Journal Entry #11: Imagination

Date: November 9, 2007
Time: 22:45

Flushing-Meadows Corona Park, the official name of the park everyone calls “Flushing Meadows”. Long before there was a movie called “Men in Black”, and even a longer time before there was a comic book by that name, there was Flushing Meadows. The site of not one, but two Worlds’ Fairs.

The first was held in the years 1939 - 1940, and among the scientific marvels that could be seen were a working robot, and a new-fangled invention called “television”. The second Worlds’ Fair to be held on that site was in 1964. That was when they constructed these towers. They put them right next to the New York Pavilion. The tallest of these towers was a fancy restaurant.

Many years later, the restaurant, and the cafeteria situated beneath it, stopped doing business, and the towers fell into disrepair. But they were never torn down. This left people with the ability to view a bit of history as they walked around the park, or viewed it from the highway.

When I was going to a summer day camp, there were many times I had the opportunity to see the towers from the highway. The very first time I saw them, I thought that the tops of the towers looked like flying saucers. I thought that way for years, and then “Men in Black” was released, and the writers of that movie decided that they were indeed, alien spacecraft, camouflaged as a tourist attraction.

Some years after that, I finally had the chance to go to the park and take a good look around. It was then that I found out what those towers really were. But even after getting a close look at them, or as close as I could get what with them closed to the public, even after reading the placard that is posted on the board fence surrounding the towers explaining what they are, what they were, and why they were built, even after all that, I still think the tops of those towers look like flying saucers.

See, that’s imagination, and that’s something I hope I never lose. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use Google Earth to fly through space for a little while.