The photograph is of my mother and I riding a ride at Ocean View Amusement Park (back when there was ONLY black and white photography). It was located at the end of Granby Street at Ocean View Avenue in Norfolk. I remember attending the amusement park all my growing up years. It was always a special family treat. They had a shed where you could go for all kinds of shows, programs and activities that I and my family attended frequently. We rode the rides so many times I can't even count. The old roller coaster was wooden and so dangerous and rickety I remember wondering how it was standing even when I was very young but it always seemed to manage to keep standing even though it was right on the beach with all that damaging salt water and sand.
The park was completely torn down in 1979. The destruction of the park was part of a movie. It was sad to see that part of my history and the history of my home city go but it had become so unsafe and was being required to be leveled. A few years before it was leveled there was a movie filmed there named "Rollercoaster". It was winter when it was being filmed and they needed summer dressed extras. My cousin Julie Grimes and I stood freezing ourselves half to death in shorts to get parts in that film. The director went down the line of freezing "extras" saying, "you, you, you" and pointing. He did not point to Julie or I, I am guessing it had to do with our not being able to hide our goose bumps, lol. I am sure they would have shown on the camera they were so huge.
That was just one more memory to add to the many memories of the time my family spent at Ocean View Amusement park. Put it in online, there are plenty of pictures and stuff to see.
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