There was no Carowinds, no Six Flags, and even Disneyland was a “Wish Upon a Star” away. There was, however, in the middle of nowhere, Springs Park, Lancaster. Nestled near the Catawba River as it heads toward Great Falls, Colonel Elliott Springs created his own Fantasyland. There was no Jiminy Cricket or Tinkerbell but there may have been just a little bit of Peter Pan lingering inside “The Colonel”.
Sure, he was a World War I Ace, a brilliant industrialist, an advertising innovator and a successful writer but there was always room to play. After all, when everyone said that mill workers would never take up golf…well it goes to show you. A golf course was thriving in each of three major Springs Mill towns along with swimming pools and an affordable beach resort was not far behind. Now, what to do with three WWII surplus planes and a kiddie sized steam locomotive?
Well, what else?
In its first iteration, Springs Park was just fun. Moms and Dads from local mill towns could pack up the kids and in 30 minutes or less, have an afternoon of family entertainment. For those of us in the ten and under crowd, there were two World War II fighter planes. Of course, the planes were defanged and all the dangerous parts removed but we could climb up in the cockpit of a P63 King Cobra and fly it anywhere our imaginations could conjure. I have asked around and cannot find out what the other fighter plane was, but for me, it will always be a P51 Mustang…the plane that won the war. I am eternally grateful that I got to pretend-fly a pretend Mustang and do a victory roll over grateful pretend ground troops.
But I digress. Lunch was also an aeronaut’s delight. Hot dogs and hamburgers served up fresh cooked from the belly of a B24 Liberator Bomber. Belly bombs, indeed, eaten on picnic tables in the enclosed area under the massive wings.
There were wooden stairs leading up to the cockpit of the bomber too but wasps seemed partial to the area and a sting from one of those miniature Messerschmitts put an end to the fun for a while.
For the train lover, Lionel had nothing to compete with a miniature steam engine which pulled three open gondola cars each big enough to squeeze in half a dozen kids. With a grown-up engineer, sometimes the Colonel himself, sitting astride the locomotive they could take a lap or two around the 900 yard oval track giggling to the sound of the steam whistle and waving at parents left behind at the gate.
For the faint of heart there was a skating rink, a miniature golf course and an old-fashioned merry-go-round. The skating rink doubled as a performance area for big name country performers like Jimmy Dean, Minnie Pearl and Little Jimmy Dickins. I can vouch for Jimmy being little. Even at age ten I was taller than he was, even wearing his 3 ½ gallon hat.
Like country music in the 1960’s, Springs Park was born again with the addition of an Olympic-size swimming pool complete with a diving tower and an amphitheater that seated several thousand spectators. A lodge house and several cabins on adjoining property allowed hundreds of young campers to spend a week of swimming , paddle boating and hiking at Camp Springs.
With all good intentions, my cousin and friend Stormy Young recruited me as a counselor for the camp. Stormy was a freshman at Clemson, and I was between my junior and senior years of high school. I always tell Stormy that he started me smoking when I would ride with him to the camp. Don’t tell him but I was stealing my Mother’s Kool Regulars long before that.
Bob and Sue Jones were in charge of the camp and there were eight or ten counselors, one per cabin, divided between the girls camping area and the boys camping area. There was plenty of space between the two but most of the campers were too young to be sneaking into the neutral zone. That might not be true of the counsellors. Once the campers were settled in for the evening, one or two counselors would stay in the area and keep an eye on them, For the counselors who had the evening free, there was an area below the dining hall where some occasional mild shenanigans might have taken place.
I had, as I wrote earlier, been a disappointment to Bob Jones in his role as football coach due to my ineptitude as a defensive end. I could understand playing offensive end. The object was to stay away from being clobbered by the other team. Defensive ends, however, had the distasteful assignment of running into everyone coming their way. It was an important task but I have always been overburdened with a survival instinct.
It is my tendency, when I disappoint anyone, to try too hard to make up for it. The same was true of Coach Jones. I worked so hard to prove to him that I was not completely incompetent that a colossal failure was inevitable. It came at morning inspection.
After breakfast, campers and counsellors went back to their cabins or tents and got them ready for morning inspection. My campers worked diligently to make sure bunks were made and their belongings put away and that there were no candy wrappers lying around our area. Campers and counsellors then assembled in front of the dining hall waiting for Bob Jones to look through the tents and award an extra dessert to the neatest campsite. After twenty minutes, he came back down the hillside.
“Mike, I want you and your campers to follow me back to the tents.” I couldn’t imagine why but he didn’t look pleased. I knew that the campers in my tent had worked hard and that everything looked great when we left for breakfast.
When we got close to the tent, I could feel the sky falling. Between breakfast and inspection I realized that I had forgotten to bring a towel for morning swim. I ran back to the tent and in my hurry to return, forgot about inspection. My suitcase was open with clothes hanging out and my bunk was a mess where I sat on it to find the towel.
“Boys,” Bob said and I knew what was coming. “You might have won inspection today but can you tell me whose area this is?”
I had done it again. Every time I feel the need to prove myself, disaster looms ahead like a rogue iceberg. I try so hard that I stumble over my own Chuck Taylors.
I did, later in life, have a chance to redeem myself. When I took a job as an English teacher at Fort Mill High School, Bob was my assistant principal. One year the school was up for re-certification and we had a team of evaluators from all over the state studying the school and visiting our classrooms. During second period, an evaluator came in quietly and sat at the back of my classroom. It just happened to be one of those days every English teacher cherishes when I was at my very best. The evaluator left without saying anything but at the end of school Bob came into my classroom.
“What did you do when that lady was in your class? She told us we had better hold on to you because you were one of the best in the state.” I don’t know what I did, but it was a good day.
Back to Springs Park. A highlight of the camp was that counsellors and campers were able to swim in the shiny new Olympic pool every morning. There were two special features of the pool that every teen-aged boy was drawn to. The diving end of the pool was sixteen feet deep and there were stairs that led down to two large plate-glass viewing areas. It was like Sea World but with people. For teen-aged boys it was a lesson on the forlorn hope that someone diving off the tower would lose her bathing suit.
The real challenge was the diving tower itself. There were three levels but two didn’t matter. The top level was ten meters, over thirty feet to those of you who are still Americans. From the top of that tower, that huge pool looked the size of a bath towel. Every boy faced the challenge of being brave enough to jump off the top platform. It took until my third week of camp to build enough nerve to climb the stairs all the way to the top. Standing on the top platform meant either jumping off or coming down the stairs in shame. I reached the top, held the rail to get to the edge and looked down. There was no way. I could not bring myself to take that step into nothingness.
I took a deep breath and steeled my nerve to face the walk down. Something happened that I cannot explain to this day. I was halfway to the stairs when I spun around and ran off the edge. I had no intention of jumping but regret came too late as I was in freefall toward the water. I hit the pool with a knee-buckling splash and rose to the surface to the cheers of a few friends. I found I could brave the jump. The information was useless in that I had no intention of ever doing it again.
I went back to Springs Park several times but only once as an adult. I was a member of the Fort Mill Community Chorus and we were asked to perform at the park. A stage was set up beside the pool in front of the amphitheater and we realized that we were singing to over a thousand people. I confess that the crowd was not entirely for us. We were the opening act for Southern comedian and country legend Jerry Clower. Jerry kept the crowd enthralled with his hunting stories and his unforgettable characters. He closed with a story about his friend John who climbed a tree to knock a racoon down but to John’s dismay, the racoon turned out to be a bobcat. Like everything else in this episode, it was a true story. In Jerry’s Words, “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’!”
The park, sadly, is gone now. What is left of it looks like a futuristic nightmare. If you want to see pictures of the park then and now, there is a Facebook group called “I Remember Springs Park, Lancaster, SC”. It is worth a look.
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