PARKS - VOLUME TEN

Twin Rivers Park - Richardson, Texas

Twin Rivers Park is Richardson’s newest city park, and I went there to see if I could find any trace of the miniature golf course that used to be located there. After wandering around for a while, all evidence of the miniature golf course had been wiped off the face of the earth.

Many of the skateparks, amusement parks and public entertainment areas of the fuzzy, earth-toned 70’s and bright, golden 80’s have been destroyed and buried under the futuristic detritus of ones and zeros. The places where humans once gathered and celebrated life, have become victims of the relentless reinvention and sterilization of progress.

There were places where people experienced joy and laughed and cried and lived life in ways that the internal components of a computer cannot recreate. Our history is being wiped clean and replaced with sterilized, small plots of land with wide concrete paths and over-engineered bridges hovering over almost non-existent creeks. The closest ‘river’ is the Elm Fork of the Trinity which is approximately 25 miles west of this park.

The shaded metal pavilions and saplings scattered throughout the park provide shade from a relentless sun. One day, the saplings will grow into profoundly majestic, mature trees and disperse shade throughout. People will arrive, sit on benches, drink iced tea and communicate with friends and family. History will be rewritten, become ungrounded and separated from the linear timeline.

I applaud the City of Richardson in its effort to create open spaces for its citizens in a state filled with private inaccessible land, but this is a continuation of the relentless destroy and rebuild tactic that erases our history and destroys any sense of historical relevance.