I was holding this one back this one for a milestone review, but forgot to make it #700 and 800…read morewill be a ways off yet. This is a place I hold dear to my heart. If Yelp had been around to check in when I was growing up, I'd probably be the Duchess for life here. Duchess emeritus. Whatever. Tandy Turn Park is embedded in so many of my childhood memories that it will always evoke a smile, a fond memory, and a little bit of wishfulness to go back and hold fast to those memories.
The park is located at the end of Tandy Turn, which dead ends on this side. It's a good sized park with plenty of grass for playing, parties, picnics, and so on. The playground equipment includes a merry-go-round, slide, swings, and a few other pieces of equipment. There's a picnic table or two as well, but not a lot of benches outside those. I'm not sure if the ground is barn mulch (old school from when I was a kid) or one of those manufactured safety surfaces that are often in parks now. This park is one in Eugene that feels more like a secret, and is certainly more secluded, because you can't just drive by it; both streets that lead to it are dead ends. You have to know it's there, which is probably why it's usually very quiet and is almost exclusively people from the neighborhood.
My sister and I often played or had our birthday parties here (birthday parties were mostly her domain; my birth month has always been iffy when it comes to good weather in Oregon) when our mom, sister, and I lived with my grandparents for a few years (they lived in a home one house down from the park for about 40). My mom then lived in the home for another 15 years after they passed away, before she sold the home in 2017. What actually makes me the saddest about having sold the home is that to go to this park we would have to drive there and park, and there's not a parking lot so folks would be parked in front of people's homes. However, so many areas are connected easily to this park--Tandy Turn, Sharon Way, and that web of streets; and there's a path from Tandy Turn to Lariat Drive and that collection of streets.
Tandy Turn Park represents a bit of my childhood that I won't be able to capture again in the same way, with my own children should I have them or with friends and family, and along with that memories of my grandma or grandpa walking down to tell us to come home, or my grandparents neighbors keeping watch over us since there's not (or wasn't at the time) a fence separating them from the park, just some landscaping. I am sad to lose that deep, half-century family connection; my mom and uncle were young enough when my grandparents moved to Oregon that they may have played and/or hung out here, too, or maybe were there when the park was created (my mom has shared that this area of Eugene was not nearly as developed in the 1960's, and much of it was still farmland). Perhaps my strongest memory related to the park is of my older step-cousin (who I'd always thought was so cool) taking us down here when it was raining and sliding down the twisty slide in the rain; I wonder if she remembers that. It reminds me of warm afternoons playing with my sister; occasionally Danielle, Jessica, Annie, and sometimes Trevor, Justin, Richard, and Christina and Charity; of our house being the place we'd run for water or a bathroom break since we were by far the closest; of sliding down the incredibly hot metal twisty slide in the summer because it we loved it too much not to; of hiding in the evergreens that line the edge of the park when we're playing hide and seek; of taking turns being the one who had to push the merry-go-round as fast as it would go whilst the others hung on for dear life (or sometimes tried to show off and stand up with no hands as it swung as fast as we could make it go); or of pumping and pumping to swing as high as we could and then taking a leap! Even memories of my young, over-imaginative self being afraid at night of what might happen in the park or hearing ghosts from there are now unexpectedly comforting.
Wrapping up what will probably be my most sentimental Yelp review ever, I better not forget to say that there are no facilities at this park: If you visit, best do so with an empty bladder. And although it is not a dog park, you will see dogs here and walking through the park with their owners since the park connects Sharon/Woodside/Buff to Tandy Turn and even Lariat by way of the park. Enjoy your time here.
