Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

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  FOR NICK AND ELEANOR TIBURZI

  and a big stuffed dog named Ruff

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Opening Bally

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  The Last Days of Palisades

  Closing Bally

  Author’s Note

  Also by Alan Brennert

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Across the water were the Palisades, crowned by the ugly framework of the amusement park—yet soon it would be dusk and those same iron cobwebs would be a glory against the heavens, an enchanted palace set over the smooth radiance of a tropical canal.

  —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  OPENING BALLY

  Palisades, New Jersey, 1922

  EDDIE HAD GONE to Palisades Park only once, on a scorching Saturday in June when the temperature in Newark topped ninety in the shade and most sensible residents of the Ironbound had either fled to the Jersey shore or opened up a fire hydrant and cooled themselves in its geyser. The Stopka family more usually went to nearby Olympic Park in Maplewood, which had not yet broken ground on its own proposed swimming pool; and so Palisades’ much ballyhooed saltwater pool sounded mighty appealing in this withering heat. Eddie’s father had wanted to go the previous Sunday, but Eddie’s grandmother, who still held considerable sway over the household, would not hear of it: according to Polish custom no good Catholic could go swimming until June 24, St. John the Baptist Day, when St. John would bless the waters of the seas, lakes, rivers, and, in an apparent concession to modernity, swimming pools, thus protecting bathers from drowning. Eddie’s dad—stocky, solid as a two-by-four and equally practical—felt there might be some justification for the practice in Poland, where the Black Sea could be frigid and swimmers might conceivably cramp and drown; but it hardly seemed necessary in New Jersey, in the summer, when you could practically poach an egg in the hot, humid air.

  But Jack Stopka lost this argument as he had many others with his mother, and to soften his son’s disappointment, the next day he brought home three packages of American Caramel candy. The chewy caramel sticks, though satisfying, were strictly of secondary interest to Eddie, who tore the packs open at once for the revealed treasure of three brand-new baseball cards: Jesse Haines of the St. Louis Cardinals, Ivey Wingo of the Cincinnati Reds, and most exciting for Eddie as a Yankees fan, Babe Ruth, posed in a sepia-tinted photograph holding a regulation ball innocent of the beating it would shortly receive from the business end of the Babe’s bat. “Wow, thanks, Pop!” Eddie said happily, adding the cards to his growing collection—most of which had come in packs of his father’s Coupon Cigarettes, a godawful smoke that Jack purchased solely for the pleasure of seeing his son’s face light up when he handed him a Ty Cobb card, or a Red Faber.

  Finally, on Saturday, June 24—after Jack finished his half-day’s work at the foundry—Eddie, his parents, grandmother, and sister, Viola, took the maroon-colored Public Service trolley from Newark, across the Hackensack meadowlands. The car clanged its bell at every stop and in between the air compressors huffed and puffed asthmatically, pumping air for the brakes. But eventually they reached Palisade Avenue in Fort Lee, where the amusement park sprawled atop a two-hundred-foot bluff overlooking the Hudson River and New York City. Eddie heard the park long before he could see it: from at least a mile away he could hear the chattering of winches pulling a train of roller-coaster cars up to a creaking wooden summit, followed by the roar of gravity dragging them down the other side and the high-pitched screams of women, children, and even a few men as the cars dove headlong into space.

  “Look at that, willya,” Eddie said as the skeletal shoulders of the coaster appeared in the distance. His tone was one of hushed reverence usually reserved for discussion of Babe Ruth or “Long Bob” Meusel.

  His mother, Rose, nervously eyed the height of the coaster and cautioned, “You may not be old enough to ride that one, Eddie.”

  “But I’m almost eleven!” Eddie reminded her. “If I wait I may be too old to ride it!”

  His mother found this very amusing and said simply, “We’ll see.”

  As they got off the trolley, Eddie could feel the rumble of the coaster deep in his belly, making him want it all the more. He ran ahead, only to have to wait for the rest of the family to catch up. They entered through the Hudson gate, nearest to the famed pool, a gigantic “inland sea” two city blocks long and one block wide, filled with a million and a half gallons of salt water pumped up each day from the river below. Eddie’s eyes popped at the size of it: children, for whom the whole world is big, love the biggest of the big, and this more than qualified. A man-made waterfall churned the waters at the far end of the pool; at the other end, the shallows were fronted by a real sand beach; and somehow, as Eddie would discover, there were even rolling ocean waves in the pool, though he had no idea how this could be. At the pool’s green-and-white ticket booth his father purchased tickets, and in the huge bathing pavilion they changed into their bathing suits—all save Grandma, who was appalled by these new styles with their scandalous display of naked leg, and so planted herself on the sand in her long, ruffled black dress (with unfashionable petticoats) and a white babushka that at least afforded her some protection from the sun.

  The pool was packed with hundreds of swimmers, the beach overrun by sunbathers and toddlers wielding toy shovels, but the Stopkas found some unclaimed real estate and spent the next several hours swimming and playing in the remarkably clear waters, watched over by rugged lifeguards perched atop red-lacquered rescue stations ringing the pool. One lifeguard, named Happy, coached Eddie on his swimming. But even more than the cool refreshing waters on this very hot day, what Eddie would remember were the smells: the salt spray from the waterfalls, a vanilla breeze from the waffle stand across the midway, and the sharp tang of lemons, big as grapefruit, that hung from the nearby lemonade stand.

  After their swim the Stopkas left the bathhouse and strolled past a dance hall where a band was playing ragtime, to the main midway graciously shaded by stands of chestnut, poplar, maple, and oak trees. From here the whole park beckoned, dozens of sights and sounds competing for their dimes: the ricochet of pellets striking targets in the shooting gallery, calliope music from the Carousel, the rattle and roar of four roller coasters—the Scenic Railway, the Toboggan Racer, the Giant Coaster, and the Deep Dip Thriller—and dozens of concessionaires, each delivering his “bally,” his pitch to the crowd, hawking refreshments, sideshow tickets, or games of chance. What to do, where to go next?

  “Let’s go ride the coaster,” Grandma declared with a wink to Eddie, and Jack laughed and said, “You’re on, Lil,” her Christian name being Lillian.

  * * *

  The Giant Coaster was situ
ated near the edge of the Palisades, an impressive location not afforded many other amusement park rides in New Jersey or anywhere else. The family squeezed into the first car, Eddie and his father up front, Mother and Viola behind them, Grandma in the third row. The cars started with a lurch, Eddie’s excitement ratcheting up a notch with every clack-clack-clack of the climb up the first hill. When they finally reached the top, the height of the Palisades doubled their altitude and made for a dizzying view: Eddie took in the exhilarating expanse of the Manhattan skyline; saw ferries chugging their way across the Hudson like windup toys in a bathtub; felt his stomach flutter at the sight of trolleys and automobiles snaking along River Road hundreds of feet below. Olympic Park had a roller coaster, but boy, it couldn’t hold a candle to this! Then the car slid down the other side and all at once they were plunging earthward like a falling plane. Eddie left his stomach behind at the summit, his blond hair blowing into his eyes as he glanced over at his father, grinning beside him—and though his mother and sister were screaming in the row behind, damned if Grandma Lil wasn’t laughing as much as she was screaming, even after her babushka was ripped from her head and took off like a flapping gull toward the waters of the Hudson.

  After the coaster they took a more sedate gondola ride through artificial canals and a diorama of Venice, Italy, which Mother adored (she had painted a little in her youth; “mostly just bathrooms now,” she would say wistfully) but which Eddie found rather slow and boring. Much better were the whizzing, spinning buckets of the Virginia Reel; after which Pop tried his luck in the Penny Arcade and Mother and Viola rode the gently trotting Arabian horses and Indian ponies of the Carousel, which Eddie believed himself too old, or too manly, to patronize. But the whole family enjoyed the Third Degree, a large castlelike funhouse next to the pool whose floors tilted crazily and in whose mirrored walls they saw laughing distortions of themselves. At the end of this ride a gust of air blew Mother’s skirt up over her hips, but one steely look from Grandma Lil to the man working the air nozzles kept her petticoats firmly brushing the floor.

  After all this exertion the Stopkas had worked up an appetite, and stopped for a supper of hot dogs, hamburgers, and French-fried potatoes. The latter were thick and crispy on the outside, warm and soft inside, served in a white paper cone. Eddie’s dad handed him a saltshaker and a bottle of malt vinegar: “Here. You’re supposed to sprinkle these on the fries.”

  Eddie squinted dubiously at the bottle. “Vinegar?”

  “It’s good, try it,” Jack urged, and since his father had never steered him wrong before, Eddie tentatively sprinkled some of the vinegar on his potatoes. He was surprised to find, upon taking his first hesitant bite, that it was delicious—they were the best French fries he’d ever tasted—and soon he was liberally drenching the fries in salt and vinegar, both of which made him so thirsty he asked for one of the ice-cold lemonades made from those gigantic lemons. This too was delicious, the tops. Meanwhile Pop washed his own meal down with a glass of “near beer,” the closest thing to a Polish lager to be had, at least in public, since the Volstead Act.

  Later, Eddie’s family passed a sideshow, the Palace of Wonders, with bold banners snapping in the wind, announcing such exotic performers as Marie DeVere, a lady sword swallower; Habib, the fire-eater; Population Charlie, a “mental marvel”; Lentini, a boy with three legs; and Carl, the Giant Swede. The “outside talker” extolled the wonders within, as a pair of scantily clad dancers, or “bally girls,” swiveled their hips, beckoning the crowd to enter. Eddie really wanted to see the three-legged boy, but his parents balked at the bally girls, judging the children not quite old enough for the sideshow.

  Instead they walked the midways as dusk settled over the park—and as nightfall transformed it. Day gave way to night but not to darkness, as somewhere switches were flipped and concession stands were delicately traced with glowing strings of colored lights, like theater marquees. With the coming of evening, Palisades was jeweled with light, from the glittering spokes of the Ferris wheel spinning like a fireworks display, to the soft white lightbulbs strung in the trees like clouds of fireflies. Suddenly the park atop the Palisades was no longer just a park, it was an enchanted island in the sky. Above the Hudson floated the starry constellation of the Manhattan skyline, which seemed a part of the same magical terrain. Eddie wished he could stay here all night, or at least until the park closed at midnight; but Viola was starting to doze and Grandma Lil was tiring as well, and so the Stopka family began to make their way back to the No. 92 trolley that would start them on their long journey home to Newark. Eddie took one last look behind him, trying in those last minutes to absorb and preserve the glittering lights and the sweet smell of candy floss and caramel apples and the sound of people shrieking in delight as they plummeted down the Giant Coaster. Eddie was certain that no place had ever made him as happy as Palisades Park had today; and so it was perhaps just as well that he had no inkling that this would be the happiest day and night he would know for a long time to come.

  1

  Atlanta, Georgia, 1930

  HOBOES CALLED THEM “side-door Pullmans,” empty boxcars with one door standing open like an unblinking eye—God’s eye, maybe, daring the brave or the desperate to trespass, knowing their journeys could end as easily in jail or in a hospital as in Chillicothe, Ohio, or Casper, Wyoming. Eddie took the dare and ran to the back platform, planting his foot in a metal stirrup and hoisting his six-foot frame up onto the ladder. But before he could step up to the second rung, he felt something grab hold of his shirt collar from behind and pull him, with a violent jerk, away from the car.

  Eddie lost his grip and tumbled backward, landing on the ground with a jolt. As he lay there in the dust, stunned and winded, a boot came crashing down on his chest, knocking the remaining breath out of him. He opened his eyes to find a nasty-looking railroad bull glaring down at him.

  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, bud,” the bull declared.

  The train whistled twice—a highball—signaling imminent departure.

  Eddie held up his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he told the railroad cop, “you got me. Serves me right for being sloppy. But I can pay my way, all right? How much is a ticket to New York—fifteen bucks? I can pay.”

  The bull’s eyes gleamed with interest. “Show me.”

  The boxcar lurched forward as the train began chugging out of the station. Eddie had no doubts that this thug was going to steal all his money as a main course, then give him the beating of his life for dessert.

  Eddie said, “Wallet’s in my rucksack. I dropped it over there.”

  The bull, still keeping his foot on Eddie’s chest, reached down and picked up Eddie’s rucksack. He began to rummage through it for the wallet.

  Eddie grabbed the man’s foot and yanked it out from under him. He toppled like a felled tree. Eddie scrambled to his feet, snapped up his rucksack. “Sonofabitch!” the bull yelled, but as he started to stand, Eddie jerked up his knee and connected with the bull’s chin. This hurt Eddie almost as much as it did the cop: he hoped the satisfying crack he heard was the bull’s jawbone breaking, not his own kneecap. The bull quickly crumpled.

  Eddie made a run for a passing boxcar. His heart hammered as he ran to keep pace, threw his rucksack inside, then grabbed the door latch and pulled himself up and in. It wasn’t until he was safely aboard that he looked back, relieved to see the bull still beside the tracks, out cold.

  Soon the car was rattling out of Inman Yards, one link in a long chain of rolling freight headed north. Eddie hadn’t lied: he had cash in his pocket for once and could have been eating roast chicken in a posh dining car instead of the bread and bologna in his rucksack. But it was early April and the weather was mild, and after three years of riding the rails, he had grown used to the percussion of the wheels reverberating deep inside him, even the coarse perfume of pine tar and creosote inside a boxcar.

  But mostly he liked sitting near the open door, feeling the wind on his face, watchi
ng the countryside roll past without walls or windows between. At night, out here in the great empty spaces between towns, the only illumination came from the moon and stars, the train’s running lights, and the occasional farmhouses along the way. Whether lit with the warm flicker of kerosene lamps or by steadier, cooler electric bulbs, their windows always looked inviting, and Eddie imagined families sitting down to dinner or to listen to Guy Lombardo on the radio—fathers reading the paper as mothers sewed, girls played with dolls, and boys shuffled baseball cards. The glowing windows, and the images they conjured in his mind, were both warming and painful. He curled up under a cardboard blanket, dozing to the clattering lullaby of the train’s wheels and the mournful sigh of the steam whistle.

  * * *

  By the following afternoon Eddie was crossing the Delaware River, back in New Jersey for the first time in three years. Rolling hills gave way to roadside commerce, and then the train was swallowed up by Newark’s canyons of concrete and steel. Soon they were passing through Eddie’s old neighborhood, the Ironbound, a patchwork of ethnic enclaves girdled by the foundries and railroad tracks that gave the area its name. Eddie longed to jump off—to walk the streets with their smorgasbord of cooking smells, kielbasa on one corner, spaghetti and meatballs on another, borscht on the next. But he didn’t, and all he could see from the train was a soup kitchen doling out bread and stew, a long line of haggard men curling around the block like the tail of a starving dog.

  Not until they reached the outskirts of Jersey City—the terminus, where cargo was off-loaded onto barges bound for the New York docks—did Eddie finally hop off and begin hoofing it up River Road. On his right the Manhattan skyline greeted him like an old friend he hadn’t seen in years; on his left rose the stony grandeur of the Palisades.

  Eight miles later he entered the borough of Edgewater, home to companies like Alcoa, Valvoline Oil, and Jack Frost Sugar—the usual harborfront smells of salt and diesel fuel sweetened by the scent of burning sugar and molasses. In the distance stood the latticed steel towers of the new Hudson River Bridge, as yet only a single cable strung between them. At the Edgewater Ferry Terminal, ferries arrived from 125th Street in New York and trolley cars took ferry passengers up the steep cliffs and into Bergen County. Eddie looked up, pleased to find, still crowning the bluffs, a majestic if motionless Ferris wheel; the twisting wooden skeleton of a roller coaster; and a huge metal sign with towering block letters that announced: