Tagged With An Easy One

I'm a little late today, I know. Let me say this for anyone planning to write a book, editing is much harder than the actual writing. It's boring, repetitive and takes up a bunch of time making you late to your own blog. That's my excuse.

Next week I plan on (key phrase being "plan on") getting back to the regular Friday InBox posts, but for today I'm going with a tag that Matt over at DC Urban Dad slapped me with. His selling point was that it was "easy," and Lord knows I'm a sucker for anything easy these days. So here are the rules.

1.go to your documents

2. go to your 6th file.

3.go to your 6th picture.

4. blog about it.

5. tag 6 friends to do the same.

Let's see what I dug up...

I have to say, if Matt knew the state of my files, particularly the pics he would realize the luster associated with this being easy would quickly fade, but no matter. It still was kind of fun.

This isn't exactly the best photo in the world, but what you are looking at is the Dreamland Ballroom found at Conneaut Lake Park in Conneaut Lake, PA. It was build in 1909 and with over 20,000 square feet of maple for it's dance floor, Dreamland was considered the largest and best dance hall in the Midwest. The Dreamland is just one of the landmark structures makeing up the amusement park that opened for business officially in 1892. Supposedly the entire resort was rather impressive and with it's location on Lake Conneaut it became a premier vacation spot for those living in Cleveland, Buffalo and Pittsburgh. The park and ballroom remained popular up through the 1960's. 

When I was a kid the park was still considered to be a pretty cool place to hang out during the summer. In fact, this was were I rode my first roller coaster, The Blue Streak which was constructed in 1938 and today is one of the oldest active wooden roller coasters in the country. It was quite a thrill for me to take my own children there once summer a few years back (which is where the pic comes from), even though they lacked patience for my nostalgic strolls around big boring buildings like the Dreamland.

Unfortunately, the local economy, politics and lack of funding have kept the park closed for the last several years. Speculation is that it will all be demolished to make way for a waterfront casino. Just what the place needs. Watching history demolished by a wrecking ball makes me sick, and all money aside I lack any understanding over how people can part with such treasures.

However, the wrecking ball won't be tearing through the Dreamland. Last winter, some a-hole kid, high out of his mind, burned it to the ground and because the owners lacked the money to pay for fire insurance it won't be rebuilt anytime soon. In an ironic twist, the park along with the charred remains of the Dreamland was deemed the perfect backdrop for the upcoming movie entitled "The Road" staring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron. And the storyline? It's an apocalyptic thriller in the future where basically the world has gone to crap and is inhabited by cannibals (it's even more ironic to realize this tag has the number 6 repeated three times in the instructions. Hmmm).

What better way to have your hometown shown off, as a vision of the end of the world. It almost brings a tear to my eye imagining some ghastly looking guy chowing down on a human thigh at a place where I can still recall having my childhood innocence. No matter. It still holds fond memories for me.

Now, the trick is selecting 6 people. Well, since Matt already hit up people on my list, I'm going to go with 6 readers who either stalk this blog or are new readers.

1. Church Punk Mom at Embellished Truth & Polite Fiction

2. Eric at Oh My God I'm A Daddy

3. Sal at Everyday Thoughts

4. Christopher or Ca-Joh if you will

5. Andrea from Were Those Wrinkles There Yesterday

6. And one of the newest blogs I've started reading, The Panic Room. 

Looking forward to what they come up with.