The city of Barberton, Ohio, the place that I remember vaguely in the back of my mind. It was the place where I would spend many Friday nights with my family in an underground bowling alley known as the "Magic City." One could find the dark place lit by many glow in the dark lights and paint. There were more than twelve lanes all named after a business. Each had a screen that would either show ads or some animated short relating to bowling. Not all the lanes had people using them, and I have never seen this place business when it's night. The place was fairly large with the snack bar sitting in the right corner of the alley when you came down the steps. On the left of the snack bar was a literal bar that only people twenty-one and up could enter. It is in this same bar that when I was ten, I learned the wonders of a truly mystical part of this bar. The adults that I usually hung around on these late nights decided to drag my sister and me into the back of the bar where something interesting lurked.

Being underground, the people delivering alcohol had a doorway in the upstairs world that could transports it safely down using a secret staircase. Though if they were feeling lazy, there was a large slide that one could simply slid the booze down. It is only when I stood in front of this very slide that I came to learn this. I remember smiling to myself as the adults allowed both of us slide down it. The sensation of my hair whipping around and my stomach lurching caused me to feel like I was flying straight down into the place that I knew only as my childhood playground. The crowd of onlookers, drunk and sober, all smiled at us as I ran right back up to the top regardless of not having my sister. She clung to my mother as I slid down the slide one more time with an adult. It is on this slide that I truly recall how the Magic City Bowling Alley was filled with the kind of history that people frowned upon.

The very place was not really meant for children. Sure, it had the bar slide and a total of three games to entertain kids, but it was not really meant for my age group. No, it was meant for the adults that suffered through the long hardships of the working world. They would come here to drown their outside lives in the comforts of classic rock, beer, and bowling. However, I was an innocent child. One that saw the world as being pure and magical. It is a place where something that seems old and ugly to society is something much more to me. I feel the warmth in my chest every time I look back to those nights that would later lead up to me running to my daddy when we would head home. He drove his Mazda, brand new, with the radio blaring the wonders of Scorpions and Whitesnake as we sped down highways. He would stop at the Hamburger Station to pick up two hamburgers, a box of greasy fries, and the sweetest cup of lemonade that you could ever taste. Sure, it was bad for his health, but we laughed while enjoying matching giant cups of lemonade while looking up at the night sky.
It's unexplainable how I felt when I would watch the world moving around us as the car came closer to my home. My dad would sing along with the radio. I would take a few sips of the world's sweetest cup of lemonade. I never felt closer to my dad or the universe. It is something that I am unable to recreate. If I were to head back to the Magic City Bowling Alley, I wouldn't be able to feel that same wonderful feeling that always made me smile every time I looked back on it. It is the price of growing up a little, and everything changing. No longer am I that innocent ten year old, but now an eighteen year junior in high school. One that will never be able to let go of the past that made me who I am today. I long for the moment where I sped through Barberton once more.