Pause and Haunt
The parks at Upper Clements had been there forever, I thought. Generations, surely. When you're young, you naturally assume that everything before your birth has a long and storied history. In reality, the outdoor zoo only opened in 1977, and the amusement park in 1989 — just before I turned two. But the structures were built with a certain older style in mind, so the illusion of history was pretty complete. Thirty years later, after much financial struggle and revolving ownership, it was all shuttered forever in 2019. There's very little left, just a few forgotten buildings on the zoo side, in view of some public trails. But like most folks my age in this area, I've got plenty of memories scattered.
Upper Clements Park had been my childhood Disney World through the 1990s, a county fair kind of place, plenty of thrills for the country crowd. We’d enter with our all-inclusive passes, told in neon green bracelets ratcheted to our wrists. I’d wear mine for days, to bed, in the bath, to church, until it finally turned so faded and threadbare that it popped off or peeled away. We’d take the rattling rollercoaster and the shuddering log flume ride, the Sissiboo Sizzler that climbed high overlooking the Annapolis River, splashing down among the overwhelming crowds of people in all directions. It was all pretty parochial in retrospect, especially after we actually went to Disney in 1998. That sort of took the shine off small-scale amusements closer to home.
So with all those crowded memories, it seemed strange to be the first boy arriving at an empty park by dawn, to locked gates like everything was derelict. That's how it was every Saturday at the age of fifteen, for my first summer job in 2003. The bus ride from Bridgetown took the better part of an hour, and it was still well before opening when I reached my destination. I'd pull the cord and disembark, and in the chill of a riverside dawn, sprint the apple orchard and hop the fence before the first summer strangers arrived. The birds chirped unaware that they’d soon be drowned by the noise of hundreds, and the rattle and wail of outdoor entertainment.
It was my kind of employment, coming with a built-in guarantee of invisibility. I’d only taken the job because it let me hide away, at the Craft Co-op just inside the main entrance, in a building mimicking an old farmhouse design. I sat among the works of a dozen different local artists, piled up in various configurations, slumped like a lump behind the desk. Weighed down on my shoulder, I’d brought along a tape deck and a stack of cassettes, music I’d downloaded off the internet, burned to disc, then recorded over to analog. It was the most convoluted manner I could manage to take my favorite bands along.
It kept me distracted from anything resembling work, killing time in a slow-motion murder as shadows dragged easy from the east windows to the west. I’d take hour-long lunch breaks, returning to discover no one waiting at the door. I’d sometimes flip the deadbolt and sit in the empty attic, kicked back a few feet from the windows — estranged stranger to the world buzzing below. I’d often spot the head of security standing by the gate, an extended family relation we'd often joke on for his dramatic comb-over. I'd called it after the Wheel of Fortune: "'Round and 'round it goes, where it stops, no one knows."
I was an ineffectual employee, but with no one watching, it never seemed to matter. So long as I opened and closed on time, there was no greater expectation. But I faltered with my mathematical calculations, all that long-hand addition and multiplication of percentages. If there was any discrepancy by the end of that summer, it was surely my fault — but I was never questioned for it. My daily wage was barely beyond the cost of lunch and bus fare, so I ended that season with just a fistful of dollars for my trouble.
I only went back once again in 2009, with my sister and her young family. It seemed strange to be grown and revisiting what seemed smaller than ever before. Now that it's mostly all gone off the face of the earth, it's fascinating to pause and haunt my own memories. Not for the sake of nostalgia, of which I'm a great enemy, but for the ghosts of stories themselves. The past, of course, does not exist. All there is, is present. The rest is only in our heads.
January 6, 2026
Upper Clements, Nova Scotia
Year 19, Day 6631 of my daily journal.
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Pause and Haunt
The parks at Upper Clements had been there forever, I thought. Generations, surely. When you're young, you naturally assume that everything before your birth has a long and storied history. In reality, the outdoor zoo only opened in 1977, and the amusement park in 1989 — just before I turned two. But the structures were built with a certain older style in mind, so the illusion of history was pretty complete. Thirty years later, after much financial struggle and revolving ownership, it was all shuttered forever in 2019. There's very little left, just a few forgotten buildings on the zoo side, in view of some public trails. But like most folks my age in this area, I've got plenty of memories scattered.
Upper Clements Park had been my childhood Disney World through the 1990s, a county fair kind of place, plenty of thrills for the country crowd. We’d enter with our all-inclusive passes, told in neon green bracelets ratcheted to our wrists. I’d wear mine for days, to bed, in the bath, to church, until it finally turned so faded and threadbare that it popped off or peeled away. We’d take the rattling rollercoaster and the shuddering log flume ride, the Sissiboo Sizzler that climbed high overlooking the Annapolis River, splashing down among the overwhelming crowds of people in all directions. It was all pretty parochial in retrospect, especially after we actually went to Disney in 1998. That sort of took the shine off small-scale amusements closer to home.
So with all those crowded memories, it seemed strange to be the first boy arriving at an empty park by dawn, to locked gates like everything was derelict. That's how it was every Saturday at the age of fifteen, for my first summer job in 2003. The bus ride from Bridgetown took the better part of an hour, and it was still well before opening when I reached my destination. I'd pull the cord and disembark, and in the chill of a riverside dawn, sprint the apple orchard and hop the fence before the first summer strangers arrived. The birds chirped unaware that they’d soon be drowned by the noise of hundreds, and the rattle and wail of outdoor entertainment.
It was my kind of employment, coming with a built-in guarantee of invisibility. I’d only taken the job because it let me hide away, at the Craft Co-op just inside the main entrance, in a building mimicking an old farmhouse design. I sat among the works of a dozen different local artists, piled up in various configurations, slumped like a lump behind the desk. Weighed down on my shoulder, I’d brought along a tape deck and a stack of cassettes, music I’d downloaded off the internet, burned to disc, then recorded over to analog. It was the most convoluted manner I could manage to take my favorite bands along.
It kept me distracted from anything resembling work, killing time in a slow-motion murder as shadows dragged easy from the east windows to the west. I’d take hour-long lunch breaks, returning to discover no one waiting at the door. I’d sometimes flip the deadbolt and sit in the empty attic, kicked back a few feet from the windows — estranged stranger to the world buzzing below. I’d often spot the head of security standing by the gate, an extended family relation we'd often joke on for his dramatic comb-over. I'd called it after the Wheel of Fortune: "'Round and 'round it goes, where it stops, no one knows."
I was an ineffectual employee, but with no one watching, it never seemed to matter. So long as I opened and closed on time, there was no greater expectation. But I faltered with my mathematical calculations, all that long-hand addition and multiplication of percentages. If there was any discrepancy by the end of that summer, it was surely my fault — but I was never questioned for it. My daily wage was barely beyond the cost of lunch and bus fare, so I ended that season with just a fistful of dollars for my trouble.
I only went back once again in 2009, with my sister and her young family. It seemed strange to be grown and revisiting what seemed smaller than ever before. Now that it's mostly all gone off the face of the earth, it's fascinating to pause and haunt my own memories. Not for the sake of nostalgia, of which I'm a great enemy, but for the ghosts of stories themselves. The past, of course, does not exist. All there is, is present. The rest is only in our heads.
January 6, 2026
Upper Clements, Nova Scotia
Year 19, Day 6631 of my daily journal.
bluesky | etsy | facebook | instagram
substack | threads | tumblr | youtube
You can support my work
get things in the mail
and see everything
first on Patreon