Monday, June 22, 2009
Myriad of factors prompted closure of Lakeside Amusement Park
Tom Angleberger
The New River Valley-based reporter answers your questions Mondays in his column, What's on Your Mind?
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Q: When I was a child there was an amusement park in Salem that is now Lakeside Plaza. Why did they ever close it? Will there ever be another in the area? It really gave us something to do on the weekends.
Judy Booker, Rocky Mount
A: It's the same old story, I'm afraid. People had happy memories of Lakeside Amusement Park, but they weren't making new ones by actually going there.
When news of the park's closing got out in 1986, people wrote letters to the park's manager, Wayne Saunders.
"They are the ones who remember coming here as a child, who maybe haven't been here in 20 years," he told The Roanoke Times at the time. The reporter noted a "trace of bitterness mixed with his sadness."
We ran a picture of one of the final runs of Lakeside's famous Shooting Star roller coaster. It wasn't full. (The riders do appear to be having a good time, though.)
"The owners -- not the Roberts family by then -- were sitting on a valuable, developable piece of real estate," explains John Long, director of the Salem Museum and Historical Society. "Lucrative shopping center or park losing money? Wasn't too hard a business decision for them."
Badly damaged by the 1985 flood and reeling from a $1 million lawsuit -- because of the death of a groundskeeper killed by the Shooting Star -- Lakeside tried for a comeback in 1986. But by September, the park's owners had decided to give it up, saying it was no longer "economically feasible." On Oct. 19, the park closed for good after 66 years of operation.
"Costs were going up," Long told me, "everything from electricity to insurance to the minimum wage, and those costs could only be passed on to the ticket buyers, the numbers of whom were dwindling."
The Salem Museum has a permanent Lakeside exhibit. In fact, Long says it's their all-time most popular display. Although the museum is currently closed because of an expansion, Long hints that the exhibit may be available at another location soon.
As for your second question: Will there be another amusement park in the area? The best-known plans for such a thing are those for Explore Park. And that project, which seems stalled for lack of money, shows how difficult it is to get a new park off the ground. Additionally, any new park would have to compete with the ride-rich fairs that stop at the Roanoke and Salem civic centers.
Grammar Grumblings
Reader Dave West plucked this sentence from a recent Roanoke Times article: "Do you know who you'll be casting your ballot for in November?"
For once it wasn't one of my mistakes, but it was one I could have easily made.
If, like me, you think that sentence sounds just fine, our Grammar Guru, retired English professor Virgil Cook, suggests substituting "he" and "him" for "who" and "whom."
First we have to deconstruct the sentence a bit, but we come up with two options:
"You'll be casting your ballet for he" or "you'll be casting your ballot for him." Clearly, the second one is correct, telling us that a "whom" is required.
" 'Who' is what grammarians call the nominative form," explains Cook. "Simply put, it is the subject of the sentence or clause. 'Whom' is the objective form."
Wait a second! Does this mean that Ray Parker Jr. was making a mistake when he belted the "Ghostbusters" theme: "Who you gonna call?" Yes it does. (Several mistakes, actually.) So is it any wonder that my generation has little hope of getting our "who" and "whom" right?
Got a question? Got an answer? Call Tom Angleberger at 777-6476 or send an e-mail to woym@roanoke.com. Don't forget to provide your full name, its proper spelling and your hometown.
Look for Tom Angleberger's column on Mondays.
