The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Kids & Family Entertainment · What Mishawaka's Children Did for Fun
Mishawaka raised its children in a city of works, parishes, and river water, and the fun those children had was mostly not built for them by anybody: it was a streetcar ride to another city's park, a wading pool poured by a relief crew, a palace of a picture theatre, a bowling house a family grew up inside, and, once a summer, a camp in Michigan bought with a Mishawaka family's grief. This record runs the leg's tests in the open. Its first finding is a negative, and it is printed whole: Mishawaka never had an amusement park of its own. What it had instead — the rinks, the pools, the Putt-Putt, the camps, the children's room — is set down at the size the record gives it, no larger.
The amusement-ground test: no park of the Playland kind ever stood in Mishawaka
THE TEST, RUN FIRST · 1880 TO THE PRESENT
The question was put plainly: did Mishawaka have an amusement park or trolley park — the pleasure ground of the streetcar age, of the kind that stood all over the industrial Midwest, with rides, a midway, a dance pavilion, and a…
Springbrook and Playland: the trolley park across the line
SOUTH BEND'S GROUND, MISHAWAKA'S CHILDHOOD · 1880 TO 1961 · BOUNDARY PRINTED
The park Mishawaka children actually used stood in South Bend, and this entry prints the boundary as it does so: the ground, the company, and the closing were South Bend's; the children on the cars were, in their documented…
The skating houses: a bowling alley that became a rink, and the Merrifield ice
ROLLER AND ICE · THE RECORD OF THE HOUSES
Mishawaka's roller rink lived its life inside a bowling alley's building, at 1121 West Eighth Street. The rink's own description of itself, carried in its business record, states the conversion plainly: "The formerly known Regal…
Miniature golf's two waves: the craze that left no Mishawaka name, and the Putt-Putt of 1979
1930 AND 1979 · ONE GAP AND ONE SURVIVOR
Miniature golf came to American cities in two waves, and Mishawaka's record holds them oppositely: the first wave, the biggest amusement craze of its year, left no Mishawaka course's name in the record reached; the second wave…
The matinee record: a palace built for families, and a children's program the paper record does not name
THE TIVOLI AND AFTER · 1925 TO THE 1990S
The houses belong to the theaters leg of this history; what belongs here is what happened in them for children, and this entry prints both halves of that record — the palace's documented course, and the documented absence, so…
The drive-in test: the screen was never in Mishawaka
THE TEST · 1948 TO THE 1980S · NEGATIVE, WITH THE BOUNDARY PRINTED
The drive-in was the family ground of the postwar decades — the children in pajamas in the back seat, the playground under the screen, the double feature past bedtime — and the brief for this section asked for the…
Bowling's family side: the Parkway houses, and the alley that became a rink
THE FAMILY COURSE · THE 1950S TO 2004 · LEAGUE BOWLING BELONGS TO SPORTS
League bowling — the teams, the records, the March 1914 league the sports record already holds — belongs to the sports leg. What belongs here is the other half of the game's life in Mishawaka: the bowling house as a family house…
The arcades: the fun-center form the record gives it
AN ANCHOR ENTRY · 1979 TO 2004
This entry is deliberately kept at anchor size, because that is the size the record gives the arcade in Mishawaka: the coin-op era's named, dated arcade — the mall arcade of University Park Mall's decades, with its own name and…
The swimming life: river water, a wading pool, and two city pools
THE FAMILY COURSE OF THE POOLS · SHARED WITH THE PARKS RECORD
The line between this entry and the parks record is stated once, here: the parks leg owns the pools as park plant — their building, their grounds, their place in the park system. This entry owns the swimming life lived in them…
Organized fun at city hall: the recreation department's documented course
AN ANCHOR ENTRY · THE DEPARTMENT AT THE SIZE THE RECORD GIVES IT
A recreation department is the least visible of this section's institutions in the historical record: it builds nothing that keeps its name, and its programs survive as single dated mentions in the press. This entry carries the…
Away to camp: Eberhart, Tamarack, and the Girl Scout camp at Syracuse
THE CAMP RECORD · 1909 TO THE 1970S · CAMPS NAMED AS CAMPS, SEATED WHERE THEY STAND
No summer camp stood in Mishawaka; Mishawaka's camp record is a record of gifts and councils, and every camp in it stands outside the city — in Michigan lake country or downstate — which is printed for each. The oldest of them…
The children's room: the library as a place of fun
AN ANCHOR ENTRY · 1907 TO 1969 AND AFTER · THE INSTITUTION BELONGS TO THE LIBRARY RECORD
The library's buildings, boards, and mergers belong to the library record of this history. What belongs here is narrower and, for a Mishawaka childhood, not small: the library was one of the city's few indoor pleasures that asked…