One of my favorite meditational/artistic tools is to mentally rewind back to places I loved as a child. The split-level stairs of my first house, the improvised garden of the second – heavy with memory, special for being enjoyed while still innocent, it’s a way to get back to the pure state and see things clearly, instead of letting other people’s bullshit skew my vision.

They’re also settings that figure in my dreamlife quite frequently. The split-level is a bright yellow sanctuary that keeps spawning adorable 70’s style rooms the further I walk inside.

The Stray and I took a trip down to Turnersville a few months ago to see how the place has aged. It’s more than a little creepy to remember bustling shopping plazas and bright signs that would be delightfully retro today – and to find abandoned buildings and empty storefronts.

I knew that the playground across from the fire station had been left to rot, but it’s been forever since I last visited. I had to know if it was still there.

It is.

This all used to be open ground, with a little wooden banner welcoming everybody in. One of those things I always used to pass on my mom’s drive to the Pantry Pride down the road, and cannot remember at all what the name was. Admittedly, it was kind of a strange place to build a playground, you had to park on the side of the road kind of out in the middle of nowhere to get here.

In my dreams, it’s still a recognizeable, functioning playground, but everything’s violet and wild at the edges. But real life has its own feral beauty to it. Melancholy, but lovely in that green-smothered way.

I’m glad that they made things so solid and built to last back in the day, that whoever decided to close the park also decided not to bother yanking everything out of the ground and just left it all to disintegrate peacefully. Thank you.

I love how most people drive right by with no idea that children used to play here. A piece of my dreamlife is safe, hidden behind the trees.