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We Wanted Something to Do

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Written by Thom Ring

The Jolly Cholly

Every town seems to have one. It's that strip of land straddling some stretch of road, maybe a state route or old federal highway, that's been reborn as the town's new commercial center, usually to the detriment of its old one.

Often this commercial strip rises from fields of old farmland. Sometimes it replaces old commercial buildings that once housed businesses long gone or still waiting for their own deaths or the deaths of their owners. But whatever is replaced, it's the old-timers who are left to remember while the new-timers flock to the mall, big-box building-center or mega-store built there. Sometimes what is replaced doesn't deserve to be missed, like the auto junkyard or factory. But for at least one commercial strip of which I am aware, in North Attleboro, Mass., much of what was replaced is worth missing.

I realized this one Saturday a long time ago after picking up my young daughters at their North Attleboro home for a typical single-dad weekend. Often on these days there was plenty to do. One, the other or both pursued interests in hockey, softball, cheerleading, holding down part-time jobs, etc., and I was glad chauffeur them to their activities. Some days, though, it was a struggle to find anything going on. The appeal of hitting the mall was limited, as much by Dad's shallow pockets as by anything else, but there was more to it than that. We didn't want something to buy, we wanted something to do.

As I pondered the literally hundreds of merchants crowding this now chronically-busy stretch of U.S. Route 1, I began to recall for my girls the many things to do that once were found along the road. Jolly Cholly's was a good place to start. The small amusement park closed in the late 1970s, although the land it occupied had not been consumed by a mall, a big-box store, or anything. It remains vacant save for the remnants of a couple of elaborate signs from another time.

It hadn't been much of an amusement park, but there was a Ferris wheel, a carousel, a bunch of kiddie rides and a simple miniature-golf course I'd played more than once. I recalled they sold a decent pizza, too.

I'm sure I would have taken my kids to Jolly Cholly's, but I doubt I'd ever have taken them to Jack Witchi's Sports Arena, at least not for its "Main Event." For something like three decades of Friday nights, Witchi's, a rundown arena with wooden benches for its 2,000 fans, hosted some of the best-known professional wrestlers in the - well - let's not use the term sport here.

Sure, Witchi's was a dump, but what better atmosphere for the seedy exploits of old-time wrestling than an old smoke-filled barn that, as with some of its performers and clientele, had seen better days? Indeed, in a fitting end, Witchi's burned down, in the late 1970s as well, so it didn't die so that commerce might live. It was years later that the site saw construction of a slick new auto dealership. Things being what they are, that's gone now, too.

But the abandoned property that once hosted these amusements is not the norm. More typical is the tract of land where the Boro Drive-In once enjoyed success. My first recollections of the Boro are of its name in giant neon script letters on the back of its screen. In my youngest days, traveling in the back of my Dad's station wagon for a trip to Boston before Route 95 was completed, I thought it was the "Bozo" Drive-In. Hey, cursive still was new to me.

Years later, I was good for a movie or two at the Boro every summer. I recall seeing the movie Evel Knieval there, feeding my growing appetite for all things motorcycle. I saw some movies even less impressive than that. This tract of land now contains a Christmas Tree Shop and a Guitar Center. With those two stores as tenants, it now sees plenty of activity.

As does the hill across the street. Now it's just a Wal-Mart, but it used to be well known as Red Rock Hill. To recall any real pre-retail activity on Red Rock Hill you have to go all the way back to the 1950s, when it hosted motorcycle scrambles races. That was too early to feed my growing appetite for all things motorcycle, but in the early 1970s I would go there with my "modern" moto-cross bike and race against family and friends. The track, a fast and challenging ribbon of dirt, was still largely intact more than a decade after hosting old BSA, Triumph and Matchless bikes. No one seemed to bother us, either. No one cared about old Route 1 then.

There once was a diner nearby. I know now it was a Worcester model, but we knew it then as the Red Rock. Actually, we knew it more as "Marv's" or the variation "Marv's Gardens," after its owner and primary short-order cook. The food was barely passable, but the point was that Marv's was open when it was no hour - or you were in no shape - to go anywhere else. Some of my best lessons in humanity were learned at Marv's.

Today the spot once under Marv's is a hardly-trod-upon corner of the parking lot at The Emerald Square Mall. The diner itself, I've been told, is somewhere out in New York, but I can't tell you more than that.

There's a chopper shop on Route 1that used to be a drive-in restaurant, Rattey's. For a racehound like I was as a kid, when it closed it became something even cooler. Rattey's Raceway hosted radio-controlled model racecars. Not those silly battery-powered things that jump around in the dirt, but fire-snorting pavement road racers that burned gasoline under giant bodies shaped like doorstops.

There was one nighttime activity that was pretty popular along this stretch of road, although I could only guess at it as a kid. Route 1 was home to at least a half-dozen little neon-lit strip motels, like Bill's Bay State, the Maine Motel and, continuing a theme, the Red Rock Motel. I heard they all had hourly rates. Most have been leveled. The Arn's Park arguably was the nicest and newest of all of them all. Presently the land where it stands is for sale.

There's still a bowling alley on Route 1 in North Attleboro, known as the North Bowl. I'm happy for that. I never was much for bowling, but at least it's something to do.