Oh, Deer Forest.

When I was a young tot, my family took a yearly vacation to South Haven, Michigan. While there was little to do there besides visit the beach, fortunately a shady little amusement park lay close by in Coloma, Michigan. It was called Deer Forest.

The trick with kids is to learn that their perception of tackiness and displeasure is usually based entirely off of your reaction. My parents were exceptionally good at faking enthusiasm, and so my brother and I were often excited about the most mundane things. Deer Park is a prime example. So was going to the Dentist.

The park opened in 1949 and hadn’t undergone much change since. It featured a petting zoo, and I’m sure some of the animals from the original opening were still there. The grounds smelled like an unkempt farm from the 50s. Their slogan was  “More fun than a zoo”- a brilliant lie. The only way that Deer Park was more fun than a zoo was that it featured a few treacherous rides. These scrapped carnival rejects included an unstable Ferris wheel and a dragon themed roller coaster. The coaster, a rickety, 20 foot circular disaster, was closed for safety reasons not long after we stopped visiting the park.

  Whiplash is a privilege

On one occasion my younger brother and I took a ride on the Ferris wheel, unaccompanied. The Ferris wheel ride began slowly, but began to gradually accelerate until we were rotating around the structure at break-neck speeds. The ride was terrifying at first, but after a while Eric and I were loving the sensations of hurdling aimlessly through the air.

It wasn't until we had been spinning for about seven minutes until we felt that something was amiss. We noticed Mom flailing at the bottom of the wheel and assumed that she was enthusiastically waving at her big boys taking their first solo ride. We waved back with equal vigor. After we finally got off we learned that the Ferris wheel had broken and was spinning at top speed. Workmen were using blowtorches and as sparks flew from the underbelly of the Ferris wheel's base my mother had a little bit of a breakdown.

Another classic staple of Deer Forest was the Storybook Lane. This featured fenced in scenes depicting beloved childhood classics including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs and The Ugly Duckling. Sickly animals were placed appropriately- live pigs for the three little pigs, ducks for the ugly ducking, etc. The sets were poorly constructed and probably was the result of a parent labor union and a lot of paper mache. The paint chipped off of the cheap structures and animals strolled in and out of the scenery as part of the story- and also pooped everywhere. In front of each gated storybook pen there was a voice box that narrated a brief synopsis of the story. It was never easy to hear the narration over the howling and screaming animals and children, which filled the park as an appropriate soundtrack.

The park also featured a fighting cage for children and animals falsely labeled as a petting zoo. I vividly remember being chased by angry goats and deer while trying to hold onto my tiny fistfuls of old corn. There were no rules in this arena. Being butted, tripped and chased by hungry and neglected farm animals was a childhood entertainment dream to my parents, who patently videotaped and took pictures. While I fell into buckets of old food and poop, it occurred to me that this was supposed to be fun, and so I made the most of it. As is life.