by Susan Orlean
Just then, Bob Swan, whose company fabricates the metal parts of Mr. Stella’s works, came into the studio with two friends. He walked around the place, looking at the sculptures and rapping his knuckles on the metal parts he’d cast. “This is ours,” he said to his friends, and then he turned toward Mr. Stella and said, “Hey, Frank! Come on—let’s go see some squash!”
At the Palladium, Mr. Stella had the triple distinction, as far as we could tell, of being just about the only man not wearing a suit and tie; the only one hiding a cigar (smoking wasn’t allowed); and the only one who called out unsolicited coaching tips from his seat. He directed most of his suggestions to Chris Dittmar, a red-haired, thick-calved Australian, who Mr. Stella hoped would win the tournament. He said, at various times, “Come on, Chris! Wake up!” and “Hey, Chris, concentrate!” and “Come on, wake up, you turkey!” and “If I’d known this was going to be on television, I would have told him to get a haircut.” Mr. Stella could barely take his eyes off the ball, but when it looked as though Mr. Dittmar had clinched the match, he did turn to us and say, “Boy, isn’t that just great?” During one of the breaks, he said that he really got a kick out of seeing world-class squash players. We asked him whether, if he had the choice, he’d rather be remembered as an artist or as a great squash player. He said, “Oh, I’d rather be an artist. I’m too old to be a great squash player. At my best, I’m a D. In fact, I can hardly walk.”
MOON TRIP
AT THE VERY MOMENT the New York street festival season was beginning to seem like one gigantic Pennsylvania funnel cake, we ran across the Big Lee Moon Trip. The Moon Trip is not for sale. It is not a Simpsons T-shirt, a slap bracelet, a neon green ripstop-nylon hip pouch, a souvlaki sandwich, a Dianetics handbook, a six-pack of tube socks, a neon-pink terry-cloth-covered hairband, a pair of fake gold Cleopatra hoop earrings, a calzone, a recently boosted and repackaged cassette player, or fudge. The Moon Trip is, therefore, a street festival anomaly.
The Moon Trip is an amusement ride, forty-five years old and currently bright red with yellow racing stripes. It is shaped like a huge beach bucket, is lined with seats (capacity eighteen), and is suspended from a ten-foot-high steel sawhorse mounted on a red Chevy one-ton pickup. Its only motion is back and forth, like that of an oversize porch swing. It is not, technically speaking, scary. At no point in the Moon Trip’s functioning does a three-dimensional hologram of Michael Jackson come into view. It does not have two hundred feet of vertical drop or four thousand feet of coiled steel track or a computer-plotted course of corkscrews and double loops. It more closely recalls something that might have emerged after several hours in the basement workshop with some sheet metal, some rivets, and some 1945 issues of Popular Mechanics. Its only moving parts are Big Johnny, Little Johnny, and Doug—three Jack La Lanne–style guys who take turns loading the kids and rocking the bucket—and Big Lee, who every weekend from the spring through the late fall pilots the Moon Trip to street festivals, block parties, and the occasional executively produced Bar Mitzvah.
Every now and again, Big Lee considers adding another ride to his lineup—the Whip, maybe—but for the moment he likes to describe his capital improvement plans as being at a standstill. Recently, at the Atlantic Antic, in Brooklyn, he explained his position. “For the time being, the Moon Trip is plenty,” he said. “I used to have the pitch game, the novelties, the fishbowl games, the tossing the plates, the parakeets—the whole you-name-it. Now I’ve got the Moon Trip, and we sell helium balloons. Sum total. The Whip is a maybe, but, right now, just a maybe. A Ferris wheel is another maybe. Currently, I’m sticking with the Moon Trip. It occupies my mind.”
A tall woman with a distracted manner walked up to Big Lee, who was sitting on an upended milk crate several yards away from the Moon Trip—a position that allowed him, with a minimum of movement, to manage the balloon concession and make change for his son Mark, who was selling Moon Trip tickets. The Moon Trip is often the only ride at a street festival. That was the case at the Atlantic Antic, and it had attracted a fidgety crowd of about forty kids. The parents stood in a disorderly semicircle a few feet away from the truck. One mother was saying, to no one in particular, “Tito just had a Sno-Kone. I hope this doesn’t turn into a disaster.”
The distracted woman asked Big Lee if he was interested in buying a king- or queen-size cotton comforter. He ignored her. Then an Asian woman carrying a small spotted dog and a Batman balloon came up to him and asked if she could get stronger gas put in the balloon for free.
Big Lee shook his head and said, “Sorry. These days, everyone’s in business.”
Monday through Friday, the Moon Trip is stored at an undisclosed site in South Brooklyn, and Big Lee runs a parking lot at an undisclosed site in downtown Brooklyn. Twenty-five years ago, he was running a different parking lot, went broke, started driving a cab, and then answered an ad for a Whip helper. He drove the Whip for six months. That job, besides providing Big Lee with gainful employment, partly satisfied a theretofore thwarted dream he’d had of running away to the circus.
“I always had this idea,” he said, pointing at the Moon Trip, which was now loaded with eighteen kids, all screaming in syncopation with its swings. “Nothing sentimental. I knew there was money in it was all. When I was driving the Whip, I got to know where the amusement people hang around, which is a slightly different location from where I hang around. The man who owned the ride had a Mister Softee concession. He just had the ride lying around. I took my savings and I bought it. It was called the Swing Away then. I changed the name myself. Moon I thought of because they had just sent someone to the moon at that time. Trip I just picked at random, and because people talked a lot about trips in those days.”
For a decade or so, Big Lee provided most of the muscle power for the Moon Trip. Then he hired his helpers and acquired the physique of someone often in repose. He is now about fifty years old, and has slicked-back black hair, a saggy smile, ruddy coloring, and less than perfect posture. He usually wears a pastel polo shirt, jeans, and a thick silver neck chain to the festivals. Big Johnny wears a Playboy pendant. Little Johnny wears hoop earrings. Doug wears a baseball cap. Mark says, “I’m in school studying recreational therapy. What do you think—I’m going to make this my career?”
While filling a balloon, Big Lee decided to outline his business philosophy. First, pick the paint colors for the Moon Trip yourself, so you make sure they’re cheerful. Second, you can get rid of the tossing the plates, the pitch game, the parakeets—the whole you-name-it—but balloons will always be good to you. Third, don’t pick weaklings as helpers. Fourth, don’t hang around any particular festival too long, because people will get to know you. Fifth, don’t tell your neighbors that you have a ride, because they’ll be asking you to bring it over every other night for barbecues, pool parties, Jennifer’s sweet sixteen bash, or whatever. Sixth, wash and Simonize the Moon Trip once a week, so it always looks presentable. Finally, push hard, because the louder the kids scream, the easier it is for people to find you at the festivals.
“Also, don’t put fat kids on the bottom row,” he added. “I got two fat ones stuck there once. Now I say eighteen will fit, depending. But this is a good moneymaker ride. It’s actually fun. I go up in it once every year to see how it’s doing. It’s old-fashioned, but it has a broad range. I always say, ‘The Moon Trip—for kids of all ages, master of none.’ ”
Behind him, Big Johnny had stopped the ride in midswing so that a little boy with a flattop could disembark.
“He got scared,” Big Johnny called to Big Lee, and he added, under his breath, “Man, by the time I get home I don’t even want to see my own kids.”
Big Lee shrugged. “It’s almost the end of the season,” he said. “Just a few more festivals. Then we go south. I mean, I go south. The Moon Trip stays here.”
MUSHER
THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS that Susan Butcher, Alaskan dog musher and two-time winner (and record holder) of the eleven-hundred-mile Iditar
od Trail Sled Dog Race, is asked most often: How cold does it get in Alaska? How cold is it in Alaska right now? Is your house cold? What does caribou taste like? What’s your dog’s name? Susan’s first four answers are: Very, very cold. Not too bad. Doesn’t feel that way to me. Really good.
The last question has approximately a hundred and fifty answers, because Susan has approximately a hundred and fifty Alaskan Husky sled dogs, who live outside her log cabin in the Alaskan bush. Such a large number of animals strikes many people as unusual, and even unmanageable, so sometimes, instead of “What’s your dog’s name?,” she is asked if she actually bothers to name all her dogs.
The people who ask that are not fellow mushers—dogsled drivers—but, rather, the kind of people (including us) who came to the Plaza Hotel last week to see Susan receive the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Professional Sportswoman of the Year Award, and who find the circumstances of Susan’s life nearly unimaginable: the dozens of dogs, the rigors of sled racing, the near isolation. (For much of the year, the only human being she sees is her husband, David Monson.) Susan, who told us she much prefers two days on a dogsled to two days in the Plaza Hotel, has accrued so much fame as a musher that she is used to being a curiosity, and she is gracious enough to answer even the most elementary dogmushing, Alaska, or life-in-the-bush question with only a trace of exasperation. “Of course I name all the dogs,” she explained. “I name some after places and some after people. Then, for a while, I’ll have themes, like the names of book characters. One of my studs is Crackers, so another theme is to name his puppies after cracker brands. Another stud is Granite, and a lot of his puppies have rock names. I know every dog by name. I know every dog’s parents. I know every dog’s grandparents. I know which one has a cold, and which one didn’t eat well last night, and I know each one’s personality and where he likes to be scratched. You have to understand, this is all I care about, and this is all I think about. I don’t understand anything else, and I don’t care about anything else. I’m with the dogs twelve or sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. They’re my friends and my family and my livelihood.”
As she was talking, Susan kept glancing at her dog Fortuna, whom she had brought with her from Alaska to donate to the Women’s Sports Foundation for a benefit auction. Fortuna is six years old and raced in the 1984 Iditarod, but now, according to Susan, she wants to be a pet. To us she didn’t seem to like being in New York any more than Susan did, but she looked happier once she’d discovered the nice sled dog living in the Plaza Baroque Room’s mirrored columns. “She misses her friends,” Susan told us. “She thinks she’s finally found another dog.” She leaned over. “Hey, Fortuna, good girl,” she cooed. “Good girl!”
Susan is thirty-two and has a long black braid and very pale blue eyes. For a normal day of mushing, she wears polypropylene underwear, layers of Thinsulate and GoreTex outer garments, a beaver hat, a wolverine muff, wolfskin gloves, and sealskin mukluks. For the press conference, she wore jeans and a cotton T-shirt that said “Purina ProPlan,” which is a type of dog food put out by one of her sponsors. For the foundation’s evening black-tie cocktail party, she said, she was going to wear a long gingham skirt, a black satin shirt, and an ivory miniature-dogsled-and-team necklace. “I do own long skirts—I need them for the Iditarod awards banquet in Nome, for one thing,” she explained, and then said, “Oh, shoot! I wish I’d brought my qiviut dress.” She was wearing that dress—qiviut is the underwool of the musk ox—last March when she received first prize for the 1987 race, and also the year before when she picked up the trophy for the 1986 Iditarod. That was the race in which she set the world record (eleven days, fifteen hours, and six minutes), and it made up for the previous year, when a rogue moose attacked her team, killing three of her dogs and forcing her to drop out. “No one was going to beat me in 1986,” she told us. “I was really determined.”
Susan said that her first dog, Cabee, was a Labrador mix, and her second dog was an Alaskan Husky, and all her dogs since have been Huskies. She first mushed dogs in Massachusetts, where she was born, and she kept at it when she moved to Colorado and shared a house with a woman who had fifty Huskies. By the age of nineteen, she was sure enough of herself to know that she wanted to live in the wilderness with a lot of dogs, and that there was nowhere in the Lower Forty-eight that would satisfy her. “At first, I wanted to build wooden boats,” she went on. “I really loved carpentry, and I wanted to sail around the world, because at the time I thought the ocean was the only place I could go to get away from people. But then I tried to figure out what I’d do with twenty or thirty dogs on a small boat.” When she moved to Alaska, in 1975, she lived in a “fly-in”—an area accessible only by plane. Then her work as a dog breeder, trainer, and racer made living near a road necessary, so she and her husband (they were married in 1985) and the dogs moved to a slightly less remote spot, a hundred and fifty miles north of Fairbanks and twenty-five miles from the closest village (Manley, pop. 62). She still hunts moose for food, but now there’s a gravel road to her cabin. “Where we’re living is very downtown to me,” she said. “We chose it because it’s good for mushing. There are very strong winds and it’s stormy, and that’s good, because it’s the kind of weather you get during races. I just don’t like city living. We do have a radio, and David likes to listen to it, but I don’t. He likes to read newspapers. I like to burn them for firewood.”
Someone passed out auction brochures—Fortuna was listed under the heading “Luxurious Fun”—and then a man who was wearing a World Boxing Hall of Fame tie clip and belt buckle, and who had the cauliflower ears of a boxer, grabbed Susan by the elbow and said, “Are you the girl that did that thing on the dogsled?”
She nodded and said, “Eleven days on a sled in the Alaskan wilderness.”
The man turned to someone walking past and exclaimed, “I couldn’t do the thing she did! I can go into the ring and get bashed up, but I couldn’t do that thing she did!”
FANS
ONE OF THESE DAYS, Leo Herschman is going to clean up his shop, the Modern Supply Company, which is on the third floor of a narrow building near City Hall. In the meantime, Modern Supply, where Mr. Herschman has been selling nothing but ceiling fans for more than thirty years, has the look of a Swiss village all but obliterated by an Alpine rockslide. “We’re jammed to hell in here,” Mr. Herschman was complaining the other day as he extracted an order form from a pile of boxes, flyers, fan catalogs, newspapers, and stationery on his desk. “I keep planning to get this place organized. When my late wife and I opened Modern Supply, in 1932, we had a beautiful store on Fulton Street. We sold all manner of appliances—refrigerators, ovens, everything. But the Fulton Street building was torn down for the World Trade Center, and we moved to this lousy place. We brought what I would call the minimum from Fulton Street—fans and motors. Now all I sell is ceiling fans. It’s still too crowded in here. A designer was here once buying a fan, and he said to me, ‘Sir, would you care to retain me to redesign your store?’ I said, ‘What are you planning to do, set fire to it?’ ”
Mr. Herschman likes to say that he became an adult at the age of eight, which means that he has been an adult for eighty-one years. He is short and wiry, with strong cheekbones, a certain amount of smooth gray hair, and a voice that is very easily heard. He wears black-rimmed eyeglasses on his forehead or at the conventional angle, depending. His eyebrows are in a constant state of arch. He is fitter and livelier than many people his age, but he likes to punctuate his workday with moments of private reflection. This means that people who come to Modern Supply hoping to have a consultation about fans with Mr. Herschman, who is described in his advertisements as “Leo Herschman, Famous Expert,” are sometimes disappointed. Interest in fan consultations usually increases with the onset of hot weather, but so does the number of Mr. Herschman’s private moments. “That’s fine with me,” Mr. Herschman said, shrugging. “I can’t stand the general public. I make no effort to be courteous to them. I also don’t
stand for any undue familiarity. We get a lot of me-generation people in here, and I try to get rid of them as fast as possible. My assistants can take care of most issues that people come to have us resolve. There’s not that much to know about fans, but I suppose I am the famous expert. I know that makes me sound like a big ham. When a guy comes in and says, ‘Hey, are you the famous expert?’ I say, ‘Well, big boy, I’m lying. I don’t know a fan from a bucket of mud.’ ”
Before becoming big in ceiling fans, Mr. Herschman excelled in a few other careers. “When I do something, I do it all the way,” he told us. “I had a lot of pep in the old days. I was a boxer and a runner. I went to sea. I was a tough guy. I was a real musician—a jazzman, not one of these drug-laden psycho-rocker types. When I was fourteen, I spent time in the printing and advertising business. The boss was a hand shaker, a Babbitt, tight as the devil—he didn’t give me a raise in ages. Then he fired the production man—he was an idiot—and I moved up in the business. I tried to enlist during the First World War. Boom! Then came the Armistice. I worked as a rivet heater on a ship after the war, with a crew of tough little brats who taunted me. I said to them, ‘Excuse me, I know you don’t mean any harm even if you are bums. If you bother me any more, I’ll knock your skulls together.’ Then I knocked their skulls together, and they said, ‘Hey, this fellow’s all right!’ Then I wangled a transfer to the pipe-fitting crew. After that, I went to sea.”
Just then, three apparently athletic men wearing T-shirts cut off above their navels walked in and eyed the fans hanging from the ceiling: There were twenty-one of them—white, brown, black, bright brass, and antique brass, with blade spans of thirty-six, forty-two, forty-eight, and fifty-two inches—and half were on, filling Modern Supply with what Mr. Herschman calls horizontal thrust. One of the athletes said, “Hey, do you sell ceiling fans, or what?” Mr. Herschman ignored them.
