Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  PALISADES AMUSEMENT PARK

  SURF BATHING

  He took a trolley car up winding iron tracks stitched into the granite face of the cliffs, paying a nickel for the short run up to Palisade Avenue and the main gate of the park. The entrance, with its triangular marquee, still retained its capacity to evoke wonder in him. Since the park had yet to open for the season, there was no rumble of roller-coaster cars, no delighted screams or calliope music, just the hollow echoes of construction work from inside. But it still brought a smile to Eddie’s face.

  A single security guard manned the gate. “Excuse me,” Eddie said. “I’m here to see…” He consulted a fraying page torn from The Billboard, the outdoor entertainment industry’s trade magazine. “John Green-wald?”

  The guard gave him the once-over. Eddie supposed he must have looked (and smelled) pretty ripe after his travels; only now did it occur to him that he might’ve gone first to the nearest YMCA for a hot shower. But the guard didn’t run him off the grounds, just asked, “You got an appointment?”

  “No, I’m looking for work. Mr. Greenwald, he’s the park manager?”

  “Yeah, come on in.” The guard unlocked the turnstile to admit Eddie, then gave him directions to the administration building. Eddie thanked him and started walking toward the main midway.

  It seemed strange to see the park so empty of crowds and laughter, but it was far from deserted: everywhere there were workmen wielding hammers, saws, or paintbrushes as they repaired and renovated rides and concessions. He passed the merry-go-round Viola had ridden, where workmen were stripping away the old paint from the Arabian horses and oiling the working parts of the magnificent Dentzel Carousel. Instead of the enticing aromas of lemonade, cotton candy, and French fries, he took in the tart odor of varnish, paint, motor oil, and fresh sawdust. He wondered where his sister was today, what she looked like now.

  The nondescript offices of the administration building were at odds with the colorful world outside; the men at work inside wore suits and ties, the women conservative dresses. The amusement business was still a business, after all, and it helped to remind Eddie that he was here on business. Approaching the first desk he saw, he told a young man wearing a white shirt and dark tie, “Excuse me. I’m looking for Mr. Greenwald?”

  “He’s not in right now. I’m Harold Goldgraben, I’m the assistant manager. Can I help you with something?”

  “Eddie Stopka. I’m looking for a job.”

  “Well, you’re in the right place, but not the right time. We open in three weeks, and we’re pretty much staffed up for the season. Do you have any experience working at amusement parks, Mr. Stopka?”

  “Not parks, no, sir. But I’ve worked plenty of carnivals. I spent the last two seasons with the Greater Sheeshley Shows, a railroad carnival.”

  “That’s Captain John’s outfit, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. We traveled all over the Midwest and South—Ohio, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida…”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from the South, Mr. Stopka.”

  “South Newark is more like it.”

  Goldgraben laughed. “So what brings you back to Jersey?”

  “I got homesick, I guess. And tired of traveling.”

  “Fair enough. What kind of work did you do for these shows?”

  “Little bit of everything. Started as a roustabout, lifting and loading the carnival equipment for the jump to the next town. Worked my way up to concessions—Penny Pitch, Skee Ball, Hoop-la…”

  An older man in dungarees, on his way out of the office, overheard this last exchange and asked Eddie, “You ever done any ride maintenance?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve torn down Ferris wheels and put ’em back up again. Coney Island Flyers and carousels, too. And I’m good at carpentry.”

  “You afraid of heights?”

  “No, sir.”

  The man looked at Goldgraben. “I could use another hand to sweep the Scenic. For a few days, at least.”

  Goldgraben said, “Okay, tell you what, Mr. Stopka: we can offer you two, maybe three days’ work. Meanwhile I’ll ask around, see if any of the concessionaires can use an extra hand. Can’t guarantee anything, but come back first thing in the morning, you’ll report to Father Cleary here.”

  Eddie looked at the older man. “You’re a priest?”

  “Oh, Christ, no. That’s just a nickname, everybody here’s got a goddamn nickname.” He offered his hand, which Eddie took. “Joe Cleary, I manage the Big Scenic Railway. See you tomorrow at nine, sharp.”

  Eddie was very happy when he left the office: he had a job at Palisades, even if only a temporary one.

  On his way back to the front gate he passed a lemonade stand and thought of the sweet but tart drink he’d enjoyed on that long-ago night. Sure enough, there were those giant lemons hanging in the window, big and close enough to touch. Well, hell, why not? Eddie went up to the stand, reached out to take one of the lemons in his hand … and he laughed.

  The lemons were made of papier-mâché and plaster.

  So that was how they got them that big.

  * * *

  After spending the night at the YMCA in Hackensack, Eddie got to Palisades a good half hour earlier than even the security guard. The Big Scenic Railway was an old wooden coaster, its assistant manager a short fellow with a receding hairline named John Winkler, who explained Eddie’s job: “You walk the tracks, and wherever you see dirt you sweep, and wherever you see rust you oil down the track with this”—he handed him some rags and a bucket filled with a liquid corrosive—“remove the rust, then sweep it off. You sure you’re okay with heights?”

  “Yeah, sure, I don’t mind.”

  One of several workers “oiling and sweeping” the Scenic, Eddie ascended the mountain of lumber like a climber scaling a wooden tor. But the harder thing was going back down the other side—walking backward down a steep grade a hundred feet or more above the ground. He would soak the rags in corrosive, then scrub at whatever patches of rust he found on the tracks. After a winter of snow and rain there was a lot of oxidation, but the “oil” loosened it sufficiently that it could be swept away.

  Following behind was Winkler, inspecting the tracks. He sounded out the planks, uprights, and timbers with a pick, looking for soft, spongy sections that might have rotted; checked the tracks for warps in the wood, broken screw heads, loose bolts, or worn pins in the chains that dragged the cars up the slope. If he found something not up to par, he marked it with a piece of greased chalk for the mechanics to replace or repair.

  At the summit, Eddie paused to rest a moment and let his gaze wander across the thirty-eight acres of park, straddling the towns of Fort Lee and Cliffside Park, spread out below him. The silence up here was profound, broken only by the tinny voices of hammers and saws floating up from below. The great saltwater pool was empty, its green cement bed being thoroughly scrubbed with lime by a squadron of workmen. Across the main midway stood a coaster called the Cyclone, a colossus made of all black metal, its steel peaks steeper than those of the Scenic; Eddie noted that its tracks also seemed to twist like licorice sticks as they ascended and descended. What must it be like riding one of those cars, he wondered, twisting from side to side even as it plummeted to earth?

  “Taking in the sights, Eddie?”

  Eddie turned to see John Winkler a few yards below him, a bemused smile on his face. “Sorry,” Eddie said, quickly dipping a rag in the corrosive.

  “S’okay.” Winkler climbed up to join him. “It is a helluva view.”

  Eddie nodded. “And that Cyclone looks like one helluva ride.”

  “Yeah, too much so. It’s all steel, so it has absolutely no give, not like a wooden coaster. People are actually scared to ride the damn thing. And all that steel is a pain in the keister to maintain, we’re losing money on it hand over fist.” This was the first, but not the last, intimation that Eddie would receive that all was not well at Palisades.

  By lunchtime E
ddie had worked up a substantial appetite. Sitting at a picnic table with other workmen on break, Eddie turned his attention to the ham-and-cheese sandwich he had brought to work. After one bite he heard a plaintive “miaow” from behind him and turned to find a skinny little tabby cat, its big yellow eyes staring soulfully at him, ribs visible beneath its striped fur. Eddie’s heart got the better of his stomach; he tore off a piece of ham and held it out to the cat, who scurried over and gulped it down. Then there was another “miaow” to his right, and one to his left, and Eddie found himself at the center of a pride of kitties all begging for parts of his lunch.

  A tall man with an amused twinkle in his eye sat down beside him. “Don’t let these little moochers fool you,” he told Eddie as he unwrapped a pastrami sandwich. “They do okay, cadging meals off the steady staff. I haven’t seen one starve to death in the twenty years I’ve been working here.”

  “Where do they all come from?”

  “They live in the woodshop, curling up between the piles of sawdust. Breed like rabbits. The office staff adopts one or two each season, the rest are on mouse patrol.” He extended a hand. “Roscoe Schwarz. I blow air up women’s skirts for a living.”

  Eddie laughed, remembering the Funhouse and how his mother’s and sister’s skirts were hiked up around their waists like umbrellas blown inside out by a storm. “Yeah? What does your wife think about that?”

  Roscoe shrugged. “She’s not overjoyed. But she knows it pays the bills.” He took a bite of pastrami. “Before managing the Funhouse I worked the Ferris wheel for sixteen years. I like the Funhouse better, you’ve got an audience, you get laughs. Only once a lady got huffy with me, hit me with her purse.” He smiled. “She was a natural redhead, by the way.”

  They shared a laugh. Eddie surrendered the last of his ham and cheese to a calico cat and resolved to pack an extra sandwich tomorrow.

  By the end of the day Eddie’s legs ached like a mountain goat’s, but the next day he finished ahead of schedule and did a good enough job that he was assigned to the park’s second biggest coaster, the Skyrocket. In the middle of his third day, Eddie was called down by Harold Goldgraben, who told him, “I just spoke with Chief Borrell, he can use an extra man on his candy concession. Meet him at his hot-dog stand near the pool.”

  Eddie had worked enough carnivals that he wouldn’t have been fazed to be meeting with a full-blown Indian chief decked out in war paint and headdress, but at the stand he found a tall, avuncular man around forty, wearing a police uniform. “Hi. Frank Borrell,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Eddie Stopka.”

  Borrell smiled. “I see you’ve noticed the uniform. No, it’s not for show. I’m the police chief here in Cliffside Park.”

  Confused, Eddie asked, “And you own a hot-dog stand too?”

  “This is just kind of a sideline, you know what I mean? I also sell candy floss, soda pop, apples on a stick … we got no crime to speak of in Cliffside Park, but a hell of a lot of tooth decay.”

  Eddie laughed. “So how did a cop wind up selling hot dogs?”

  “Lotta cops moonlight here as security guards, but me, fifteen years ago I was walking a beat on Palisade Avenue. I got friendly with the Schencks, the owners—helped them out with traffic and whatnot—and they offered to let me buy into some concessions as an investment.” He looked Eddie up and down. “The Goldgraben kid says you’re a damn good worker. You’ve worked carnivals?”

  Eddie rattled off his experience, and Borrell took it in with the close attention one would expect of a policeman. Then, “I need a grind man to sell candy floss and popcorn,” not exactly police parlance. “You interested?”

  “You bet.”

  “I can pay fifteen dollars a week plus two percent of the take. But that might not amount to much.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re all holding our breaths to see how this stock market crash affects gate receipts. As it is, I’ve been just breaking even. The Schenck brothers aren’t doing any better—I’m not sure how much longer they’re going to foot the bill to keep this place open. They got bigger fish to fry in Hollywood.”

  “I’ve worked other shows that were getting by on the skin of their teeth,” Eddie said, though saddened to hear of it. “I know what it’s like.”

  “Okay, one more thing. Palisades has an employee dress code: men have to be clean-shaven and wear coats, ties, and collared shirts during the week, a full dress suit on weekends. I’m looking at you and thinking maybe you don’t own a suit, am I correct?”

  Eddie flushed with embarrassment. “No, but I can—”

  “Don’t sweat it, I’ll front you the cash. Go over to Schweitzer’s Department Store in Fort Lee, get yourself a nice suit, couple ties, two or three dress shirts. You could use a haircut, too. Phil Basile’s got a barbershop here on the park grounds, tell him the Chief sent you and to shear off some of that hay on your head, put it on my tab.”

  “Thanks, that’s really swell of you.”

  “You got a place to stay, kid?”

  “Yeah, a room at the Y.”

  “My cousin Patsy’s in real estate, I’ll see if he knows of a place. No, wait a minute. Hey, Duke!” he called out across the pool area. “Duke!”

  About fifty feet away, one of the men helping to clean up the pool area looked up. “Yeah?” he called back.

  Borrell said, “You know the guy, don’t you, that manages the building where Lightning lives? Over on Anderson Ave?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So get your wop ass over here, there’s somebody I want you to meet.” The Chief turned back to Eddie and gave him a good-natured slap across the shoulders. “We’ll get you fixed up with something, kid.” Borrell then spoke three words that thrilled Eddie more than he could admit:

  “Welcome to Palisades.”

  * * *

  Johnny Duke was not a sentimental man. “Sure, I’d miss the park if it shut down,” he told Eddie. “It’s a great place to get laid.”

  John “Duke” DeNoia, one of the lifeguards at the Palisades pool, was six feet tall, husky, with curly black hair—a rugged thirty-year-old with only his scarred, pockmarked cheeks to detract from his good looks. According to him, that didn’t matter much.

  “The pool is like a giant magnet for pussy,” Johnny expounded as he and Eddie made their way across the park. “Blondes, brunettes, redheads, big tits, little tits, what have you—they all come to the pool. And if you’re a lifeguard, sitting on one of them big red chairs, you might as well be a king. Well,” he added with a laugh, “a duke, at least.”

  “Yeah, I was gonna ask,” Eddie said, “why Duke?”

  “The Duke DeNoia was a nobleman from Naples, sixteenth century. His given name was John Carafa. I’m John DeNoia, ergo, Johnny Duke.”

  “Does the park let you take girls on the rides for free?”

  “Wouldn’t know. Never been on one.”

  “You’ve never been on a ride here?”

  “Never been on one anywhere,” DeNoia said.

  “Really?” Eddie said in disbelief. “Not even as a kid?”

  DeNoia shrugged. “They go up, they go down. What’s the point?”

  Eddie was at a loss to reply to that.

  The “Duke” grinned. “Only one thing I’m interested in riding, and it ain’t no friggin’ Ferris wheel. Though one gal I knew was kind of a cyclone.”

  They reached the parking lot where Johnny kept his sporty yellow Oldsmobile Roadster. “Nice car,” Eddie said.

  “Thanks. Great for getting laid. Climb in.”

  Johnny opened the throttle and drove to a redbrick building with Tudor-style gables in the 700 block of Anderson Avenue. Eddie thought it looked too swank for him, but Johnny disagreed: “Times are tough, everybody’s willing to negotiate. C’mon, let’s see what they got.”

  Johnny made introductions to a rumpled-looking manager: “Eddie here’s working for Lightning and the Chief. You got any singles available?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, I got one backs up on the alley. No fancy view or anything…”

  “I don’t mind,” Eddie told him.

  As they followed the manager down the hall, Eddie said in a low voice to Johnny, “Who’s … ‘Lightning’?”

  “The Chief’s partner at the park, that’s his nickname. He lives in this building, I’ll introduce you. Hey, come to think, you’re gonna need a nickname yourself. Stopka—is that Russian?”

  “Polish.”

  “‘Eddie the Polack’? No, wait, we got one of those already…”

  The manager led them into a cramped but clean room with a Murphy bed, a small kitchen with an icebox and coal-burning stove, the promised view of an alley, and a bathroom about the size of a box of Wheaties. But it was a nice neighborhood and right on a trolley line. It rented for ten dollars a month—a bit rich for Eddie’s blood, but when Johnny bargained it down to eight-fifty, Eddie bit and paid the first month’s rent in advance.

  On the way out, Johnny stopped by Dick Bennett’s apartment and introduced Eddie to him. “Hey, nice to meet ya,” Dick said, glad-handing him. “Lightning” Bennett lived up to his nickname, a fast talker not unlike many Eddie had met in the carny game but a bit slicker than most, sharply dressed and genial. “You play the ponies, Eddie?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ve got a tip on a nag called Legerdemain in tomorrow’s fifth at Freehold. I’ll be at the track, I can place a bet for you.”

  Eddie demurred again. Dick didn’t hold it against him, and he even gave him a bottle of bootleg whisky (at least it looked like whisky). “Welcome to the park, kid. I don’t get by as often as I used to—I’ve got stakes in a couple of nightclubs too—but the Chief’s a great guy, you’re in good hands.”