Let me tell you ’bout a place…

…somewhere up-a New York way…“

(In this case, the “somewhere” referenced in the post’s title is actually a little to the west of Buffalo, New York… just across the border and about a 20-minute drive into Ontario, Canada.)

Grab your coffee, because I’m taking a long stroll down memory lane today. I finally finished (!!!) the project I’ve been working on that has everything to do those memories…but before I share it with you, I need to tell you about… the place.

If you were wondering about the final picture in the last post…it was a piece of this:

Likely, there is a cherished place in your history that now only exists in your memories.

Time marches on, “quaint” sometimes gives way to bigger and “better,” changing economies can make things go POOF and before you know it, something new takes it place… or doesn’t.

It’s not an indictment on the new…it’s just that the old, sadly, sometimes runs its course. “And you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”

I share memories of such a place with thousands of people in Western New York and Southern Ontario… A place that lives fondly in photographs, is memorialized in books and videos, is shared and celebrated in social media groups, and is revisited in stories told across generations.*

These memories have been occupying prime real estate in my brain–albeit a little excessively–long before the world screeched to a halt a few years ago. Still, I really needed a happy place then, and I knew right where to find one.

Crystal Beach.

“Crystal Beach” is short for the park of the same name, founded more than one-hundred years ago as a religious venue on the beautiful shores of Southern Ontario.

Its simpler days gave way to sideshows and attractions, and to that, thrill rides, a world famous ballroom, and eventually became the amusement park that was often the highlight of my childhood summers. It was a charming park with beautifully landscaped gardens, incredible flavors, and joy-filled times spent and shared with my family, classmates, friends, and for as long as it remained open, the handsome fella I eventually married.

Municipalities had special days in the park, so visiting on “Tonawanda Day” was an annual event for my family. My dad worked second shift and of course needed the family car, so we sometimes had to take a school bus to make the hour-long trek across the US-Canadian border to The Best Place in the World.

Before we would all leave for our respective adventures–my dad for the factory and the rest of us for the park–there was a Tonawanda Day ritual. My dad would pull out the coffee can filled with all his spare change, dump it on the bed, and whatever I could scoop up with one hand was mine to use at the arcade.

There were also some years when Dad’s work would hold their annual picnic at the park and he would get to join us. We’d arrive in time to visit the stadium across the street where the company offered welcomes and hosted traditional picnic games. Ordinarily that would’ve been fun, but no three-legged race could compete while the rides across the street were beckoning. I never wanted to miss a minute of our time inside the park.

The first stop was always the Giant Coaster, a bright yellow wooden coaster that boasted and delivered “a fast, smooth ride.” As the youngest in our family, I always rode with my mom, who added extra security by crossing her foot over mine…and as we clicked our way to the top of the first hill, I would slip my arm under hers for extra measure.

My brothers, braver/older/taller than I, would race to the Comet, a much larger coaster with the added thrill of being located parallel to the shoreline of Lake Erie. Heading up the first hill, the “treacherous” view often featured whitecaps and waves crashing against the wall below.

Even after I finally met the Comet height requirements, I think it took a few visits before I had the courage to try it. Racing down that first hill, it didn’t seem that the tickle in my stomach would ever end, but it always did…just in time for the second hill, when screams turned to laughter and the hope that someday I might finally ride with my hands in the air like the big kids did.

Next to the Comet was the slow, lingering Sky Ride that took us over the water to the pier. That’s where our parents and grandparents used to arrive via the Canadiana, a luxurious steamer that traversed Lake Erie back and forth from Buffalo. My parents and late in-laws have shared so many stories about the ballroom on board that featured live music from some of the most famous band leaders.

“Laff in the Dark,” was a two-seat car ride that bumped, twisted, and sharp turned your way through the dark while things popped up, down, or out at you. It was one of the scariest rides to me as a little kid, and over the years (when I finally stopped closing my eyes) I discovered it was actually meant to be funny, not frightening.

Even more fun was the Magic Carpet, an amazing walk-through funhouse with all kinds of rooms filled with surprises: funhouse mirrors, a slanted room, a wooden slide, surprise jolts of air, and at the end an actual moving carpet (continuous loop on rollers) that you sat on to carry you to the exit.

I would watch in amazement as my brother Jim was always able to tackle The Looper, figuring how to make it rock its way over and around and around and around.

I’m fairly sure I never actually got it to go upside down, but I remember that Jim was a pro. The Looper shown above is still operating at Knoebles park in Pennsylvania… (I was today years old when, reading the YouTube comments, I discovered that it isn’t simply rocking that gets you over and around; apparently there’s a magic foot pedal in each car. Trip to Knoebles: New bucket list item.)

And there was the time my grandmother came to the park with us. Someone convinced her to ride the Roll-o-Plane and for about three minutes, the park noises were pierced by alternating shrieks of laughing and screaming so bizarre that she started to draw her own crowd of people laughing and waiting for the ride to end to see who was making all the racket.

So many other fun and memorable rides. My parents were great with figuring out how many strips of tickets we would need to make the afternoon last until the evening, because the best part was riding the rides when the lights came on…until the horn sounded that the park was closing for the night.

That’s when we raced to the back of the park to get a Hall’s Sucker, before heading to the waffle stand for a paper bag filled with Sugar Waffles (which rarely lasted through the ride home).

There were a lot of Sunday evenings when our family would meet other families at the park just to roller-skate in the old Crystal Ballroom. It was such a cool building with an enormous wooden floor and was a great place to skate.

In its heyday, the ballroom boasted the largest dance floor in North America, and the best of the best brought their orchestras to play there. Dancing in that ballroom is the cornerstone of my parents’ Crystal Beach memories, and to this day their faces light with excitement when they talk of the times they spent there.

Little sidenote…The Ballroom was lined in windows that rattled a little when the Comet flew by… And at night the windows and lights attracted sand flies…and HUGE spiders who ate their fill. My skating friends and I used to play “Spider Corner,” our own version of tag. Once tagged you were taken to the spider corner, where you had to sit on a bench next to the spidery windows. You sat there until someone came and freed you while the designated spider was out gathering other victims. (Just felt we needed to cover that crucial bit of lore.)

So many other rides and special memories… my mom loved the Heyday and the Scrambler…. And of course the hairpin curves of the Wild Mouse; the giant Paul Bunyan statue; Leo the Lion in his circus truck asking you to feed him your paper trash and sucking it right out of your hand; making a record in the arcade (and being shocked to discover upon playback that you weren’t destined for a music career); Skee-Ball; pitching pennies in the hopes they’d land on the buzzer so you could collect enough coupons to trade for a trinket…stamping out corny souvenir medals with Mr…not to mention visiting the actual beautiful white sand beach next to the park.

Eventually, “shiny and new” took our attention away from The Best Place in the World, leading us north to Canada’s Wonderland, east to Niagara Falls’ Maple Leaf Village or Marineland, and in the States, Darien Lake. Unfortunately, taking our amusement park dollars elsewhere proved costly in ways we never envisioned.

In 1989, Crystal Beach gave us her last wonderful season.

The land was sold to developers and the park was demolished, becoming a private beach community.

Prior to and during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time on Pinterest, Ebay, Facebook and a lot of websites looking at photos and even purchasing postcards and photographs people shared or were selling…refreshing and sort of reliving my happy memories of the Best Place in the World.

I started “collecting” the images that meant the most to me (before I learned some were copyrighted 😬) and have spent hours pouring over them on my computer with my family and especially my elderly parents. At 94, there’s not much that interests my Pop…but for him, me, and thousands of others…Crystal Beach never fails.

And THAT, my friends, is when I had the inspiration to take those memories one crazy step further….

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*SOURCES – My family didn’t have many pictures of the park, and some of my memories might have faded without the internet posts of or connected to the people below. I have truly enjoyed watching, reading and enjoying contributions shared by:

People like the late Paul Kassay (aka “Mr. Crystal Beach”), the late Al Knoblock; Ken Jones, Sr., and Ken Jones, Jr., Rick Doan, Dale Roddick, Thomas Martin Smith, Cathy Herbert, Rose Ann Hirsh, Gary Pooler, Kim Carney, Steve Boyd (and others whose photographs, research, and works I may have seen but whose names I have yet to discover) who have–collectively and individually–taken the time to capture, preserve, document, and share their memories of the park. So many of the things I’d forgotten have been made more vivid for me because of their images and descriptions.

Buffalo’s WNED-TV – which produced a wonderful history of the park, Remembering Crystal Beach, available for viewing here, on YouTube.

The Buffalo News – which, several years ago, invited people to share photos and memories of the park, and the community answered with wonderful pictures and vintage postcards that really brought the park back to life for me.

The Amusement Park Historical Association of Niagara, Brock University, Niagara Public Library, Pinterest, Facebook groups, vintage postcards that popped up on eBay and other resale sites.