Joe W. Brown: The park of many childhoods

Read Boulevard, Eastern New Orleans. Joe W Brown Memorial Park Sign (photo by: Infrogmation of New Orleans, 12 July 2017)

In New Orleans East, one of most well-known parks, Joe W. Brown Park, is the park that I remember going to with my siblings at seven years old. Joe W. Brown Park is named after one of the largest oil producers in Louisiana history and is located at 5601 Read Blvd. The park contains a football field, swimming pool, track field, a recreation center, and more. Although, when I first went to the park it didn’t have as much as it does now, and I remember only going to the playground.

The park was always a place to be outside since many of us were rebuilding our homes after Katrina and didn’t have the opportunity to play in each other’s yards. Joe W. Brown Park has a playground that is small, with a swing set boasting 4 swings, three purple slides, a little gray rock climb area, a purple and orange umbrella cover over the park, and three benches at the corners of the playground. The ground on the playground is made up of green rubber tile which has a rough texture that when anyone fell they would easily scrape their knees, hands, or elbows.

The playground was built in mind for the use of toddlers to twelve-year-olds, and even though the park didn’t contain a lot of things to do, my siblings and I were able to make the most of it. I met a ton of other kids who went to other schools at this park and made friendships that lasted from thirty minutes to a couple of hours, but it didn’t matter to me at the time because I like how much easier it was to socialize with other people as a kid.

Every time we went to the park, my siblings and I would race towards the swings, which were either full or empty, and swing for most of the time on the weekdays, but we would change up our playtime on the weekends since we had more time by playing tag with random kids, racing each other, or playing make-believe. It would also be at this park where I first learned how to ride my bike with no training wheels, which I believe is one of the major achievements a kid can receive in their childhood. I had received a Mongoose bike for Christmas, and after begging my aunt to bring me to the park to ride it, she packed us and our bikes up into her small Honda car and drove to the East Bank.

The moment my aunt had parked her car, I burst out of the car and grabbed my nike out of the truck to be the first one to ride my bike. I can say without a doubt that I didn’t fully learn to ride a bike that day, but I did learn how to stay balanced on my own for at least twelve seconds, which was pretty good compared to my first attempt where I scraped my right knee on the driveway at home and scarred it. It took around three hours of falling to achieve those twelve seconds, and all of those trails and errors happened within the grounds of Joe W. Brown Park.

Joe W. Brown is a park like other parks in New Orleans–open to all and raising kids one skinned knee at a time. When I think back on my childhood in New Orleans, I think back on Joe W. Brown Park, and I know this is true for other kids in the neighborhood and friends of mine. Parks are not just parks to us in New Orleans; they’re the backyards and play yards that offer socialization and interaction when our own spaces have been swept away by hurricanes.

Germaine Ellis is a student at Bard Early College and a senior at Abramson Sci Academy.