I See Kudos and Sadness in This Dirt Pile in Great Falls

If you make enough trips around the big ball of fire in the sky, you will eventually reminisce of a time gone by.  Those memories vary, of course, depending on circumstances and people.  And often, I find myself looking more through rose-colored glasses than perhaps the lens of an adolescent teen.

Driving home from golf this afternoon, I had two small epiphanies; of my age and a realization of just how much life as a kid has changed since being that (sometimes) adolescent (delinquent) GenX teenager.

I See Kudos and Sadness in This Dirt Pile in Great Falls

Passing by what was once home to the Marony Natatorium, there has been some recent activity at the demolition site:

It's perhaps part of the original plan for the park which included a play area and updated basketball courts when the City of Great Falls deemed the facility unsafe and it was demolished.

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But it is the big pile of dirt off to the side that got me both swelling with pride for our city's children and those that raise them, but it also choked me up a tad thinking how as a kid it would have been being used so much more differently.

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It Wasn't Right, But Man, Did We Have a GREAT Childhood as GenX

It really wasn't right.  There were a few times that friends and I probably crossed a line in some of the antics we attempted.  But seeing that huge pile of dirt over several days, I noticed something particular about it.

Not one single track through it.  And especially not one of a BMX bike with a jump somewhere in the mix.

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Again, in no such way am I condoning the reckless destruction of city property.  Or private.  Not at all.  I am extremely proud of the fact that there aren't kids playing on it.  But at the same instance it makes me sad of how much times have changed.

Yep, it is city property, and rightly so it shouldn't probably have kids crawling all over it.  But as a GenX kid, we would have had ramps, a tunnel and an old bed to land on somewhere.  And probably one of the neighbor kids' old hockey helmets for our only protection.  If that.

via GIPHY

I feel sorry that today's technology driven adolescents won't experience things like that.  And while I don't want to condone breaking the rules of today, sometimes, as an adult, I find it hard to be a reminiscing kid.