Roger Williams Park, in ... Providence, Rhode Island, is an elaborately landscaped 427-acre city park and is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. ... The land for the park was a gift to the people of Providence in 1871, in accordance with the will of Betsy Williams, the great-great-great-granddaughter, and last surviving descendant of the founder to own the land. It had been the family farm and represented the last of the original land grant to Roger Williams in 1638 from Canonicus, chief of the Narragansett tribe. The family farmhouse (built in 1773), known as the Betsy Williams Cottage, and the Williams family burial ground (including Betsy's grave) are still maintained within the park.
The park also contains seven lakes which comprise approximately 98 acres. ... The park was designed by Horace Cleveland in 1878, and was constructed in the 1880s. Many of the roads, bridges and sidewalks were built by the Works Progress Administration from 1935 to 1940. Currently it contains the Roger Williams Park Zoo, the Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, the Japanese Gardens, the Victorian Rose Gardens, the Providence Police Department's Mounted Command center, the Dalrymple Boathouse and boat rentals, historical tours, a Carousel Village for children that includes the "Hasbro Boundless Playground" which is accessible for handicapped children, the Temple to Music, the Roger Williams Park Casino, large greenspaces, and many miles of walking paths.Generations of Rhode Islanders have spent at least some time at Roger Williams Park: taking their children to the zoo to pet the farm animals and pose on the dog statue "The Sentinel," snapping wedding or First Communion or Confirmation photos in the Japanese Garden; riding the carousel or attending an Independence Day band concert at the Temple to Music, with its Greek columns (and, sadly, a white "canvas" that made it victim to graffiti artists). During the Gilded Age anyone who was anybody appeared in evening dress and furs and jewels at the Casino. The Zoo, from its beginnings as a "menagerie" with one building to the sad traditional zoo of concrete and chain link enclosures, became eventually one of the finest animal collections in the country.
I discovered the Park as a refuge when I got my drivers' license; after college classes I would flee to the zoo, which was free back then, and walk through the farm exhibit and through the grasslands to visit the Roosevelt elk. I'd always drop in at the Victorian Bird House, the original menagerie building, a steel-and-brick edifice with Crystal Palace lines and a soaring ceiling, with its free-flight cage in the center, and a flock of budgies singing and chattering in a smaller enclosure right in the front. Sometimes I would go into the museum, which still looked as it had at the turn of the century, with wood-and-glass display cases of butterflies and of minerals, all labeled by hand in brownish ink, a gallery of taxedermied wild animals from the Eastern Woodlands of New England, and a two-story foyer with a sarcophagus next to the gift shop.
On one of those post driver's license days, both my friend Sherrye and I found ourselves with a free day, and we decided to have a picnic. We had sandwiches and drinks, whether from home or a shop I can't remember, and for a snack, very clearly remembered, a bag of popcorn. I had a special place I liked, near the museum; if you parked out at the road at a tree I had "bookmarked" in my memory and headed down a grassy-and-root-gnarled slope to a certain spot under the trees, when they were in leaf you were unable to see the road at all, just the old bricks of the museum rising up behind you and the boathouse before you, across the lake, all canopied in sagging maple limbs and oak branches. It was like being in a time machine; when there was no traffic was passing to break the spell you almost could have been in the park in any age, even in the 1910s with horses and carriages winding down the park roads, or the 1920s with huge Deusenbergs and Pierce Arrows bringing excited children to play.
We stretched out our picnic blanket and had our lunch, luxuriating in the cool breeze, lazily looking up at the leaves fluttering above us, and talking about what we always talked about: television and books, Sherrye's pesty older brother, our parents and how weird they were sometimes, the usual teenage stuff. Lunch finished, we opened the bag of popcorn.
Suddenly a bright-eyed grey squirrel appeared, posting himself several feet from our blanket, looking at us in anticipation, his little nose working rapidly. "Oh, how cute!" was the watchword, and of course we tossed him a kernel of popcorn, watching him take it up in his dexterous little black paws and nibble on it. When he finished it, he scampered out of sight and when he reappeared he wasn't alone.
We laughed. "He brought a friend." Each received a kernel and we watched them eat and tossed two more.
Except suddenly there were three, and we tossed a third kernel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fourth furry shape appear. A fourth kernel was tossed.
After that it was sort of like the Sorcerer's Apprentice; somewhere out of sight Mickey Mouse in spangled robes was raising his wand and Deems Taylor was conducting the orchestra. As if by magic a fifth squirrel appeared, and a sixth. We really didn't mind initially, and flung each of them a kernel and then another, each time aiming well away from our picnic spot, but when numbers seven and eight materialized we started looking at each other. We were both too well-versed in the reality of life, especially Sherrye, who entered college knowing she wanted to become a nurse: sure squirrels were cute, but they were still wild animals with the usual wild animal ticks and fleas, they were rodents and did bite if provoked, and they occasionally carried rabies. This could be a problem.
So when number five (or maybe it was number two or number six, since by now with eight squirrels to keep track of it was impossible to tell each little identical furry grey creature apart) was emboldened enough to come to the edge of the blanket until he was shooed back, and then turned right back around and approached again, one of us turned to the other and said, "You know, I think we'd better go," and our little time-travelling luncheon was swiftly concluded. We snatched up the trash and the bag of popcorn, shooed the squirrels with a flick of the blanket, and dashed back to the car with at least one of the squirrels in hot pursuit. We sprang into the car and shut the door and then laughed and laughed.
Even today, I can never see squirrels without thinking of that funny picnic under the trees, and wondering just how many we could have gathered if we'd been crazy enough to have stayed on. I think I'd rather not know the answer!
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