I recently returned to the Park (the proper name is the Arcadia Community Regional Park, but to the hoards of us who marauded around it as kids, it was just the Park) where I spent so much of my pre- and early-teen childhood. Especially those long summer days. The sun, seemingly stuck in the sky somewhere just past noon, burning down with particular intensity, baking the metal merry-go-round and the rocket ship to a skin-searing million degrees, or so we claimed. The sand offered little relief from the temperature and no cushion from a fall. When we could no longer endure the heat, we would wander over to the pool and try not to get yelled at for doing flips off the diving board. In those eternal afternoons everything seemed harsh and faded in the blazing sun. Today I still see the Park as desaturated and overexposed.
Wandering through the park I was immediately drawn to the Lawn Bowling greens. As kids we would hop the chainlink fence, which at three feet was surely more aesthetic than functional, and run around on the manicured grass until some worker would chase us out yelling something about ruining the lawns. Why, we thought, do the old people get the nice lawns and shaded benches while we have to put up with blazing hot, rough sand? Lawn bowling continues, apparently, to be something of a niche pastime.
The pool was a mixed bag. It offered some respite from the heat, but you couldn’t chase each other around it (no running allowed, the sign said and the lifeguard enforced), you weren’t supposed to do flips off the diving boards (another rule announced by a sign and enforced by a lifeguard), and it seemed always to be crowded with moms and their little kids.
Wandering through the Park I couldn’t help but recall those summer days and to lament the loss not of innocence but of the rocket ship, the merry-go-round, and the sand. I also couldn’t help but see the Park in overexposed and desaturated scenes. None of the photos I took that day looked quite right — the colors too vivid; the light too soft. For me, the Park will always be vaguely overexposed and desaturated. Nostalgia seems to be what I photographed that day.