16 March 2008 - 18:14Great good places that have been lost

I have a fascination for places that come about because someone didn’t follow the conventional way of doing things; those one-of-a-kind places to eat, to play, to dream. Places that are not a product of a corporate state of mind, but that grow from an individual’s vision and passion. Amusement parks with simple attractions that allow kids to enjoy their imaginations; places where people gather to dance, laugh, and be friends; roadside diners with quirky signs outside, and humor and good food inside: these are all places that I have come to treasure for whatever time they are there to enjoy.

The Enchanted Forest was a storybook amusement park which opened in 1955 where you could wander through, and see characters from nursery rhymes and other whimsical stories. As a small child, a day trip to the Enchanted Forest with my family was one of my fondest memories. The park was owned by a single family, and as the founding generation aged, there was no one to take on the work of running the park. The land, with the attractions still on it (The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, The Three Little Pigs’ Houses, Willie the Whale, Cinderella’s Castle) was sold to a shopping center developer in 1989, who put a fence around these lovely memories and let them rot. However, in 2005, many of the Enchanted Forest buildings and figures were moved to Clark’s Elioak Farm not too far away from their original location, where they can be enjoyed by present and future generations of small children.

The Clog Palace was the place to go in the 1980s and 1990s in the Washington, D.C. area for listening to and dancing to Appalachian old-time string band music. There was a lot of eating, drinking, and socializing, too, as I recall. It was held in a few places over the years, but is most known for its time at Captain White’s Oyster Bar on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland. I’ve recently begun a project called the Clog Palace Memories Project to gather stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and any audio or video files that may exist recording the music, dance, and fun we had there. Even though the Clog Palace doesn’t exist any more, and in fact was held in several places over the years, strong bonds of friendship and community were created there and live to this day.

Planet Wayside was a quirky little diner that a friend told me I ought to check out, because she knew I liked tacky yet ironic things. She couldn’t have been more right about it. I visited it for the first time in late 2001, when the whole world seemed to be falling apart, and I desperately needed a diversion from the stress. Everything about the place, from the roadside sign with its bizarre messages (“Children named after fish eat free”), to the decor (a caricature of Madeline Albright, who sometimes visited), to the demeanor of the owner (deadpan humor that could be misconstrued as rudeness if you weren’t in on the joke) appealed to my goofy sense of humor. Sadly, the owner’s wife died in 2003, and despite his best efforts, he was unable to continue running the restaurant. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough customers. The day he re-opened the restaurant after his wife’s death, people started pouring in to see their old friend, and the local fire department called in an order for a half a dozen sandwiches in the first fifteen minutes. Planet Wayside was razed in 2006, and now a new restaurant stands in its place.

It’s sad when a places like these are lost, but it’s part of the natural order of things. What makes these places charming is also what makes them vulnerable. They are usually the result of one person’s vision and inspiration, and only they have the energy and interest in pursuing them. When the time comes that the visionary is too burned out, or out of money, or too sick to keep things going, the dream comes to an end. Unless someone else is willing to step in with their own vision, energy, and money to maintain them, these places often fade away in time. Sometimes the right thing to do is let them go; other times it’s not. Whatever the case may be, think about the places and people in your lives that make life fun, and treasure them while you have them. You just never know what tomorrow will bring.