The Hope Parks and Recreation Maintenance Department is headed by Ronald “Runt” Kidd, a 27-and-a-half-year veteran Spring Hill native who plans to retire next September 9th.
About working for the department, he said, “I just enjoy being outside and meeting different people from different places. You're always outside doing something different.”
On Monday that was removing ceiling tiles at Fair Park Coliseum so that insulating foam could be applied around the HVAC system’s ducts and vents. Eight-month employee Benjamin Bobo was standing on an elevator truck that had lifted him up about 20 feet to reach the works inside the ceiling. From Spring Hill himself, Bobo explained this was just one of many kinds of tasks he has helped carry out in his time with the parks crew.
“When I get here in the mornings, I go around and check all the trash and make sure all the trash cans are not full. If there’s a little in it, we might leave it to the next day, but we usually get them all. Then if it's during the summertime, you usually get on a mower and take off mowing, and probably mow till lunch, go get a little snack, and come right back and start mowing again. During the wintertime we have these projects like we're doing now, and it's a pretty busy little job. You don’t have a lot of down time,” Bobo said.
As of early November, mowing season has been over for about three weeks, Bobo said, and now mowers are being fixed. “We put out some [rye grass] seeds the other day on the ball fields to make them look pretty through the winter,” Bobo said. Marking the soccer fields is also part of the work load.
About his co-workers Bobo said, “I love the people up here. Runt’s really good to me. [Parks Superintendent] Summer Chambers is really good to me. They really take care of me.” In the summer, Bobo said, the department usually is looking to add a worker. “It would be nice to have somebody good that really works hard to come maybe for a little part-time job next summer. We really need them.”
Another important member of the staff is Kris England who grew up at Shover Springs and has many memories from the 1970s of using the park as a youngster for sports and FFA programs. He has been working for the parks staff for two years himself. “I like just being outside, being able to do things different. I kind of like different challenges, to try to fix this or fix that. I enjoy that stuff. I don't really like doing the same thing every day. I enjoy working for my bosses. They're good people.”
England said that just a look around Fair Park gives an idea of what he has worked on fixing. “Everything from a picnic table to a swing set to a ball field to a lawn mower,” he said. The fact that so much use is gotten out of his work is gratifying, he said.
“There's kids here every day. Every day. Even on rainy days sometimes, there are kids out there playing. I just wish we had more funding to be able to do more.”
As we talked, Hope residents were still casting early votes to potentially provide that funding through a 7/8 cent sales tax which would pay for a new aquatic and recreational center as well as many improvements at all Hope’s park facilities, including to its sports fields and its playgrounds. Tuesday night’s results revealed Hope’s voters did indeed approve that tax, as well as a 1/8 cent tax for maintenance of the rec center and a bond issue for a new fire department headquarters.
I asked England what he thought of the possibility of this passing. “I don't want to pay any more taxes, either. But then I realized my kids are here. Then if they all have kids and they have kids, there'll be one day when they have nothing but video games. And I don't think there's anything good about those video games.”
His daughter Abby seems to be defying the video game trend, though, in her own use of the parks facilities. “She's big into rodeo, and so we use the arena a lot to practice. She plays softball. We play softball down here all the time. We practice and have tournaments,” England said.
Reached Thursday, after the news of the passage of the tax initiatives had emerged, Kidd said “I'm just overwhelmed and excited. I’m not going to be here to enjoy it, but our community needed it very very much.” But Kidd’s grandchildren, who he looks forward to spending more time with after retirement when he plans to remain at his farm in Spring Hill, will likely enjoy it as they run, jump, swim and maybe show cattle in a place where their grandfather's and his friends' handiwork can be seen everywhere.
