The Great American Amusement Parks

From the diary: “May 2, 1981

“We went to [the] Santa Rosa [library] and I checked out The Great American Amusement Parks by Gary Kyriazi. I’m thinking of buying it. I read the whole thing today – it was great.”

My father had invited me to go to the big air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I don’t think he owned a plane at the time but he used to and loved planes and flying. Me? Not so much. Still, it sounded like a bit of an adventure and I was hoping to convince him to take me to an amusement park on the trip because I loved roller coasters (still do) and my mother didn’t do amusement parks.

I’ve read several amusement park histories and guidebooks.

From the diary: “May 6, 1981

“I found an article in Campus Life called ‘Theme Parks – Scream Parks.’ It was good up until they started predicting what the future would bring. They started babbling about EPCOT, space stations, and educational parks. I did learn two things of interest from the article though. They were: 6 flags o’er teck’s ass has a new roller coaster in which the train hangs below the tracks, and Marriott’s G[reat] A[merica] in Gurnee, Ill. has a new wooden twin racer coaster called ‘The American Eagle.’”