I posted a note to my mom yesterday where I wrote the following. I thought it would be cool to share it with you. Astroworld, in case you don't know, was a theme park. I believe it was rated the country's best in the 70s. Six Flags bought it and tried to change the name, but it never stuck. So they altered it again, calling it AstorWorld, a Six Flags Theme Park. Now it's a blank slate of land.

<<
Tonight, while bored watching the news, I was poking around on wikipedia (you DO know of this don't you?) I do this often, just start random searches...one thing leads to another to another and so on. Something led me to look up my high school, which was there, then I looked up Frank Guzik ele in Dallas. Guzik was our HS principal, a great man, Jewish, too, who died a few years back. They went and named a school after him, which is very fitting. I will never forget him. Then I looked up Parker ele. They have a site and apparently are still quite big with the whole chorus things. Remember how I used to be in their chorus, and tried out for the singing boys of Houston?

So I looked up the school on google maps and went to satellite view, then panned down Creekbend to our house, and Robert's house. (I've tried a few times to locate him, but do you have any idea how many Robert Pierson's there are in Houston???) The pool seemed to still be on the corner, and things looked so much smaller/closer together than I remembered them. I panned over to the McDonalds by the bayou. Now that seemed far. You know, right after we moved into that house, I must have been 8?, I rode my bike up to that McDonalds and ordered a burger. I wouldn't let my 8 year old do such a stunt! And in a new neighborhood, too.

Suddenly I was panning over to how close we lived to Astroworld, then panned closer. I had heard they closed the park down, so I was curious to see what was there. Indeed, it looked like some of the rides had been dismantled, but the park was still there. Oh, I have such fond memories of Astroworld. Many with you, many later.

I still recall being there once, before the Looney Tunes days, when they had the costumed characters. One wore a huge hat and he came up thru a hole in the floor. I was so amazed at that. The curtains parted and it looked like just his hat was there. Then it rose up and there was the mascot. I remembered that crazy house, all twisted and slanted. That was one of my favorite things. I also recalled the barrel ride, where the floor dropped after spinning around and we all stuck to the walls. And that domed movie place; lying on the floor and it felt like we were moving, but it was just the movie. But the best part was the Alpine ride. It went thru so many rooms, going up and down, inside the mountain and out. Then that one place with the blast of frozen air, that felt so good on a hot Houston night.

So I wiki'd Astroworld. It opened in 68, I think it said. But it said it was demolished and all that remained was the bridge across 610. This made me do a search for images and sure enough I found someone who had posted a before and after shot taken from the air. That bridge crosses 610 and ends into nothing but dirt. Everything is gone. The pools. The Americana buildings. The roller coasters. Asian town. The mountain. Greezed lightning. Cyclone. Excalibur. XLR8. The Viper. All of it gone. And I hear the trustees, or whatever, only got less than half the money they thought they would get for closing it down and selling off all the parts. Many of the rides that had lived until the end are in other amusement parks around the country and Mexico. Greezed Lightning is in Lubbock! The vipor in Dallas. Another one in San Antonio. Others were so old or were damaged in the dismantling.

Mom, it's like someone from the family died. All those memories. Even the smells and the sounds. The summers I worked concert security there. The 2 years I had a season pass, and we would even just go after work for a few hours. All the concerts I saw there (worked). The time I snuck in the back with Jason (did we ever tell you that story?) Getting to know the ins and outs, and even where the employee cafeteria was and going to eat there and never getting caught. The boat ride with the big head statue that would fire that loud boom. The train ride with the ghost town. The Astro way. Being there with Ilyse. And now it's all gone. It just makes me sick. How could such an icon be tossed aside like it's an old leftover meal? And does Houston now not have an amusement park??? How terrible that kids there don't have a place to experience some of what I did growing up and going there.

So then I started thinking, surely I'm not the only one who thinks this. I should write a book about Astroworld. Research the park's inception, what it took to build it. I could outline some of the greater rides there, and some of the history making that went on at Astroworld. XLR8 was a one of a kind roller coaster that was suspended from tracks above. The Cyclone was at once the largest wooden coaster, with the steepest dive and fasted ride. That bridge from the parking lot to the park was (is?) the only privately owned bridge over a US highway. Greezed lightning had the fastest zero to (whatever) of any coaster. I could put in old photos of rides and park goers. It would be a huge task to do all that research and search for photos to use and all that. If only I had time. Where is that advance I need to take time from work so I could work on this?

That's when I gave up searching, and thus, another bored night came to an end. I do stuff like this all the time. I get bored, start thinking/searching; get ideas and find I really can't make them happen. Oh, well.