The Old Yacht Club

Craig Fletcher found this photo in a friend's garage. It was too large for the scanner, so it is shown from two angles so you can see everything. It shows the old Funland area and bowl of the park, along with parts of Highland, Winnifred, Shirley and Bennett Streets. If you recognize anything or can guess the year, please let us know with a comment here. And share any stories you have about the old days! The photo was covered in tape, hence the scratchy look.

I do recall watching my older brother and his friends riding the Shoot the Chute with the boats clanking up the incline then turning 180 degrees and zooming into a splashdown. Too much for me at that age so I just watched. I was too small for the bumper cars so he would pack me in and drive wildly around the track sparks-a-flying and ramming into his friends cars.

There was also a small scale train that chugged around the Funland as well along with a rotating swing, shooting gallery and a small roller coaster. University Place schools sponsored a day at Funland for all us crossing guards. Not sure if it was because none of us had lasting injuries from fencing with our flags or because we didn't lose any kindergartners. At any rate, it was a lot of fun back in the day to ride bikes down there and then push the bikes back up Pearl Street on the way back to UP.

I never went to the yacht club but did love to watch the slag cars dump into the bay. Red glowing slag and the steam boiling up was entertaining but what really captured the imagination was when they blasted the slag out of one. You could see the inverted cone pressure wave radiating up with an annular dome in the middle before the shock compressed the air in your lungs. This was long before we gave a lot of consideration to much in the way of pollution. I used to kid that we didn't need radios in Ruston, we have heavy metal in the dirt.

Comment Posted January 8, 2008 10:55 PM