R.I.P. Storybook Gardens

Jack be nimble, Jack be ... Whoa! Looks like somebody lost a foot jumping over a candlestick. One of the characters up for auction.


All the kings horses and all the kings men,
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again ...

It was hard not to poke fun. The peeling paint, the classic characters with missing appendages, the cartoon buildings that held some function now relegated to storage. It was clear it had seen better days.

But it was a landmark, a tradition dating back 50 plus years. It was a pioneer attraction where stories came alive for thousands of children.

This was Storybook Gardens in Wisconsin Dells.

And so went our visit. After handing over a $13-per-person admission,  we walked around the park, exploring the nursery rhyme tableaus, waving at the monkeys and keeping the kids from wading into the ponds.

"Want to check out the playhouse? Sure, sweetie, just let dad make sure there aren't any racoons living inside first."

Let the kids have their fun, enjoy it for the kitsch factor. Besides, Zoltar was nowhere to be found.

The high points were feeding the giraffes and riding the train. The animal show was the best.

Sadly, that was our last visit to that Wisconsin Dells-area park. Storybook Gardens isn't opening this year. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the characters are going to be auctioned off, and the land will be used for a new attraction. It's purely an economic decision. I imagine the garden doesn't bring in the crowds that it used to. A city of thrill parks, water slides and resort hotels has spring up around it, making it hard to compete for tourist dollars.

Heck, there's even a mammoth Trojan horse at the go kart track down the street.

And, like the owner said in the State Journal article, kids today don't know anything about the characters. We have two small books with the nursery rhymes that we read to the kids, but not too often. I even had trouble figuring out some of the displays or remembering the complete verses or explaining the plots

Still, there was something simple and peaceful about the place. You could check in and go at your own pace.




Old King Cole was a merry old soul, something, something ... Hey kids, while you're up there, how about making yourself useful and scraping some paint.

Zombies

Well, we made it through the Rapture. It appears no one was summonded away, at least no one I know and apparently no one in the public eye.

The Maya Apocalypse of 2012 is still a whole year away, so that means we should be preparing for the next big event --- the walking dead.

Luckily, the federal government isn't remaining silent on this issue (as it has with both the Rapture and the Mayapocalypse).

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control (I've always wondered how something can have more than one center) have released tips on how to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. You can find them here ---  http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp.

The Centers (Center) also note they (it) "would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine)."

It's good to know that the CDC is being open and upfront with their zombie plans. The military and Homeland Security haven't done likewise. And it not because they don't have plans.

They do have plans.

As we all know (at least those who are familiar with zombie literature and film) those plans aren't public because they involve rounding up civilians who may be infected and using them for vaccination experiments or exterminating them.

Pocketknife

I still remember my first pocketknife. It was first or second grade, and we lived outside an Army base in what was West Germany. After much discussion, my father took me to the PX on the base to pick one out.
 
With my own money and my dad's blessing secured, I eyed the models in the glass case just inside the front of the store. There was a thick Swiss army knife packed with too many tools to remember. It was so thick that I had no idea how it would fit in my pocket, which wasn't an issue because it was out of my price range.
 
My eyes (and wallet) settled on a smaller knife, one the a blue plastic scale handle. A price of about $7 seems to be what I remember. There was no sales tax. It was a basic pocketknife, one with a main blade, small blade, corkscrew and standard bottle and can opener.
 
That was in the early 1970s.
 
Last week I took my 8-year-old son out to buy his first pocketknife. He's been in the Cub Scouts and worked on his knife care and safety lesson --- how to sharpen, how to close it without losing a finger and so on.
 
We went to the hipper big box retailer and found a Victorinox Recruit --- a good starter knife with the basics --- for $15 plus tax.
 
I hold the knife and give it to him when he requests it for specific tasks. The first request came shortly after we arrived home. He whittled a stick that had fallen from one of the backyard trees. After he stripped off the bark and shaped one end into a fine point, he nicked himself on a finger. Nothing serious, but just enough to chalk it up as a safety lesson.
 
Over the years, I've acquired several other knives of all fashion and function. But I still have the blue handle pocketknife.

Housekeeping

I finally got those banner ads on the top of the site to go away. I also did some minor tinkering.

After that, I spent most of the morning trying to get the lawnmower, an ancient Toro, to work after a long winter hibernation.

I changed into by grubby pants (ratty cargos with holes in the slash pockets) and old yard-work shoes, Filled the mower with gas, checked the oil, pulled the cord a few dozen times to get it started.

No luck.

Messed around with it some more and tried another dozen pulls. Nothing.

Let it sit for awhile and puttered around with other stuff. Put up something on the swing set for the kids.

Tried again. Still nothing.

After more tinkering and pulling, I gave up and changed back into my non-grubby clothes to run some errands. Before driving off,  I decided to give it one last chance. It started on the second pull. Not wanting to risk having to do it all over again, I went straight to moving the lawn in my good clothes, leaving a nice green film on my sneakers.

So, I got the lawn done, but my right hand is ripped up from all the failed starts, and my shoulder is numb. It's hard to type.

Bin Laden's death dispells stereotypes

They told us he was evil incarnate, the worst of the worst. For more than 10 years, they told us he lived in a cave, plotting the destruction of the western world.

Well, now we know the truth.

Bin Laden wasn't planning future terrorist strikes from a cave. He was planning from a wall three-story, $1 million compound on the outskirts of a city in Pakistan (that was for about five years, the two years before that he was apparently renting). He had all the amenities, flush toilets, electricity, three wives, even a cool trash-burning area.

It sounds like somebody owes cave dwellers an apology.

Just because some people who spread terrorism lived in caves, doesn't mean that all people in caves are terrorists. Cave dwelling is an ancient lifestyle, predating political terrorism. And it has always been a peaceful lifestyle (well, OK, there were the mammoth hunts, those could get bloody, but aside from that).

Charity and service to mankind are two of the pillars of cave dwelling (actually, they are more like stalagmites).

Let us hope that never again will people hide in caves as a way to spread terrorism.