Showdown at the Transmobile

Very few perks to working the Transmobile. It was the ride of the lazy, the lame, and often, the drunk. (The fact that it was maintained by the stoned should be of no surprise to anyone.) It was simply a slow, one-way trip to the other side of the park. Sideways. No one was ever happy to ride the Trans.

We ran into problems when people tried to make their own fun. Let's stand up and surf our way across the park! So what if we're 12 feet above the concrete path? Or, Let's pull on the brake halfway up the hill to give our buddies in the next car a chance to catch up! (And then what? Were they planning to hold hands?) What they didn't realize was that pulling on the brake caused the sad little car to lose all momentum and break down-- shutting the ride down for 40 minutes while we waited for the techs to stumble out of their smoke-filled shack to climb a pole and work their magic. Cheech and Chong repair machinery. Hang tight!

One of my jobs at mid-station (which wasn't actually a stop at all) was to yank the offenders off the ride and mark their wristbands so they couldn't ride again. That'll show you! No more riding slow and sideways for the rest of the day!

I got to the point where I could anticipate trouble. It sounds awful, but it was a bit of racial profiling. Black guys would just chill and look as cool as was possible riding sideways in an orange tram. Latinas would laugh and pretend they were on a scary roller-coaster. Rowdy white frat boys were generally a problem. They’d rock the car, give each other noogies, or whatever guys do when they’re pretending not to be gay, and call out obscenities to any girls that had the misfortune to walk underneath them. I’d yank them off the car, write on their wristbands, and decline their invitations to Staten Island. Then I’d go about my day.

The worst patrons were, without a doubt, the white women. (I can say this because I am a white woman.) White women, very often, weren’t in a good mood, didn’t want to be in the park in the first place, and didn’t believe that the rules applied to them.

Which leads me to my showdown. The number one rule of the Transmobile was that it was a ONE-WAY ride. This is important, as it would get very congested at the end of the day when people needed to get to the side of the park where they left their cars. It was always crowded on the Motor World side, because after a long, hot day, people didn’t want to climb a massive hill in order to go home.

It was the end of another scorcher and the air hadn’t yet cooled enough to render my sweat-soaked uniform shirt a comfortable clammy. I was pushing buttons at the Motor World Trans when the phone rang. It was Jen.

“Just so you know, the lady in the Sea World t-shirt in Car 14 was specifically told that this was a one-way ride, so don’t let her try anything,” Jen warned. “She’s going to try to ride round trip, and that’s just not fair.”

Damn straight, it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t going to happen. My line was absolutely mobbed with exhausted, sunburned, and dehydrated New Yorkers, and I wasn’t about to let this lady jump the line, and have them lynch me. Besides, I had a sense of justice. I would handle this calmly, I thought to myself. I’m a rational person.

Then Car 14 rolled into the station, and there she was, already glaring at me. I approached Shamu Lady and lifted her safety bar.

“You can put that bar back down, girlie, because I’m riding back up.” Girlie? Girlie?

“Ma’am, this is a one-way ride. You were told so at the top,” I responded in my best my-parents-raised-me-to-be-polite voice. The crowd, lined up behind me, began to quiet down to listen to our exchange.

“I don’t care what you say. I’m not getting off this ride!” And she folded her arms over the image of the smiling dolphin.

The polite me vanished and was instantly replaced by someone who sassed, “And I don’t care what you say, lady, but I am not pushing this button!”

I heard a woman in the crowd behind me whisper, “Oh, no, she DI-int!”

“And,” I continued, “I don’t think all these people, who having being waiting on line for a long time, would appreciate you cutting in front of them! So I’m not pushing any buttons until you get off this ride.”

Then I folded my arms and stared at her. She didn’t move. I was nervous, but made myself look pissed off instead. I’m not a confrontational person. I started to worry, What if she doesn’t get up? Then what?

But the crowd was with me. They had my back.

“C’mon, lady! We’ve been waiting!”
“That’s not cool, yo!”
“Get off! Wait your turn like everybody else!”

They grumbled and hollered until finally, she stood up, and exited the station. I had won the standoff. It was silent. I slowly turned to face the crowd, paused for a second, and raised my arms above my head like Rocky. Victory! The crowd erupted into cheers! Yeah, girl! I felt amazing. I was a peon in a soul-crushing uniform, but I was not without grit.

“Next four people!” I called. “Next four people, step up! Have a safe trip home!”

This is John.

John was an exchange student. He was known as John-the-Irish-Guy, John-I-Heard-He's-An-Underwear-Model, or, my favorite, Eurotrash. (That was Therese's pet name for him.) John didn't mind any of the nicknames. John didn't mind anything at all really. He was a laid-back guy.

However, one day, as John was jumping down to take his lunch break, he said something that one of the jumpmasters didn't like. I don't know what it was, but she decided to put him in his place. His place was, apparently, in mid-air. At the time I snapped this photo, he'd been hanging there for a little under 10 minutes. Then the radio started squawking; our supervisor was furious. It seems that some guests had noticed that there was this guy just hanging there from the bungee tower and they thought he was really stuck.

So the supervisor flipped out on all of us for making the only safe ride in the Park look dangerous. The jumpmaster reluctantly lowered John to the airbag. His legs were numb and he had missed half his lunch break, but you know what? John didn't mind.

I Dream of Mickey

I hope we're not giving the impression that it was all fun and wacky hijinks in polyester over there. We spent a lot of time being flat out miserable. It was usually brutally hot, everywhere you wanted to go was uphill both ways, and there wasn't even a comfortable staff lounge to eat in. You either had to eat in the cafeteria with guests who ignored that fact that you were on your lunch break and asked you a million questions, or you ate in the dank, dark "Pizza Cellar" that had all the charm of a dungeon. The only air-conditioned place was the office, and you only got to eat in there if you were on good terms with the O.B. (Office Bitch) and nobody else was around. (Note: Most of the O.B.s were lovely people who got their titles based on the fact that they worked in the only place that wasn't stifling.)

Sometimes, whilst in the depths of despair, we'd compare our lot to that of our bretheren in better theme parks.
"I heard at Disney they actually wash your uniforms for you."
"Yeah, and they make more than minimum wage."
"You know what I heard? I heard at Disney, they have this underground tunnel system so you can walk through the park to your position without being stopped by customers and then yelled at for being late."

It was pathetic, like something out of Orwell. We were like these overworked farm animals and Disneyworld was freakin' Sugar Candy Mountain. I mean, how depressed do you have to be to speak longingly of working for the Mouse?

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.

No Fear

Part of the bungee tower mythology was that the guys who wore the "No Fear" t-shirts (second most-hated t-shirt after Big Johnson and Co-ed Naked Anything) had the highest walk-down rate. I don't know if it's true, but we liked to say so.

Working bungee was probably the best gig at the park. (Though my friend Dana was a jungle girl in the Tarzan show and got to wear a boa constrictor. You'd have to ask her about that one. Anyway.) One part I liked was checking out the tattoos. One guy had the names of 12 different women on him. I kept cross-referencing his date's ID with the guy's ink to see how she ranked. (Her name was written in small letters near his wrist, incidentally. I guess she was new.)

But what I loved the most was watching the men psyche each other up for the big jump. Sometimes they did it with manly high-fives and sometimes they did it with playful accusations that the jumper was just a big piece of female genitalia. Boys will be boys.

My favorite exchange went like this:
Jumper #1: Nick.
Jumper #2: Sup.
Jumper #1: Represent, yo.
Jumper #2: No doubt.

I learned that "Represent, yo" almost directly translated to mean, "Jump bravely from this bungee tower, so we can tell the people of Queens, New York of your intrepid act."

Or something like that.

I Once Saw a Frenchman's Testicles

True story. It was in the ice cream shop--more loss of innocence.

In the early 90s, the preferred style of shorts was, well, not very short. Therefore, to be contrary, the Park decreed that we must wear what could be described as hot pants, and I swear, they we partially made out of paper. My friend, Kerry, used to describe said uniform as "soul-crushing." She wasn't wrong. These things were short and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable to wear and uncomfortable to watch someone else wear, as we shall soon see.

Anyhoo.

I mentioned the Brit, right? The poor exchange student who was bamboozled into near slavery at an American water park? So the Brit had friends--other foreigners who'd visit Fitzgerald's on their breaks for free ice cream. Together the Brit and the other foreigners would lament being stuck in podunk America, and plot how they could illegally get some beer, which was perfectly within their rights at home. Seriously, these poor guys.

My favorite was the French guy. Let's call him "Antoine." Antoine would come by for ice cream and I'd practice my 9th grade French on him. "Je m'appelle Melissa. J'ai quatorze ans." He thought I was adorable. He'd visit often.

During one visit, Antoine was tired and decided to set a spell. He hopped up on the counter, which didn't matter because we never had customers, anyway. As he was plotting, "Ah got a ride to zee leeker store; zees weel be zee beegest party," he pulled up his legs and hugged his knees.

And there they were. Balls. French balls.

And where does one look when one is 14 and has never seen a set of grown-up, hairy balls--not to mention grown-up, hairy, foreign balls? Oh, it was terrible! I couldn't look and I couldn't NOT look. I was so uncomfortable and self-conscious and terribly afraid of ever sitting in the shorts again for fear of displaying my unmentionables! What to do?

I scooped him some ice cream.

Ice Cream, Light Bulbs, and the Loss of Innocence

My first job at the Park was in Fitzgerald's Ice Cream Shop in Cobblestone Village. It boasted a broken waterwheel and a sign that advertised homemade ice cream with Belgian waffles. We had neither. There was a constant influx of optimistic guests who really thought they might get a fresh, hot Belgian waffle with vanilla ice cream melted on top. Sounds good, doesn't it? I had to tell them that we were "fresh out." It was June and it was my first job. At 14, I did what the 18 year-old supervisor told me to do. For a while, at least.

One time, a customer claimed that she was "seriously pissed" not be getting a waffle. This disturbed my co-worker, a disappointed British exchange student who had come to "see America," or New York City, at least. It turned out that just getting a ride to the A&P was a big deal for him. Anyway, my Brit friend, being a Brit, took "pissed" to mean "drunk," and thought we'd have this reeling, beer-soaked wench screeching about waffles. Alas, no. But we chuckled over the language barrier.

The summer went on without incident. Other than the waffle controversy, and the fact that I was feeling increasingly guilty about the "fresh out" lies, things weren't bad and I was an obedient little food&bev girl. And then.

The skies opened one evening in August and we had a rush of campers in the shop. They were shivering and soaked, but they wanted ice cream. I was madly scooping when a flourescent bulb in the ice cream case burst, sending shards of glass and some powdery substance into the open containers of butter pecan, vanilla, and chocolate. I called over my 18 year-old supervisor.

"We need more ice cream. A bulb burst into the case," I told him.
"Scrape off the top and serve it. We don't have time."
"No, you don't understand. There's glass in the ice cream."
"And I'm telling you to scrape off the top and serve it." He gave me a threatening stare. It was the threatening stare that did it. Because while he attempted to intimidate me, I realized that I wasn't intimidated. My "boss" was just a kid, and a stupid kid at that.

"If you want these children to eat glass," I announced, "then you serve it to them." And I thrust the scoop into his hand.
One of the counselors overheard us. "There's glass in the ice cream?" she asked.
"Yes, Ma'am. You may just want to go get pizza next door," I told her.
"How about you just give me a waffle with no ice cream?" she asked. Silence.
"Ma'am," I replied, glaring at my supervisor, "I have never even seen a waffle in this place."