Several years ago while working for a local magazine, I learned about a super-cool amusement park that was located in Fort Smith from 1905 to 1920. The park was called Electric Park, a common name for such places at that time, and located where Kay Rogers Park (the fairgrounds) is now on Midland Boulevard. Then Midland wasn’t paved, and patrons of the park traveled there from downtown Fort Smith by streetcars (trolleys), which, handily enough, were owned and operated by the owners of the park, the Fort Smith Light and Traction Company.

So basically those guys were making bank.

What drew me to the story of Electric Park were the cool buildings they had there. A combination of moorish, crystal palace, and oriental onion dome architecture, they were absolutely beautiful. When I first saw a picture of one of the structures, I said, “Where is that?!” I got so excited to see it in person. Of course, the park and all its buildings were long gone. (Fort Smith tears everything down.) Still, I heard there was a book about Electric Park written by a local author, Stan Kujawa, but for years Amazon has continually said it was out of print.

Bummer.

A few weeks ago while perusing my Amazon Wish List, I saw the Electric Park book and had the bright idea that the Fort Smith Library might have a copy. Well, they did, so I checked it out and have been reading it. (During this time I also found print and digital versions of the book for purchase online.) And whereas I don’t intend this post to be a book report, since I really don’t have anything else to talk about, I’m going to share some of the book’s highlights.

In its heyday, the park had a casino, a dance hall, an auditorium that sat 2,200 people, and a roller coaster and regularly hosted vaudeville acts, orchestras, bands, and public speakers. The book by Kujawa reproduces dozens of newspaper advertisements for the park, and in one a woman named Squire Kate said that a woman’s joy in life should be her husband and children, that any woman who prefers a canine and a childless life would “frown on man and rant against the simple life of the home.” Clearly she was talking about lesbians. This is something I noticed while reading the book–that for as advanced as people were a hundred years ago–hell, the park owners were responsible for building the Midland Bridge from Fort Smith to Van Buren–they could be just as prejudiced (or more) than we are today. For example, only whites were allowed at the park.

Often people say, “We’ve come a long way.” Uh, have we? So we’ve integrated amusement parks and stopped performing in blackface, which apparently was common at Electric Park. Yes, lesbians can stay home with their dogs, and gay people can marry. These are good things. But god, we sure have taken forever to get here, and prejudice, discrimination, and mistreatment (harassment, murder) still happen. Have we really come that far? Ugh. Freedom isn’t difficult in theory. It works like this–if you can go to a park or get married, everybody can. Period, end of story. If everyone really got this, it wouldn’t take a hundred years for things to change. The world would look different by noon tomorrow.

But I digress.

On a more lighthearted note, I was tickled by many of the reproduced newspaper advertisements for the park. One advertisement encouraged readers to “come and meet the best and most refined people.” (Oh la la.) A hot air balloon was called “a big gas bag,” which I just thought was a term Grandma used for Grandpa. When the flowers were in full bloom, it was called a “pansy shower.” One of the shows brought to town in 1911 included five boxing kangaroos. Dancing was referred to as “trip the light fantastic,” apparently because dancers are “light” on their feet.

In 1920 Electric Park closed, and the buildings were torn down and sold for materials. My entire life I’ve visited the fairgrounds where Electric Park once stood and never knew its history. I’ve ridden rides there, gone to the rodeo, danced. And whereas I can imagine that it used to be a better place, certainly a prettier place than it is now, the truth is that life doesn’t change much. Buildings go up, buildings come down. Look at the photos of faces a hundred years ago, and those faces aren’t much different than ours today. People then enjoyed getting out and being amused just like we do now. They had their fears and prejudices just like we do now, except we have ours in air conditioning.

There’s an idea in spirituality that if you want to free the world, free yourself. Byron Katie says that freedom comes from loving the thoughts in your head. Said another way, freedom starts inside. Because if you don’t have peace inside, you’ll always feel trapped. And if you don’t recognize the fact that you’re the one who’s trapping you, you’ll blame your lack of freedom on something outside of you, another race or religion, “those people,” canine-owning lesbians, whatever. You’ll spend your entire life thinking that the world needs to change instead of realizing you do. Because, let’s face it, wanting the world, or even one person in it, to change is hopeless (absolutely hopeless). But changing yourself, freeing yourself, that’s something possible.

That’s something even a big gas bag could do.

[Images from Electric Park by Stan Kujawa.]