A welder didn’t start the fire, it was already burning, ’cause the world was turning

A welder didn’t start the fire, it was already burning, ’cause the world was turning

Twenty-five years ago, the reality was beginning to settle in. Although its owners announced that Idora Park would open on schedule for the 1984 season, any realist knew that the park would not survive.

The park’s signature ride, the Wild Cat, had been destroyed a day earlier. And while Idora was more than the Wild Cat — much more over its 85- year history to that day — by the 1980s amusement parks had become theme parks and the only thing keeping smaller parks alive were classic roller coasters.

The awful truth is that without the fire of April 26, 1984, Idora Park may have died an even slower, uglier death. But it would have died as surely as dozens of others have — even Geauga Lake Park, which had eight roller coasters, both classic and modern, when it was closed for good. Valiant efforts are being made to save Conneaut Lake Park, which has been closed for two years but is supposed to reopen this season.

As America changed, its community parks were among the casualties. Just thinking about the depth of those changes inspired our headline, an obvious knockoff from Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Regional amusement parks emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide a destination for streetcar lines. It was a symbiotic relationship: the streetcars provided park goers, the parks provided streetcar riders.

A destination for its day

As we said, Idora was much more than the Wild Cat, or, for that matter, any collection of rides. It’s ballroom attracted some of the nation’s biggest bands for one generation, and hosted the area’s most popular sock hops for another. The ballroom ws the venue of choice for formal balls and proms for Youngstown College, Youngstown University and Youngstown State University. It was the scene of car shows, beauty contests and home and garden shows. It was also the scene of political rallies and, given that, appropriately the place where friends and colleagues gathered to mark the retirement of long-time Vindicator politics editor Clingan Jackson.

It boasted the area’s most popular picnic grounds, largest swimming pool and home field for Youngstown’s minor league baseball teams.

But by the day of the fateful fire, the park had already been for sale for two years with no takers. Tens of thousands of people have fond memories of days and nights at the park, being jostled on the crowded midway and standing in line for their favorite rides. A few of them told their stories in The Vindicator Saturday and Sunday.

But a few thousand others can recall going to the park in the late 1970s and early 1980s to be surprised that they could walk from ride to ride, whether it was in Kiddie Land or along the midway, and ride anything they wanted with no line — even the Wild Cat. Those visitors knew that the park’s days were numbered.

Idora’s fate was sealed with a single spark from a welder’s torch and a fire that spread from the Lost River to the Wild Cat, the Turtle and the midway. But by then, there were no streetcars in Youngstown, every family had a car, and kids didn’t tell their classmates about spending a day at Idora, they talked about flying to Florida to see Mickey Mouse. Midway french fries were replaced by deep-fried turkey legs — which is as fitting a metaphor as we can conjure for a culture of excess that doomed Idora before that anonymous welder lit his torch on a beautiful spring day in 1984.