CONEY ISLAND FLASHBACK
(A Day at a Not so Amusing Amusement Park)
Growing up, I was fortunate to have had a father who loved taking us places. During the end of the 1950’s he had been keeping up on articles about the impending demise of Coney Island’s Steeplechase. This was a large section of the amusement park that was comprised of a huge building with an interior full of rides. It was encircled by a series of tracks that mechanical horses of which you could hop on and race around the building high up off the ground…hence the name, The Steeplechase. *Fearing that demolition was just around the corner, Dad wanted us to experience the place.
My older brother and sister who were teens at the time were very excited to be going so I was a little dubious about what I was getting into. When we pulled into the parking lot, the first thing I noticed was a tremendous clown face on the upper stories…with a creepy grin. I think he was the precursor to Pennywise from “It”. Now I was on the alert.
First, they put me on the famous Steeplechase ride itself. I was too young to go it alone so I had to ride holding on for dear life to the back of my brother who kept standing up like Johnny Long coming in around the final curve. Periodically, every time the horse machine flexed, it pinched me in the ass so hard I think it drew blood. “Wasn’t that fun?” they asked. Yeah sure.
Then they set me up on the giant slide. Here I was put on a tiny rug that I would constantly slip off of to get friction burns on my legs. “What a blast, right?” Uh-huh.
And finally, I was escorted into a large turning cylinder where I was tumbled like a sneaker in a dryer. I banged my head, elbows and knees. “Want to do that again?”, No, that’s OK.
When it was announced that we were leaving, I said, “What?… did we miss the ride that can throw me into the wall?” Sarcasm from a nine-year old rarely works.
But actually, we weren’t leaving the park yet. We still needed to go on the Wonder Wheel; a monster of a Ferris wheel whose gondolas would swing out at each rotation. Now I wasn’t paying too much attention to this because I was still licking my wounds so when we climbed into the wheel’s car with a bunch of other people, I didn’t expect what was about to hit. Apparently at a certain point the car races down a track at lightning speed. As we careened towards the center of the wheel, I yelled out, “we broke loose” and hit the floor crying. This is me in a crisis and this is why you don’t want to sit next to me on a plane. If we hit an air-pocket, I will have you reciting Hail Mary’s in a matter of seconds. And, if we were on a sinking ship, I’d be wearing so many life-preservers that I would look like The Michelin Man.
So, yeah, I really thought we broke loose and we were plummeting to our death. Such fun.
*NOTE: A few years later the Steeplechase, an historic and unique building built in the mid-1800’s was taken down thanks to Fred Trump; Donny’s father. He even held a demolition party where he invited friends to come and throw stones at its windows. (What do they say about people who live in glass houses?) Even though I had a memorably bad experience in that structure I was sad to see it go down.
