The Rocket Park
“The original rocket was placed in the park in 1966 and no longer met the current safety standards and thus was not insurable as it stood.” –Future Neenah, a non-profit group that heads local projects.
1994
Going to Riverside Park, affectionately referred to by Neenah, Wisconsin locals as “The Rocket Park,” is the ultimate adventure as a child. Usually, we go with one adult who watches three or more children at a time. The likelihood of one child hiding in an unreachable place is increased significantly when there are more children around to egg them on. Adults are always outnumbered. I have three siblings and the woman who babysits us has two children of her own. Together, our mischievous energy begins a naughty children’s revolution to rival Lord of the Flies. I am the youngest of the bunch, usually told to stay out of the big kid’s business. But at The Rocket Park, we are united, ready to raise hell. This is the magical park with the towering metal rocket, with only a hint of the color it had been painted. Red, maybe, covered in brownish rust and dents. It touches the clouds, its metal slide jutting out from a make-believe door. The rocket smells like urine, marred by decades of initials scrawled in by high school lovers who have climbed to the top level to kiss, maybe more. If the wind blows hard enough off the lake, the whole structure shakes. I am finally brave enough to climb the ladder all the way to the top; I freeze when the structure begins to sway. My heart flutters from the lovely thrill. Even so, I begin to cry.
2001
Eventually, playing with Barbies stops being cool. Instead, you ride your bike or rollerblade outside with other little scoundrel girls who have scabs on their knees. You find the nearest kid with a trampoline in their backyard and double bounce one another. Free from your parents’ dirty looks, you play make-believe games where you are all international spies or talk about the green eyes of your latest crush. You sloppily apply cheap lipstick that you pilfered from your mothers, sisters, and friends. They each contain a type of toxic, glittery substance; you think you look grown up when you visit the bathroom mirror. Some days, you ride your bikes all the way up Cecil Street to go to The Rocket Park. When all the parents leave their children in search of dinner, tweens and teens show up to make a ruckus. Even as the autumn air begins to nip painfully at your dimples, you run around playing freeze tag or hide-and-seek with altered rules for hours. Sometimes, you find fresh-faced boys to chase from other schools and lie about your names when they ask. You challenge the boys to a race to the top of the rocket. You imagine yourself a part of the rocket’s history by snagging your first kiss at the very top, etching your initials in the metal, with a quarter or a stick. It never happens. But you imagine that it did.
2007
Many Neenah locals are devastated when it is announced that the Rocket will be taken down. Forty-one years bulldozed in a weekend. Some reluctantly agree with the decision, due to “safety concerns.” Stories are passed around and overblown on local news: a kid broke a bone, perhaps their leg, after they went down the unstable metal slide. Some locals blame the parents for not watching their kid. Some blame the rocket, as if it had planned to maim the kid all along. I hate to see signs of history erased in favor of more modern updates—call me stuck in the past. Call me cliché. Call me nostalgic. I like old buildings, cobble stone, and rust-laden rockets that overlook the lake. Secretly, I am tormented by the fact that I never got my top-tier kiss or scratchy initials. The town mourns the fact that so many children will never feel the rush of courage from finally making it to the top or the sudden sickness that follows, as the rocket sways in the wind.
2009
We haven’t visited the new rocket yet. During warm summer days, the place is infested with sticky-fingered kids and helicopter parents. At night, bored teenagers roam the park with their friends asking questions with no answers. Somebody sneaks a bottle of liquor from their parents, someone else brings stale cigarettes, and another brings a friend from out of town. The imminent disaster of this concoction can be smelled from the surrounding neighborhoods. We are all careless because we’ve just graduated high school and know everything. Slightly drunk, we all lay on the warm AstroTurf and forget about the spiders that fall graceful from surrounding trees. In the dark, we see only the blurred outlines of one another and the streetlights making small fires in our eyes. Later, someone climbs into the new rocket that replaced the old one. It’s too short. Too safe. Too new. The thrill of being too high and too alive fell with the deconstruction of the old rocket. We sit inside the new structure and pass around stories of the old rocket. Everyone has a story. They are cherished memories, tinged with grief, woven into the fabric of our little Wisconsin town. A little drunk and angry about the fallen rocket, a friend stands at the top of the slide and pees. It collects at the bottom in a pool as if to say, There. Now this one smells like urine too.
1994
Going to Riverside Park, affectionately referred to by Neenah, Wisconsin locals as “The Rocket Park,” is the ultimate adventure as a child. Usually, we go with one adult who watches three or more children at a time. The likelihood of one child hiding in an unreachable place is increased significantly when there are more children around to egg them on. Adults are always outnumbered. I have three siblings and the woman who babysits us has two children of her own. Together, our mischievous energy begins a naughty children’s revolution to rival Lord of the Flies. I am the youngest of the bunch, usually told to stay out of the big kid’s business. But at The Rocket Park, we are united, ready to raise hell. This is the magical park with the towering metal rocket, with only a hint of the color it had been painted. Red, maybe, covered in brownish rust and dents. It touches the clouds, its metal slide jutting out from a make-believe door. The rocket smells like urine, marred by decades of initials scrawled in by high school lovers who have climbed to the top level to kiss, maybe more. If the wind blows hard enough off the lake, the whole structure shakes. I am finally brave enough to climb the ladder all the way to the top; I freeze when the structure begins to sway. My heart flutters from the lovely thrill. Even so, I begin to cry.
2001
Eventually, playing with Barbies stops being cool. Instead, you ride your bike or rollerblade outside with other little scoundrel girls who have scabs on their knees. You find the nearest kid with a trampoline in their backyard and double bounce one another. Free from your parents’ dirty looks, you play make-believe games where you are all international spies or talk about the green eyes of your latest crush. You sloppily apply cheap lipstick that you pilfered from your mothers, sisters, and friends. They each contain a type of toxic, glittery substance; you think you look grown up when you visit the bathroom mirror. Some days, you ride your bikes all the way up Cecil Street to go to The Rocket Park. When all the parents leave their children in search of dinner, tweens and teens show up to make a ruckus. Even as the autumn air begins to nip painfully at your dimples, you run around playing freeze tag or hide-and-seek with altered rules for hours. Sometimes, you find fresh-faced boys to chase from other schools and lie about your names when they ask. You challenge the boys to a race to the top of the rocket. You imagine yourself a part of the rocket’s history by snagging your first kiss at the very top, etching your initials in the metal, with a quarter or a stick. It never happens. But you imagine that it did.
2007
Many Neenah locals are devastated when it is announced that the Rocket will be taken down. Forty-one years bulldozed in a weekend. Some reluctantly agree with the decision, due to “safety concerns.” Stories are passed around and overblown on local news: a kid broke a bone, perhaps their leg, after they went down the unstable metal slide. Some locals blame the parents for not watching their kid. Some blame the rocket, as if it had planned to maim the kid all along. I hate to see signs of history erased in favor of more modern updates—call me stuck in the past. Call me cliché. Call me nostalgic. I like old buildings, cobble stone, and rust-laden rockets that overlook the lake. Secretly, I am tormented by the fact that I never got my top-tier kiss or scratchy initials. The town mourns the fact that so many children will never feel the rush of courage from finally making it to the top or the sudden sickness that follows, as the rocket sways in the wind.
2009
We haven’t visited the new rocket yet. During warm summer days, the place is infested with sticky-fingered kids and helicopter parents. At night, bored teenagers roam the park with their friends asking questions with no answers. Somebody sneaks a bottle of liquor from their parents, someone else brings stale cigarettes, and another brings a friend from out of town. The imminent disaster of this concoction can be smelled from the surrounding neighborhoods. We are all careless because we’ve just graduated high school and know everything. Slightly drunk, we all lay on the warm AstroTurf and forget about the spiders that fall graceful from surrounding trees. In the dark, we see only the blurred outlines of one another and the streetlights making small fires in our eyes. Later, someone climbs into the new rocket that replaced the old one. It’s too short. Too safe. Too new. The thrill of being too high and too alive fell with the deconstruction of the old rocket. We sit inside the new structure and pass around stories of the old rocket. Everyone has a story. They are cherished memories, tinged with grief, woven into the fabric of our little Wisconsin town. A little drunk and angry about the fallen rocket, a friend stands at the top of the slide and pees. It collects at the bottom in a pool as if to say, There. Now this one smells like urine too.
Maggie Finch recently graduated from Northern Michigan University with her M.A. in English. She has been a poetry reader for both The Wisconsin Review and Passages North. Her published work has appeared in Third Street Writers’ publication Beach Reads: Paradise, Gravitas, and Mistake House. Beyond writing and reading, Maggie enjoys sipping coffee, eating vegetarian meals, and spending time with her cat named Bean.