- Feb 5, 2002
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“The world will never starve for want of wonders; only for want of wonder.”
—G. K. Chesterton
One day, I was sitting at our kitchen table watching a compilation of ads from the early 2000s. Like all Millennials, I’m a slave to nostalgia. One of them hit a little too hard, though: the commercial for York’s Wild Kingdom.
For those who didn’t grow up in northern New England, York’s Wild Kingdom is a zoo-cum-theme park in downtown York, Maine. As either a zoo or a theme park, the Wild Kingdom probably wouldn’t pass muster.
But the fact that it’s both things at once makes it magical. Being able to ride a Ferris wheel and an elephant on the same day is deeply significant. Needless to say.
My grandparents lived in York, so the music from the Wild Kingdom commercial is like a time machine. As soon as I hear it, I’m eight years old again — riding the old trolly, or playing ski-ball, or watching the taffy-pullers at Goldenrod’s, or eating fish and chips at the Union Bluff, or sitting by the campfire with my grandfather, making s’mores and listening to the waves break on the bluff.
I remember that a wooden fence ran halfway round the cliff’s edge, fencing in my grandmother’s garden. She had a green thumb, but her favorite flowers were the wild sea roses that grew over the fence. Every year they came back thick as a hedge, a living wall between us and the Atlantic.
As I have often told people, my childhood was idyllic.
Continued below.
—G. K. Chesterton
One day, I was sitting at our kitchen table watching a compilation of ads from the early 2000s. Like all Millennials, I’m a slave to nostalgia. One of them hit a little too hard, though: the commercial for York’s Wild Kingdom.
For those who didn’t grow up in northern New England, York’s Wild Kingdom is a zoo-cum-theme park in downtown York, Maine. As either a zoo or a theme park, the Wild Kingdom probably wouldn’t pass muster.
But the fact that it’s both things at once makes it magical. Being able to ride a Ferris wheel and an elephant on the same day is deeply significant. Needless to say.
My grandparents lived in York, so the music from the Wild Kingdom commercial is like a time machine. As soon as I hear it, I’m eight years old again — riding the old trolly, or playing ski-ball, or watching the taffy-pullers at Goldenrod’s, or eating fish and chips at the Union Bluff, or sitting by the campfire with my grandfather, making s’mores and listening to the waves break on the bluff.
I remember that a wooden fence ran halfway round the cliff’s edge, fencing in my grandmother’s garden. She had a green thumb, but her favorite flowers were the wild sea roses that grew over the fence. Every year they came back thick as a hedge, a living wall between us and the Atlantic.
As I have often told people, my childhood was idyllic.
Continued below.
