When I put this page up last Labor Day I figured my mom and my cousins would read it. Instead I've gotten e-mails and
letters from all over the country, from people who went to Pine Hollow as far back as the thirties. Some of them
made me laugh at work and some of them made me pull over in the parking lot. Here they are, oldest first. Keep
them coming! — Timmy
Eva Singleton, Rome, Georgia
Our Sunday school class went every June on the back of a deacon's hay truck, singing the whole way. Admission was a
nickel, and my daddy gave me a quarter for the whole day and told me to make it last. I rode the coaster in 1932 when I was
fourteen and screamed so loud the preacher's wife asked if I'd been saved. Grown folks dressed up for the park then. The men
wore hats and ties to ride the carousel. Can you imagine.
Clarence Bruns, Chattanooga
I worked the coaster platform the summer of 1937, when I was seventeen, for fifteen cents an hour, which was good money.
My job was to check that everybody's lap bar was down and to holler "Keep your hands inside!" which nobody ever did. I
still have the badge. On Saturday nights I'd stand outside the ballroom and listen to the bands play, because I couldn't
afford to go in.
Roscoe Wood, Ebbert, Georgia
I learned to swim off the end of the Pine Hollow dock in 1938 when my big brother threw me in. That's how it was done then.
During the war the park stayed open but you couldn't get tires or gas, so people came out on the bus, and on Saturday nights
the soldiers came out by the truckload. Everybody was saving their ration stamps for gas to get to Pine Hollow.
Eleanor Schneider, Nashville
The ballroom in the summer of 1946, with all the boys home from the war. My sister and I wore the same two dresses all summer
and switched them back and forth so nobody would notice. There was a big band every Saturday and the windows were open over
the lake and you could hear the water under the floor between songs. Timmy, your grandparents were out there every Saturday
that summer. Everybody knew them, because they were the best waltzers on the floor and they knew it.
Buford Ortiz, Dalton
I asked my wife to marry me on the Ferris wheel in September of 1949. She said yes when we were at the very top, and then the
wheel stopped there to let people off at the bottom and we sat up there for ten minutes, and I've always believed Mr. Hardesty
did that on purpose. Fifty years this December.
James Andino, Atlanta
Timmy, you wrote about the fried pie lady. That was my mother. She made the fried pies at Pine Hollow from 1950 until the
very last day, apple and peach, two hundred a morning in the summer, and I grew up in that snack shack. She's 83 now, living
with my sister, and when I printed out your page and read her the part where you said nobody ever made a better fried pie,
she said, "Well, that's true." Then she cried. Thank you.
Nellie Martinez, Chattanooga
I worked the carousel ticket booth three summers, 1950 to 1952. The organ played the same few tunes all day long, and I still
hum them when I'm doing the dishes. My husband says he can always tell when I'm thinking about Pine Hollow. Every child who
ever rode that carousel had a favorite horse. Mine was the white one with the roses carved on its saddle.
Sidney Warriner, Knoxville
They put in the Tilt-A-Whirl in 1955 or '56, and the first summer you'd wait an hour for it. I took a girl on it on our first
date and she got sick on my shoes. I married her anyway. We still laugh about it, though she says to tell you it was the corn
dog, not the ride.
Tommy Hirst, Huntsville, Alabama
The ballroom turned into a skating rink around 1958, and from 1961 to '66 I was there every Friday and Saturday night of the
summer. They played records over the speakers and had a couples-only skate where the lights went down, which was the most
terrifying three minutes of every week of my life. My friends and I had a rule that you had to ride the Flyer with your hands
up the whole way or buy everybody a Coke.
Ronald Kilmer, Birmingham, Alabama
My dad drove a bread truck and delivered to the snack shack, and in the summer of 1957 he took me along on his route. Mr.
Hardesty gave me a free ride ticket every time we came. I must have ridden the train two hundred times that summer, because
the train was the only thing I was tall enough for. I still say it was the best ride in the park.
Douglas Sparkman, Cleveland, Tennessee
Graduation night 1972, actually, so it's barely the seventies, but I'm putting it here. Our whole senior class rented the park
for the night and Mr. Hardesty kept the Flyer running until two in the morning. Somebody rode it fourteen times in a row. It
might have been me.
Manuel English, Chattanooga
Timmy, you don't know me, but I think we were in the Spook House line together about a hundred times. I was the kid who knew
exactly where the skeleton dropped and grabbed his sister's arm right before it, every time, and every time she screamed. She
still hasn't forgiven me. The brass ring: I never got it, not once in ten years. I'm still a little bitter.
Douglas Issa, Marietta, Georgia
I ran the bumper boats the last two summers, 1986 and 1987. A whole lagoon full of kids ramming each other all day, and I
was the one in the lifeguard chair with the whistle. The last day, after we shut down, all of us who worked the rides went out
on the boats ourselves and rammed each other in the dark until Mr. Hardesty came down and told us to go home. He was laughing.
Donald Lovato, Chattanooga
I was only twelve when it closed, but I remember Kiddieland, the little red airplanes that went up and down when you pulled the
stick, and I remember being so proud the summer I was finally tall enough for the Flyer. That was 1987. I got one summer. My
daughter will never get to ride it, and that's why I'm glad you made this page.
GOT A PINE HOLLOW MEMORY?
E-mail it to me at [email protected]. Tell me
the year and where you live now. I'll put it up.
|
|
|
GeoCities.us
» Route66 » Mile
