Imagine living at the beach as a teenager and working at an amusement park.
Takoma Park, Maryland resident Chris Lindsley, a former employee at the Funland Amusement Park in Rehoboth Beach, is offering a glimpse at that life in a book chronicling his six summers working at Funland in the 1980’s.
The book is called “Land of Fun: The Story of an Amusement Park for the Ages.”
Over 143-pages, it also tells the story of how the Fasnacht family that owns Funland, created summer memories for generations since 1962.
It also tells author Chris Lindsley's story about working at Funland, “I worked at Funland for six summers in the 1980’s. And I’ve been going to Rehoboth since I was 4 and I’m 54 now. So every summer that I’ve gone, I’ve spent time at Funland.”
Lindsley says he started thinking about writing the book during the summer of 2017 after his children went off to college.
He says he felt the family that owns Funland had a very interesting story to tell, “I met with the head of the Fasnacht family that runs Funland - Al Fasnacht - and said here’s what I’d like to do, are you okay with it? And he said sure if you’re interested in it, I’m happy to support it. So that’s kind of the genesis of it and it’s been a really fun two-year journey.”
Lindsley says he lived in dorms right above the amusement park during the time he worked there and says it was a very interesting and fun time in his childhood.
Funland has more than 300,000 customers a summer between Mother's Day and the week after Labor Day, many of whom come from Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and other places in the Mid-Atlantic.
For more information about Lindsley or the book and to order a copy of the book, click here. Or you can go to Funland's website by clicking here.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from theDelaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
