A Day at Idora Park in Youngstown 1983 - for those who have an interest in old and lost amusement parks.

these old films always show so many unintended things - the fashions at the times, the haircuts,

and I think here the innocence.

Last Edited by beeches on 02/28/2015 05:04 PM

cool, youngstown has a sad and final feeling to it in general

you are so right. the loss of steel mill work killed the local economy in the 1980s.

Still I am glad my grandparents chose to come there to work when work was plentiful.

all my relatives have left, either for the rural areas of Ohio, or to the Southwest.

growing up in canton we used to go to myers lake which was a great park for a small town and this was in the 50's and 60's and before i left in 73 and moved to fl i drove a bread truck for schwebels bakery and had been to the bakery in youngstown on a few occasions.

they had great kaiser rolls and the french bread was excellent as well.

thanks for the memories OP

you're welcome!

Canton, huh? Do you remember Baker's Acres and Tappan Lake?

We lived closer to Cuyahoga Falls. Our bread maker was Lawson's. Even the last time I saw Cuyahoga Falls, the intoxicating bread aroma from the factory still wafted across the Cuyahoga river.

thank YOU!

We left in the mid-sixties.

Last Edited by beeches on 02/28/2015 02:00 PM

Maybe also you remember Isaly's in Youngstown.

It was the home of the Klondike bar. the wrappers anywhere used to say Isaly's up until a few years ago.

Fun watch! Ty

funny how the speed of the film seemed to slow on the roller coasters - and I wondered if the filmer was a little tipsy the way it bobbed around!

but it is a time gone by. Glad you liked it.

i remember lawsons for their bread and milk.

used to drive my old 62 MGA roadster down to tappan lake to water ski with friends.

what a great place to have grown up but i just couldn't stand the winters anymore and after doing spring break a couple times in ft laud i. was. gone.

i'll probably never go back so it's sad that part of my life is over.

Last Edited by thetrickybigguy on 02/28/2015 02:12 PM

Same here. An old amusement park I remember as a child is also long gone after a fire closed it for good.

Same goes for the neighborhood I grew up in. It was once a really nice, close-knit, blue collar community that over the decades devolved into a terrible and dangerous, high-crime "hood" as more and more of the original residents fled. The entire neighborhood was finally demolished after the long, slow decline. It no longer exists.

The little restaurant where my parents met is gone. My childhood home is gone. The school I went to is gone. The old church with bells that used ring is gone. The shop where I used to buy comic books and candy is gone. The malt shop where I used meet all my friends after school is gone.

It is all gone. I can't physically walk down memory lane anymore. The only place I can visit it now is inside my head.

my grandfather almost reached one hundred years old after working in a Youngstown steel mill just like this.

it's hard to imagine.

thanks again - I was wondering if Tappan Lake really existed, or only in my mind!


Winters were my favorite part - the sledding.

Some are going to envy you that car for sure!

no part of your life is truly gone if it can make you smile when you remember it.

was this all in Panama, or in the US?

cleveland akron younstown and canton were big factory cities and both sides of the family worked at most.

i worked at babcock and wilcox for a short while right after high school where my dad was in management.

then you had timken roller bearings and my mother retired from the hoover company.

most of those places have closed down and it's hard to imagine that those factories raised generations of people and now they're gone forever.

timkin makes shit in mexico these days



back in the day though even the janitor at a factory earned enough to raise a family, buy a car and house.


now the statists have brainwashed the masses that even minimum wage is too much pay

funny you should mention the MGA because the last winter i was there and still working at schwebels depot out of canton i turned into the lot there and slid on some ice and went right into the side of the bldg.

messed up the right fender and ended up selling it to some lucky guy for two hundred bucks just to get some more dough together for the one way trip to paradise.

restored today that car would probably get 60K maybe more.

Last Edited by thetrickybigguy on 02/28/2015 02:38 PM

In the USA.

Dang. About the MGA, that is. Wow.

Last Edited by beeches on 02/28/2015 02:40 PM

hope it was not Ohio. but it may have been the rustbelt somewhere.
Places hold as much attraction for me as people - sometimes more, even.

Yours is probably the last generation that will die with sweet memories of the United States, before it was invated by Muslims, hedonists, communists and savages.

Smile and know that you lived in the last moral society.

it was a beautiful car B...

red with a black convertable top.

that car handled like no other.

nothin like a summer evening with the top down comin back from tappan lake.

No, it's not in Ohio; it's in Missouri. I don't know if Missouri falls inside the Rust Belt. If it doesn't, I think it should.

I moved out of the USA well over a decade ago, so I'm always quite shocked when I hear about a lot of the changes that have occurred since I left.

I'm no spring chicken. I've seen a lot of changes over the decades, many not for the better, but nothing like what I'm hearing about now.

I know a lot of people have nostalgia for the 80's, which probably was the last decade when any form of innocence still remained in America. But for someone my age, even the 80's was quite a fall from where we used to be. My sweet memories go back decades prior to that.

By the time the 80's rolled around, people were more isolated, communities not as tight knit, families breaking apart, factories closing, one income home ownership for blue collar workers nearly impossible. Americans were still generally good, decent, courteous, optimistic, independent, and innocent by the world's standards, but the 80's was clearly the beginning of the end. The unraveling had begun in a way that had become really obvious to us older folks.

is this the right color?

I loved to see that video, Thanks Beeches.

OMG!!!!

that is the exact car that i had.

the side windows were plastic and they would slide open and shut.

on the older models the rear tail lights were long ways and then in 62 they made them the opposite way.

5 * post OP.

you are very welcome. I remember the tiny house my grandfather had with my grandmother in his retirement from the mills, so tiny it only had 2 rooms and a kitchen.
His children ponied up for a bathroom years later.

a beautiful little house, now gone the way of crack and whores. I visited it and saw the paraphernalia first hand a few years back.

Sad.

Last Edited by beeches on 02/28/2015 08:26 PM

Maybe sad it is all gone now.

The good thing is you had a good youth and can remember and cherish it.

Drive past the remains of Chippewa Lake weekly, the first home of Jungle Larry.

Chippewa Lake Park is a name that rings a very distant bell in my mind. I remember hearing an ad on the radio for it.

will check it out, and Jungle Larry!

here he is: [link to blog.cleveland.com]

Camp Mowana is still going strong near Mansfield, I believe. I attended it once as a way-too-young child!

Last Edited by beeches on 03/01/2015 01:08 PM