Celebration Park

New favorite park for us Lobsters. No mature trees to speak of for a mile in every direction. Plenty of saplings planted by well-meaning parks & rec types, but they'll take time to grow into rocket-eating, kite-thwarting menaces.



There is a large water hazard, a pretty little lake with a warning sign not to drink from it or swim in it. Recovered waste water, I'm guessing they won't be stocking it with fish.



But we went to launch some rockets and took Em's Chinese friend along. This was Sunday afternoon, and it turned out to be windier than I anticipated. Kites were flown, though Em was unwilling to let hers climb more than twenty feet or so because she thought it would be too much hassle to reel in.



When I say Em's Chinese friend, you don't meet a log of tall Chinese teenagers in this part of the country. She's a sweet kid, but she's been here for three years and would like to talk to someone about something besides her being Chinese. Anything.



Kites and rockets, for instance, even though both are as Chinese as pasta, cheap labor and political oppression.



As I say, windier than I'd thought (get out there with no trees at all, it figures that it gets breezier). But it's such a large area I went ahead and launched with no problem.



Went back this evening while the Corned Beef & Cabbage dinner I'd planned for St. Patrick's Day finished up in the oven. Flew some kites, did some sidewalk chalk, serious swinging and rope climbing. Em cracked me up: all the way there she was against going at all on the basis she had better things to do. Then she got a kite up and next thing I know she's throwing rocks in the pretty but probably nasty lake and exclaiming how fun it is.



I wore my St. Patrick's Day hat, which Em says clashes with my Aloha shirt, but I don' t believe her.



Anyway, it was 70ºF, people were picnicking and playing and strolling about. Little kids marveled at our kites, and my ridiculous hat, which I'd forgotten I was wearing until I was asked about it.

When I imagine living in California, in a positive way, this is the evening I picture. A climate in which shelter is a hard thing to comprehend, absolute leisure, beautiful women all over. Granted, beautiful married women with little kids, but still, beautiful women.



I've heard old timers in town here complain about the way the city spends money. The ones who remember when Gardner was a wide spot in Highway 56 complain about the 'Taj MaHigh School,' the City Hall (very ordinary brick building, a duplicate of Shawnee's City Hall as far as I can tell, but not the glorified trailer the city used when I moved to town), etc.


Rockets & Kites from Chixulub on Vimeo.

I'm not a big proponent of government spending, but at least on the local level, I can see where we get some bang for the buck. All these families having a beautiful evening and all it cost us out of pocket was gas to get there, and not much of that. A lagoon the water treatment plant would need anyway doubles as a pretty pond, the longest slides I've seen in a park, the shelter houses and play equipment, etc.



It's not like handing out bonuses to criminally derelict executives at AIG, for instance.