Does anyone else remember toll slides?

[Bertha Venation]

I can't find a picture anywhere. A toll slide was a huge colorful wavy slide. Maybe two or three stories high. You paid your dime and got a moving blanket and down you went. My grandma would take us. One of my best memories of childhood.

Anyone else?

What other fun things did you do as a kid?

[Chan790]

1. Yeah, I used to go 3 or 4 times every year at the Eastern States Exposition in W. Springfield, MA.

Basically, it's a "state fair" for all of New England. Geez, I just realized that I don't think I've made it to the Big E in close to 20 years.

MD has a state fair but it's tiny by comparison. DC has a one-day fair they piggyback onto Columbia Heights Day. The Mid-Atlantic needs one good regional fair.

[cliffordu]

2. You mean like this?

http://photos.dailynews.com/2013/07/photos-ventura-county-fair-opens-4/#7

[Bertha Venation]

26. Kinda

Hard to tell from that shot. But certainly colorful enough, and with the defined tracks.

[LWolf]

3. Sure.

It's only been a few years since the last one I rode, at a county fair somewhere.

As a kid? I spent hours and hours and many days out in the back of beyond on my horse, bareback, halter and leadrope only. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone.

I spent many hours and days at the beach, floating around past the breakers.

As a very young child, I rode trains all over the country with my grandma on business trips.

[olddots]

4. I remember a ma& pa amusement park in Mass. that had one

that was wide enough for twenty kids to ride at once .

For a short time there were trampoline centers that had trampolines built into the ground , it was fun but I imagine a lot of kids got hurt
so they all vanished in a short time.

Small scale amusement parks were a wholesome version of traveling carnivals , wow thanks for the memories of the smells ,sounds and
excitement that can't be duplicated .

[Bertha Venation]

16. Sounds wonderful, olddots

Last edited Sat Aug 3, 2013, 08:07 AM - Edit history (1)

We only had the big parks -- Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. In contrast, the toll slide (and I have no idea where it/they was/were) was only a dime.

Happy I could put you in mind of good memories.

[HarveyDarkey]

5. Like this?

[MiddleFingerMom]

7. Nah, that's a water slide. These were dry and you'd "sled" down on a piece of canvas...

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... or carpeting.
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I remember, BV... though I didn't know they were called "toll slides" and I don't think I ever
went on one.
.
Our town had an abandoned 3-story school with an old fashioned aluminum-tube fire escape.
It was around 3 feet in diameter and it was nothing more than a completely enclosed slide so
they could evacuate the upper floors quickly.
.
It had a locked grate barring access, but the lock was always busted when we would play on
it. It took quite a bit of strength and focus to inch your way UP that slippery slope to the top,
and many was the time one of us would slip and slide down cussing up a storm (to the delight
of our peers), but it was a blast if you made it to the top and slid down ECHO-YELLING down
to the bottom.

[Bertha Venation]

27. That sounds like fun!

And like the kind of illicit thing a kid would thrill doubly at getting away with.

(Yes, I did it. I ended a sentence with a preposition. Life's too short for all correct grammar all the time.)

[Bertha Venation]

14. Sort of, but;

without water, and far, far taller than that, and with way more waves.

[Downwinder]

6. You ever try slide rock in Oak Creek Canyon?

http://www.dreamsedona.com/slide-rock-state-park.html

[HarveyDarkey]

12. This is what I liked to do, back in the day

Different spillway, but it worked the same.

[Agschmid]

17. So two things....

1. OMG watch out for my goods! I'd ride some kind of craft down rather than exposing my body to direct contact with protruding objects.... rebar ouch.

2. SO COOL!

[HarveyDarkey]

18. No rebar to worry about, there was usually about 6" of really slick moss

I often went down barefooted standing up, some used waterskis. The funniest was a large group who went down in a big army raft. It went off flat, hit the boil at the bottom & went straight up in the air. There were arms and legs flailing everywhere for a few seconds, nobody stayed in the raft.

Edit: typo

[Agschmid]

19. Phew!

[Bertha Venation]

15. No... but someday, maybe

If they take big chicks in their 50s . . .

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. I think we called them Super Slides ... but, yeah I remember them. Fun!

Last edited Fri Aug 2, 2013, 09:41 PM - Edit history (1)

[AngryOldDem]

9. Oh, yes. Amusement park had that.

Loved it -- one of the few larger attractions that didn't scare me.

We called it the Giant Slide.

[Chan790]

10. We also had alpine slides.

An alpine slide has to be the worst idea in history ever designed by engineers.

It's basically an all-weather luge that one rides sitting on a modified skateboard with a friction hand-brake between your knees. It answers the question "What do you do with a ski slope in the middle of the summer?" while leading to other questions like "Have you ever wanted to ride a skateboard in a concrete chute down the side of a mountain at 75MPH+?" and "Are you f**king insane?"

[hunter]

11. My grandma used to take us to Beverly Park in her big baby blue Cadillac...

I miss the park, and I miss the car, even though it had power windows that could break fingers.

My grandma gave it to my brother, but some idiot drunk driver crashed into it at high speed (50+ miles per hour on a residential street!) while it was parked in front of his house. Drunk driver didn't die, but grandma's car was totaled.

Grandma's car was a land yacht. "Power" everything and "air" suspension. You couldn't feel the road at all. It was the first car I ever drove with "cruise control."

Somewhere in my head is mixed up a memory of an oil pump dressed up as a grasshopper. I relate it to Beverly Park but it may have been somewhere else.

My grandparents would also get money every year from Chevron because they were pumping oil out from underneath their ordinary suburban home.

[Bertha Venation]

28. I love reading of these memories, Hunter.

I never saw any oil pumps dressed up like grasshoppers, or anything else, but we were surrounded by the "horses," as I called them, in Huntington Beach.

[applegrove]

13. The whole family and guests would swim out to the tippy raft in the lake. We'd all get on it

at the same time. It would sink straight down because of the weight of the people on it. Soon the water would be over all the kids heads. Right then you'd dive down and grab ahold of the wooden slats that made up the raft. Once everyone had fallen off it, and you'd get kicked a little bit, the raft would shoot up to the surface with me on it. It was a pretty dangerous pastime. But that's just how we rolled as a family.

[ConcernedCanuk]

20. You bet I do - Wasaga Beach Ontario - 1972

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no blankets though - they had running water in the slides for you to slide in

It curved upwards near the end and you landed gently on the ground.

I see they've changed it



Here's another newer one in Wasaga Beach called WaterWorld



enjoy the memories

CC

[onestepforward]

21. I remember those!

We had prickly burlap sacks to slide down on. They had a strong smell, but I kinda liked it. I'm guess now it was probably some nasty insecticide, lol! I think it was called a Super Slide.

[hibbing]

22. Pamida

Hi,
I remember one being in the parking lot of a Pamida store, are there even any of those around anymore either?

Peace

[Archae]

23. They're at the Wisconsin State Fair, again.

[denbot]

24. They would pop up in and around L.A. when I was a kid.

Ya traded a dime for a burlap "sled", and a two story stair climb. I remember the slides, but I can't for the life of me remember where they were..

Even funner was taking a small raft to the beach and letting the surf bounce you back to shore at what seemed like a million miles per hour.. Good times..

[NewThinkingChance40]

25. Never heard of toll slides, but...

when i was a kids, we spent most of our time organizing backyard football games Lots of funs, a few broken bones, but had an awesome time!

[alarimer]

29. I remember merry-go-rounds at grocery stores

Or those coin-operated rocking horses. I was just thinking about this the other day, at the grocery store. You'd come outside and there would be those rides. I think they were probably really dangerous.

I have a very dim (and probably false) memory of a dolphin tank at a mall in Minnesota. They (whoever they were) brought a dolphin and a big tank around and did a show. The dolphin did tricks and everything.

This seems like it should not have been real. But for some reason I remember it. But I could have dreamed it I guess.

[TorchTheWitch]

30. the alpine slide in New Hampshire

I haven't been there since I was a kid, but it's still there and really popular. It sucks though if you get some slow asshole riding the brake the whole way down. It's a cement track that these plastic carts you ride on go screaming down the mountain for a little over a mile with twists and turns sort of like the luge but without ice. There's a handbrake in the middle of the cart between your're legs you're supposed to use, but we were nuts enough not to. People wipe out on the curves frequently.

One the ride...

Aerial view someone took of people on the ride from the chair lift that gets you up the mountain where it starts...