A Zoo Ran Through It

I ran under the protecting arms of giant oaks and magnolia trees, sometimes bounding through the wet spongy grass, sometimes pounding against hardened clay and concrete, being careful to avoid the threatening finger of thickly gnarled roots, as they erupted slowly from the earth. Scurrying squirrels chattered curses, as I disturbed their fast-forwarded lunch breaks. Loitering pigeons made last-second decisions to avoid the wrath of my lumbering Nikes.

I had been wanting to do this for quite a while—take my afternoon run through Hampton Park, a place so totally cluttered with highly charged, palpable memories of my childhood, that I half expected to run into lingering apparitions of my mother, my aunt and myself as we walked around this sylvan inner city retreat in 1946.

Of course, the park in those days was an even bigger attraction than it is now—especially for six-year-old boys.

Because it had a zoo. Oh, certainly not on the scale of San Diego's or the one in Washington, DC, but in my cloistered little world, it was quite an amazing place. It was filled with the kinds of animals that, until that point, I had only seen in books or movies.

Ninety-two years ago, this site had hosted the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition, a spectacular even authored by Colonel John H. Averill to promote trade with the West Indies, Central and South American. Thirty-one states and territories showcased multifarious industries, professions and trades, with exhibits ranging from art collections to agriculture to railroads. A New York architect, Bradford Lee Gilbert, designed the layout to reflect a motif blending the Colonial South with Ancient Spain. There were extraordinary Palaces of Commerce, Cotton, and Machinery together with a sunken garden, playing fountains, a race track and statuary from famous sculptors. The City of Philadelphia sent the Liberty Bell, there was a trolley line installed, and numerous dignitaries attended, including President Theodore Roosevelt.

The expanse of the exposition covered about 252 acres, extending from Rutledge Avenue on the east to the Ashley River (including what it now the Citadel) on the west and from Moultrie Street on the south to the present St. Margaret Street on the north. It closed after 6 months on May 31, 1902.

Unfortunately, all these fantastic structures were razed, but the city was left with a beautiful park, to which it added thousands of trees and, eventually, the animals. It is named after the state's Revolutionary War hero, General Wade Hampton.

The remains of the sunken gardens, the ponds, rose bushes, and the bridge—although the latter was altered a few years back—are still there, along with the remodeled bandstand and a small concession stand.

I received my kindergarten diploma on the bandstand in 1945, impatiently fingering the rolled up piece of paper, anticipating the termination of the silly ceremony so I could partake of the essence of Hampton Park—the animals.

When we—my mother, my aunt and I—visited the park, we would usually park on Cleveland Street and enter from the front. It was a most impressive entrance, at least to a six-year-old. In the center of the promenade there was a vast, looming aviary. It had soaring tropical trees whose tops I could barely glimpse from my three-foot level. The entire enclosure was fended in and covered by a wire mesh to maintain, as well as protect, its inhabitants. The aviary was filled with magnificent birds such as iridescently feathered peacocks, cranes, egrets and owls. They were not always immediately visible, forcing me to visually comb the viscous foliage till I suddenly spotted a splash of whiteness.

Me: "Momma, look up there (pointing to where a behemoth oak gently stroked the wire's apex and a patch of white flashed out between its dark green leaves)."
Momma (equally excited): "Yeah, Bobby, that's a crane."

On your left as you entered the park, there was the buffalo area and on your right, the deer.

Although I had seen a stuffed buffalo at the Charleston Museum, seeing a live one was immensely more interesting. First of all, they seemed much bigger and their fur was falling off in clumps like some old moth-eaten coat whose donation might arouse the indignation of a Salvation Army worker: "You keep it, Mister. What self-respecting homeless person would wear that?"

They moved about only slightly more than the one at the museum, mostly just standing around in small groups ruminating, but when one did finally start his slow motion gait, it was always a stirring moment for me, since I always hoped it might be the initiation of one of those dust-billowing, earth-rumbling, prairie dog terrorizing stampedes I had seen in the movies. An earnest request that I be allowed to bring my cap gun next time to "sort of get things started" was flatly rejected by my mother, although four or five moderately annoyed buffalo running around a two or three acre area would not have even come close to meeting minimal stampede requirements, I'm sure. So, while I certainly enjoyed watching the buffalo, there was always a small fly of frustration in my soup of contentment.

Never having witnessed a white-tailed deer stampede, my time spent with them was consistently of a higher quality. They tended to be less inert than the buffalo and sometimes would even come up close to the fence. Once, there was even a frolicking, but spindly legged little fawn.

Me: "Is it Bambi?"
My Mother (always ready with a little white or white-tailed lie): "Yes, it sure is."
Me (verifying): "Who's that with him (referring to the placid doe standing next to him)?"
My mother (having become an involuntary expert under the Bambi category): "Uh, that's Bambi's aunt that he went to live with after his mother died."

To my great elation, I soon discovered that the zoo also housed Bambi's friend, Thumper (the rabbit) and his girlfriend, Patter, along with the adorably malodorous Flower (the skunk), not to mention his sweetheart, Pansy.

In the zoo's declining years some of its ducks and even some peacocks were transferred to the deer habitat. I suspected this may have been a cost-cutting measure to gradually pave the way for more insidious actions, such as moving the raccoons in with the lions or the parrots and mynah birds in with the falcons, but thankfully these never happened.

Following the main promenade beyond the deer and buffalo areas, you came upon the "snakehouse," a relatively small building whose walls were lined with glassed-in cages of these wriggling, eerie reptiles for whom I had no Disneyesque frame of reference. My courage was hardly bolstered by my mother's "Ooh, I can't look at THOSE CREEPY THINGS" or my Aunt Gert's "Bobby, did you know a python can swallow a pig whole, or even a little boy" (suddenly grabbing me around the waist, as she shouted the last three words for emphasis). Needless to say, in those early years I was an infrequent visitor to the "snakehouse."

The zoo's two largest animals were a male lion and a bear. Neither of these beasts ever projected the ferociousness I had hoped for, although people who, no doubt, had been many places behind both animals where brains and dignity were doled out—still vengeful over this evolutionary shot change—did their best to provoke them by screaming at and taunting them: "Hey, lion, get up! Hey you! Leo, wake up, wake up! Come on, bear, you can sleep all winter."

They would throw peanuts or popcorn into the cages. The lion would lazily amble over and eat a few, but the bear, who, for some reason, only had three legs, only got up occasionally and hopped slowly about the cage, regally ignoring the crazed rabble peering through their bars.

My mother told me the bear's paw had gotten infected and had to be amputated. Aunt Gert, whose lifestyle was as wild as her imagination, said the bear had lost it battling the world's only sabre-toothed tiger, which incidentally dwelled at the uninhabited end of the Isle of Palms. I figured the bear had probably gotten too close to the bars and one of these people had bitten his leg off.

Without a doubt, the zoo's most fascinating attractions were the monkeys. They were in a couple of large cages to the left of the "snakehouse" as you entered the park. I don't recall the species represented. They were just your generic monkeys, as far as kids were concerned, but they always gave crowd-pleasing performances, flying around their cages on swings and ropes and making NFL-transcending, spectacular catches of the peanuts we threw them. People also threw them bananas, which would not fall through the small holes of the wire mesh; but if they landed on top of the cage, the wily primates would reach out and force them through the holes or cut them on the wire, as if it were "the amazing Ronco Banana Slicer," pulling them in piece by piece. Of course, there were fights—though never the life-threatening kind, but quick decisive ones establishing who was king and who wasn't.

But the monkeys' most uproarious performances were much more amusing to the kids than the adults or, more exactly, the adult parents. As kids are universally and perennially into "slapstick" humor, especially of the "toilet" variety, we couldn't have asked for a more representative group of comedic actors than these shameless simians.

To take in the monkey show at Hampton Park Zoo meant not only the witnessing of the aforementioned astounding feats of meal-time acrobatics, but unlimited exposure to a sufficient degree of vulgar personal habits and occasional sexual forays to make Madonna blush. Most all of the behavior was self-directed, such as complete genito-urinary and rectal examinations (minus the glove, of course) but, occasionally, a male would decide it was "big nasty" time and this—you have my word for it—was the original "big nasty," and, obviously the reason for that pejorative terminology. I will spare you a description. My mother, who tended to be quite embarrassed by this behavior, would drag me away, as I gaped in amazement.

Momma: "Come on, Bobby, let's go feed the ducks."
Me: "But, Momma, look at what they monkeys are doing."
Momma (to Gert, in a low whisper): "It's disgusting."
Gert: "Now I know were that saying 'More fun than a barrel of monkeys' came from."
Momma: "Hush, Gert. (Tugging my arm.) Come on, Bobby."

That was the first time I had seen sexual intercourse, and I had no idea at all what was going on. Actually, with all the kids crowsded around the monkey cages starting wide-eyed and mesmerized, it was probably a missed opportunity for the parents present to explain the "birds and the bees," which, incidentally, is certainly a fatuous expression. Up until the recent spate of animal mating shows on ETV and the Discovery Channel, never in my entire life had I seen a bird or a bee copulating. A more appropriate expression might have been the "dogs and the cats," or the "rabbits and the love bugs," or maybe just the "monkeys" or, even better, "monkey business" or "monkey shines." But this was the 40s, so they probably picked animals that no child would ever see, on purpose.

Sometimes, there were crowds of teenagers there also, cheering the monkeys on: "Come on Cheetah!" "No wonder Tarzan slept on his back!" "Oooo, look at King (rhymes with Kong)."

The monkeys' sexual antics were simply a matter of animals doing what comes naturally. As for the genital groping and extemporaneous body orifice examinations, it seemed to be so excessive that I feel there may have been some environmental stimulation. After all, the zoo was located just between the home of the Charleston Rebels (the city's minor league baseball team) and The Citadel. Monkey see, monkey do…

I completed my sex mile run around and through the Hampton Park, ending up at about the spot where the monkeys used to be. I felt I could almost hear the screeching and howling, smell their awful stench.

Hampton Park is still a beautiful spot, and although I miss the animals, I don't miss the zoo. Over the years, I've come to feel that wild animals don't belong behind bars except to protect them from vengeful, short-changed humans.

[Bob Coskrey writes from his cage in Mt. Pleasant.]

Must Use New Words and Phrases for the Millennium

June 1999
Must Use New Words and Phrases for the Millennium
By Bob Coskrey

Having been introduced to the interested word list in Wallenchinsky and Wallace’s book of Lists “Names of Things You Didn’t Know Had Names,” “Obscure and Obsolete Words,” “Untranslatable Words,” etc., I was inspired to come up with a list of my own words and phrases, entitled simply, “Must Use New Words and Phrases for the New Millennium.” Some of these you will note, are old words or names with newly ascribed meanings, like the first one, for example:

1. Cher Crop (Share Crop), noun: How a middle-aged female rock star obsessed with remaining forever young refers to her stable of young men, hence any group of young men preyed upon by one or more horny old women.
2. Clintonize, verb: This word, as one might guess, has multiple meanings: a) to lie publicly in an astoundingly audacious manner; b) to deny that a very commonly known human sexual behavior constitutes sexual relations, despite overwhelming clinical evidence; c) a specialized type of dry cleaning effective in removing incriminating stains, also known as “semenizing.”
3. Win One for the Gifford: to accomplish an extramarital liaison without being video-taped.
4. Pam-Mammicide, noun: the diminishing or eradicating of a personal characteristic that is totally responsible for one’s professional success.
5. Dennygrate, verb: to racially discriminate against someone in a public eating place.
6. Newter, verb: to jeopardize or destroy one’s career through making absurdly idiotic and self-destructive statements, e.g., Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder newtered himself in public.
7. Springer Spaniel, noun: a dog trained to detect whether an androgynous person claiming to be female is one or not. If after a thorough sniffing, male genitalia is discovered, the dog will go into a pointing stance.
8. Dylanate, verb: to conduct a successful career as a singer/songwriter even though no one can understand a single word you say.
9. Gorify (GORE-i-fy), verb, two meanings: a) to take credit for something that everyone else knows you had nothing to do with, e.g., oceans, fire, or the Internet; b) to be glorified is: to act/talk as if your limbs and brain cells were petrified.
10. Join the Dick Armey: to make an embarrassing public malapropism, unconsciously revealing a prejudiced mindset, requiring an immediate public apology.
11. Carlie Simonize: to write a disparaging song about your ex-lover.
12. Concession area: section of a movie theater where a customer conceded to pay whatever price is demanded for junk food he/she could buy elsewhere for half the amount or better.
13. Cardiolotto, noun: game played by theater concession counter employees in which cholesterol gorging customers are secretly assigned numbers, which a randomly selected, and the lucky employee whose selectee has a heart attack before leaving the theater receives a sizeable bonus.
14. Pop-off corn: name given to butter saturated popcorn sold at concession counters by its employees because of it deadly effect on customers.
15. Fruit Loop: specialized subway systems in Chicago for gays.