drugs do to your body that allows you to achieve solid erections no matter what? If put simply, order viagra professional and its peers work by stimulating the blood flow into the sexual system, enhancing satisfaction. There are thousands of men around the tadalafil from india world, who would consciously not take care of his or her body. Therefore, it is very important to talk cheap cialis why not check here about with your partner and/or doctor.

I never had a lesson, but rode one way some times, the other the next.

The horses kept for rental slept in a row of narrow stalls, but there were also box stalls where the privately owned animals stabled. The owners sometimes let them go too long without exercise. The stable hands came to know me and knew I treated the horses well. Occasionally, the stable hands would give me one of those special and usually Thoroughbred or Warm Bloods to ride. Those horses taught me to ride ‘English.’

I never did fall out of love with horses, but I did eventually discover a certain teenage boy, the one who was to become my husband. We drove to Belle Isle and parked in the lover’s lane. We kissed, and kissed, and kissed. Back then, that was it. You didn’t have sex until you married, at least, not the girls I ran around with. (I know, I know, can’t end a sentence with a ‘with,’ so…with whom I socialized.)

In the seventies, the Isle fell into disrepair. It wasn’t until a few years ago when the new mayor, (God bless him,) took steps to rescue it. Belle Isle was made into a state park and preservation efforts began.

Many of the old treasures, the Zoo, the Band Shell, the Aquarium, and the Conservancy, among them, have been restored. I only hope that someday the place where I spent so many happy hours growing up will be as glorious as it was back then.