I don’t
get there often, but I always enjoy the change of scenery, including a
fountain in the middle of its pond. It appealed to me so much that I felt
compelled to take the photo accompanying this post.
I knew I wasn’t the only one fascinated by it—shoppers not only thronged around the waterfall and accompanying vegetation, but pitched pennies into it.
That feature would soon be copied in enclosed malls
across the U.S. But as many of these retail emporiums have transformed into
open-air structures or even non-retail uses and maintenance became more expensive, they became less common. (Though
it remains enclosed, even Paramus Park removed its waterfall a couple of decades
ago, evoking considerable nostalgic mourning among area residents.)
One place where you can still see a fountain, albeit
in modified form, is The Shops at Riverside, a few miles south of
Paramus Park. While walking through the mall’s corridors yesterday, I heard the
familiar sound of my youth, and snapped this picture.
As I discovered, what I heard didn’t come from a
waterfall but more like a whirlpool. Water is pumped through an open cavity,
which comes back to a lower basin before falling down a sloping surface.
(See Colum Marsh’s July 2018 tribute in Canada’s National
Post on why mall fountains represent “a community oasis,” with “the
tonic quality of a city park: welcoming and restorative.”)
Most of the pond, it turned out, was still frozen
over. But after two days when the thermometer exceeded 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the
small northern part of the water had opened up, concentrating the attention of
walkers like me, in a way it never had been in the non-frigid seasons of the
year, on this fountain.
So I eagerly photographed this moment in time, this
promise of better things, so needed now, in this season of death, in this
region and even this country.
The fountain at the center of the pond especially drew
my interest today—enough, obviously, that I photographed it.
The thermometer may have read 49 degrees but with no
sun, it felt cooler. Elsewhere in town, even as seats and tables remained in
place for outdoor dining, they were largely unused, with potential patrons no doubt
discouraged by the plunging mercury.
The gray sky seemed an appropriate reflection of the
gray spirits so many have felt in this region of the Northeast in recent days
as COVID-19 cases increase, along with the probability of tighter restrictions
on business and private gatherings.
Given these circumstances, then, seeing this pond and
fountain didn’t make my heart soar. But it was a sign of life, the way water
always is, even amid a contraction of nature that has felt more severe this
year than ever before.
