Just about the time I thought I was finished with Roses in December, I realized that that there was still one more shoe to drop. There was the letter from Eugene to Lucy that had been intercepted by Lillian and kept from Lucy. From time to time I had thought about dealing with that, but I never found a particularly elegant way to bring closure to the story. Then one summer Saturday morning I went out to a derelict and shuttered amusement park just south of town to wander through and take some pictures, all the while not quite knowing why.
As I walked past the melancholy detritus of the former playground, I came upon a collapsed building which held in its rotting remains a bit of concrete lattice work that was similar to what I had seen in pictures of the Wisteria Ballroom at the long gone Summit Beach Park.
All at once I knew how the story was supposed to end and why I had taken time off from a working Saturday to visit the blighted remains of an old amusement park. I found it interesting when I later learned that Crankshaft’s artist Chuck Ayers had been through that park himself gathering illustrations for a magazine article. Another one of those happy accidents that become a part of the process.
