Part of what made my neighborhood the place to be as a kid was Supper Rock Park, a 6 acre park right across the street from my house. What made the park so special? It had a mountain in the middle of it. A real. Fucking. Mountain. A climbable, amazing mountain that boasted incredible height and took a crazy amount of stamina to hike. If you made it all the way up to the top and back down, you were the thing that 2nd grade dreams were made of. A hero. A legend. Queen of the afternoon, princess of the playground. A google search of the mighty rock turned up this:
So... I remember it being way bigger. It looks so sad here, doesn't it? Standing behind the playground like a sad old weirdo at a school dance with a little bow tie and a wilted bouquet.
Maybe it's the angle?
Nope.
Obviously I was 7 at the time so everything seemed bigger, but perhaps more obviously- this is a small hill featuring rocky terrain. A mountain it is not.
The reason it was named Supper Rock Park is because one of the (what I now recognize as very small) rocks at the base of the hill had a round, flat carving in it. It looked like a little disc had been cut out of it with primitive tools. We were made to believe that Native Americans smashed their food in the cutout after carving the hollow and lit it on fire to cook it or something. I'm not really sure on the logistics of how they supposedly cooked their food in it, only that it definitely happened and the townsfolk were so stoked on it they named the park after it. I don't know if there is any fact to this, or if the neighborhood kids that were older than me told me a made up story so they could humiliate me later. In either case, supper of some kind was had, and rocks were involved.
I tried searching for a history of the park and came up with nothing but a bunch of listings giving me the address of the park and a weird neighborhood board website that hasn't been updated since 2008. Typical Albuquerque.
Speaking of typical Albuquerque, there was also the darker, seedier side of the park. Broken bottles everywhere, cigarette butts, people making out left and right. One day playing there with my sister and a friend of hers, we noticed a couple getting all sexy as we passed by. That's when I learned what French kissing was at the tender age of 6, and I was totally horrified. As my sister's friend explained in grave detail the mechanics behind such a kiss, my world spiraled more and more out of control.
Touch tongues? What are you insane? That's the worst thing I've ever heard!
All of this thanks to Supper Rock Park, a place where children play and drunken horny teens get their mack on before smoking some cigarettes, breaking some bottles, and not picking them up.
If you or someone you know has a status update on the park-- I'd love to hear it.
