My Family Vacation That Went Very, Very Wrong
When I was age 12, my family and I decided to take a little vacation. But things quickly took a turn for the worse, and just kept going downhill.
Our destination was a park in Memphis, Tennessee, called Mud Island Park. It was a fairly new park, having opened in 1982, and was widely advertised as a fun place to go.
We decided to leave on a Friday after my mother got off work. So me and my stepbrother, Billy, who was two years older than me, got in the car with my mom and stepfather and set off for Memphis. But right out of the gate, things went wrong. We had only gotten about eight miles down the road when our car got a flat tire. Not to be dissuaded, my parents got out the spare tire, and it, too, was flat.
So the four of us walked to a friend’s home nearby, and he gave us a ride home. Arrangements were made to fix the flat tires, and the friend took us home. We’d lost too much time, so we decided to set out again in our second car the next day.
After about a three hour drive from our home in Hot Springs, Arkansas, we arrived at the hotel in Memphis and parked in the attached parking garage, which was open to the street, then checked in. The hotel was a high-rise hotel near Mud Island Park, which was exciting to a kid like me, within walking distance of the park.
Now, Mud Island Park wasn’t the theme park that I thought it was. There weren’t any rides or rollercoasters. No live music acts (at least that I can recall), despite having an amphitheater. No mascots. No animals. Instead, there was a museum about the Mississippi River (which I can’t remember), a restaurant, an arcade, and a hydraulic scale model of the river in concrete, which stretched the entire length of the park was called the “Riverwalk.” The model was pretty cool, with little bridges and depictions of the cities along the way. Overall, though, the park was sorta boring for kids our age.
Despite the name, the park itself isn’t actually an island. Rather, it’s on the southern tip end of a peninsula that juts out into the Mississippi River, and there was a walking bridge that crossed over to the park from the “mainland.”
I recall being fairly bored at the park, as there wasn’t much there to excite 12 year old me. I remember looking over the edge at the river. I remember the highlight of the day being the lunch we ate at the restaurant and ordering and eating Mississippi Mud Pie afterward. And I recall playing games in the arcade.
My stepbrother was more interested in the scale model of the river in the concrete of the park, which meandered across the entire length of the park and had water running through it. It had a sort of “stair step” shape down in the channel of it, like a three-dimensional topographic map. Those steps were very angular and rough, and there was algae growing on them. I remember someone — maybe a park employee? — warning my stepbrother and other kids not to wade in the model Mississippi. They did anyways. What kid could resist doing this?
After we returned from the park, we walked into the hotel’s parking garage and discovered, to our horror, that the car had been broken into. My stepfather had left a pad of blank checks in the glove box — the only thing the thief took.
That night we were at the hotel and learned that the hotel had a swimming pool. The pool was up on one of the higher floors and was open to the air, with a concrete wall topped with a metal railing to keep stupid kids like me from falling. Billy and I were having a fine time in the pool while our parents were back in the room, nearby, when I noticed that there was a lightning storm on the horizon. So I got out of the pool, dripping wet, and stepped over to the metal railing to get a better look, grabbing the rail with both hands. Just then my leg touched a pipe that ran along the concrete wall.
The pipe had an uninsulated wire in it. Instantly I was electrocuted. I can remember gripping the metal railing, unable to let go, shaking uncontrollably, and screaming in pain at the top of my lungs. I can still remember it clearly. Back in the pool, Billy was laughing. He told me later that he thought I was joking around, pretending to have been struck by lightning from that distant storm. He felt sorry for that later. I’m not sure how long the electrocution lasted. It felt like minutes, but knowing how these things go, it was probably far shorter.
My parents heard the screaming and came running out to the pool. Realizing what was happening, my stepfather yanked me away from the railing and the pipe. I remember laying on a deck chair, the kind that was long and had plastic straps, and still shaking uncontrollably as my nerves attempted to recover. I seemed to recover okay. I wasn’t taken to a hospital. I was a surprisingly resilient kid.
Despite what had happened, we decided to go back to the park the next day, the last day of our vacation. Billy once again played in the scale model of the river, despite the warnings. Unfortunately, he discovered why kids weren’t allowed to play in it. He slipped on the algae and gashed his leg on the sharp “stair steps” in the channel of it. Bleeding profusely, his father took him to the first aid center in the park to get treated by a nurse.
Around the same time my stepbrother was getting sliced, I was in the arcade with my mother. This was still the days when arcade games were those big, standup cabinets that you fed quarters into. I was sitting on a wooden stool, the kind with rungs connecting the four legs, and I had wrapped my feet into those rungs. My game ended and, realizing that I was out of quarters, I jumped off the stool to go to my mom and beg for more.
Unfortunately, I forgot to unwrap my feet from the rungs first.
I slammed into the floor, my feet and the stool flying. When I tried to get up, I discovered my ankle hurt very badly, and I could only limp along. So my mother took me to the first aid station, where I was treated by the same nurse who had treated my stepbrother.
The nurse examined me and said it was a sprained ankle. She recommended keeping it elevated, soaking it in Epson’s salt, and wrapping it with an Ace bandage. I remember limping across that walking bridge back to the hotel, helped by my mother.
We went home, and I remember my foot swelling up and turning colors. I don’t remember how long it took to heal, but my mother says it seemed to heal within a couple days and that I didn’t complain.
For the rest of my youth, after that, I was prone to sprained ankles, particularly when I played sports. I took to wearing high top tennis shoes, which helped with supporting it.
Then, when I was a freshman in college, I was playing one-on-one basketball with my pal, Kevin, when, once again, I sprained my ankle. So I went to an urgent care center down the road. For the first time, after all the sprains I’d suffered over the years, the doctor there had an x-ray taken. “You sprained your ankle,” he said after examining the x-ray, “but you have an old break.” He pointed to an area of the x-ray that showed a portion of bone just sort of floating away from the rest. “It’s smooth on the edges, so it’s an old break.” There was only one injury I could remember in that area. I hadn’t sprained my ankle at Mud Island, I’d broken it.
I can’t claim to have ever gone back to Mud Island Park. The park is still there, but according to the Wikipedia entry for the park, the museum closed in 2019. Apparently there is some sort of “immersive attraction” that will soon be housed in the building. I have no idea if the restaurant is still there, but I doubt the arcade is. The scale model of the river is still there, though. I can’t help but wonder how many kids over the years have been injured in it, like Billy. If you go to the Google Street Views in the park, you’ll even see kids wading in it. Here’s one, apparent of twin girls, doing exactly that.
Did the hotel ever fix that uninsulated wire? I certainly hope so.
Have you had a “nightmare vacation” that compares to this? I think a lot of people do. If you do, or if you’ve visited Mud Island Park, please leave a comment and tell us about it.
