There was once a slide in Old Fort Park that was just a whole bunch of rollers attached in a wavy pattern. The local newspaper dubbed it the "rollercoaster slide" and that sounds about right. I don't remember when it was installed or even when it was removed, but I do remember going down it when I was around 9 or 10 and then later when I was either a sophomore or junior in high school.
My mother would sometimes go to events at the Ag Center and that would be when I went as a young kid. The slide was just pure fun and pure evil too. If you didn't pay attention you could pinch your fingers or even toes in it as you slid on it or tried to walk up it. Good luck with that last bit. I went to Old Fort Park in high school once. My graphic arts class had gone on a field trip up to some printing facility in Dickson, TN and then came back to picnic and kill the afternoon at the park. I thought I had my future well planned. I'd be an A.B. Dick offset press operator, but like most of my youthful plans it didn't turn out that way.
But for the moment I was just a goofy high school student who spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about being perceived as cool. I didn't get too into trends or the typical myriad of ways of trying to be cool. I was, as they say now, very close to being on the spectrum and my social skills were fairly non-existent. Still, I hoped that people thought I was cool and I wondered, for a second after we arrived, if a high school kid that rode a kid's slide would only be considered to be an infantile dork. Not that my worrying was going to shake me too much on this matter. If that slide was still there I was going to go down it. The funny thing was that everybody went down it that afternoon. It was downright glorious.
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