RIP, Ray Bradbury

One of the best days I ever spent working at the Park was the one day I spent at the summit of the Alpine Slide. The sun was shining. It was warm, but not too hot. I brought my lunch with me and I had plenty of water and sunscreen. The lead ride attendants rode up to visit for a bit, under the guise of "checking the bullwheel." That was nice. But nicer still was the luxury of being able to sit and read all of "Fahrenheit 451" without interruption.

NY Times Obituary

Park Talk on the Best Show

Oh, hey there! Last night, I was listening to The Best Show on WFMU, as is my Tuesday night tradition. One of Tom's callers mentioned the Park and I called in to offer my expert opinion. You can listen here. The call starts at about the 1:45 mark, but you owe it to yourself to listen to the entire three hour show, because this was a particularly good installment of what is always three of my favorite hours of the week.

Parkular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics posted a piece recently titled 5 Theme Park Rides that Pushed the Limits of Common Sense. Guess which park featured two out of the five?

Everybody Wants Some

Colleen just posted about the Van Halen concert she went to the other night. Which reminded me, as many things do, of the Alpine Slide.

I was loading the bottom chair. Matt P was on the phone in the lift shack. His eyes got huge, then he hung up the phone and burst out of the shack.

"Holy crap!!" he yelled. "David Lee Roth is back in Van Halen!"

The entire line of patrons let out a collective whoop. There may have even been a celebratory kick or two. One of those kickers may have been me. It was an immediate about-face from the normal staff/guest relationship that was tolerant at best, and outright hostile at worst. Because NOBODY likes Sammy Hagar. Or the guy from Extreme. Sadly, that mid-90s reunion didn't take. But Diamond Dave is back where he belongs now, and that's what matters.

Shake it off

One afternoon, I was working an Alpine Slide mid-station. Located near the bottom of the slide, the main purpose of the position was to assist riders who crashed on the way down. Radio traffic was slow for the day but that was about to change.

One of our special needs employees was working at another mid-station higher up the slide. He called over the open channel for the slide and shouted that he had witnessed a park patron urinating off of the chair lift which carried people to the top of the slide. (Bear in mind that the slide ran UNDER the lift.) Brett, the ride supervisor, asked, "did you actually see him going?" To which he answered, "No, I saw him shaking it off!"

The patron was confronted at the top of the slide, he response was that he needed to relive himself but neglected to do so before boarding the chair lift. The top ride attendants were dumbfounded by the man's honesty.

After the rain...

...came the task of drying the track of the Alpine Slide. The track was a slick fiberglass, so the job was tricky. How did we do it? Well, as you might imagine, the process was impressive and well thought-out.

First, we went to the Lost and Found and grabbed whatever beach towels had been left there by guests. Then, we rode the lift with carts and towels in tow. Once at the top of the slide, we positioned ourselves on the carts with one towel in front of us and one behind. Finally, we took off down the slick fiberglass track, doing our best to go slowly and avoid tangling the beach towels in the runners of our carts. (I think we steered with our knees.) And I believe we prayed, as well. Yes.

After one particularly violent storm, I was about halfway down the track when I had an almost very nasty run-in with Nature. I was so busy concerning myself with the fact that I'd already worn my beach towel bald so that it wasn't absorbing any more water, and that I was gradually picking up speed--very nerve-wracking, that--that I failed to notice the flock of wild turkeys just parked there on the tracks in front of me. What to do? I threw the useless towel aside, pulled up violently on the brake, all the while shrieking, "TURKEY! TURKEY! TURKEY!" at the top of my lungs. Well, these clever turkeys must've known I was talking about them, so they flew out of my path at the last possible second, in a very Hollywood-stunt-turkey manner.

Turkeys on the tracks, baby. What a great job.

Radio, Radio

While most rides at the Park would only close during electrical storms, the Alpine Slide would close at the first sign of precipitation. Even the slightest bit of water would send carts careening of the tracks. Not that people didn't careen off the tracks when they were dry, but that's another matter.

Most of the time, the attendants would stay in the ride area and wait for the rain to stop. If you were at the top of the Slide, you were basically stuck there. If you were at the bottom, you had more options. Which brings me to the following exchange, heard over the Park's Channel 9 one afternoon, after a rain delay:

"Alpine top to Alpine bottom, copy?"
"Alpine Pizza to Alpine top, go ahead."
"Hey Brett, what time do you think we'll be able to open.... Wait, whuuuuut?"

Luckily, they brought pizza back for the top attendants, thus averting a mutiny.

Mark B and the Importance of Recycling

It's funny how, years later, the Park is still very much a part of my life. None of my other jobs are like that. Sure, I keep in touch with people I met while toiling for one company or another, but this is different. I'm not entirely sure if it's because I worked there while young and impressionable, or what. Probably not, because I also worked at the A&P around the same time and I never feel the urge to tell funny stories about Life in the Supermarket. And no one from the A&P has ever called me up to share stories about our former co-workers. Like my friend Mike did recently. Without even pausing to say hello, he launched into the details of his latest Mark B sighting.

But before I get into the story, let me take this opportunity to explain who Mark B is. Mark B is developmentally disabled. Highly functioning, but developmentally disabled nonetheless. He worked on the Alpine Slide. He usually held the chairs at the bottom of the lift so they wouldn't smack the patrons in the ass when they sat down. Or he would stand at the top ride area and instruct the patrons to follow the large arrow painted on the ground when stepping off the chair lift. He was well suited to these tasks.

He also had a 'radio station' in his house. As far as I could figure it, that meant he had a microphone hooked up to his stereo so he could sing along to the music he was listening to. And that music was usually Sesame Street-related. One of his favorites was The Opposite Song.* It's a catchy number. Everyone in Alpine Center caught Opposite Fever. As far as I can recall, it was the only song ever performed over the parkwide 2-way radio frequency.

Most importantly, he was a vehement recycler. He would make the rounds to all the offices in the Park (and later, area post offices) collecting their cardboard and empty bottles, which he would then take to the recycling center. Didn't matter if you were saving the boxes to use later or if you weren't quite finished with your beverage.

Which leads me back to Mike's phone call. He ran into Mark while visiting the current incarnation of the Park with his family. He was holding an empty water bottle. Mark B tried to take it from him to recycle, but Mike resisted. He tried to tell Mark B that he wasn't finished with the bottle- he was going to refill it later. Because he, too, is environmentally conscious. And also cheap. A battle of wills ensued. Mike eventually prevailed. I think.

In the end it really doesn't matter who won. I just wanted to tell you all about Mark B. And sing the Opposite Song. "I go up! (UP!) And you go down! (DOWN!) I travel in a straight line, you round and round! (ROUND AND ROUND!)"

*As found on Sesame Street: Born to Add. You can hear a snippet here.