City Park

One of my favorite places growing up in New Orleans was City Park. According to Wikipedia it is 1300 acres and is the 20th most visited urban public park in the nation. It is 50% larger than Central Park in New York City. Amazingly I had this urban greenspace as my personal playground on many Saturdays.

Some of the my many adventures included the following:

• Taking art lessons in the Delgado Museum of Art (although I never really liked art; I was more of a music kid)
• Renting bicycles and exploring the many side roads and pathways
• Fishing the bayous for perch, trout, and bass
• Recycling pieces of whatever we caught to use as bait for alligator gars (there was a bounty, but I don't remember ever snagging one)
• Climbing the massive oak trees just like Tarzan (although there were no grapevines)
• Playing tennis
• Chasing turtles, swans, ducks, and geese around the waterways in rented canoes, peddle boats, or skiffs
• Puttering at golf
• Swimming in the large public pool and jumping off the 10 meter high dive
• Wandering through the colorful maze of Storyland
• Catching chameleon lizards in the beautiful rose garden
• Picnicking in the shade of the live oaks
• Riding the "toy" train
• Swinging high in the playground and popping the seat chains or baling out from 20 feet up
• Racing after my brother or other friends in games of tag, not it, or hide and go seek

Ah! The childhood mysteries and memories of that mesmerizing place. I could almost become Peter Pan or one of his boys as I lost myself in the real and pretend worlds of City Park.