The Not So Much Prodigal Returns

I went to the Park yesterday for the first time since I got an orange soda on my break nearly ten years ago. My son Sean and I were there for my nephew's birthday party. We had to go to group check in to get our wristbands. I don't remember where it was before, but it's in Cobblestone Village now where Fitzgerald's Ice Cream used to be.

As soon as I cross under the archway, I immediately become pissed off and cranky. It was odd really. Nothing happened to make me angry. None of the hundred guests milling around without direction did anything to make me annoyed. It was just walking through the Park again. Of course, I did have to hoof it in the heat and humidity from a bottom dusty, rocky lot with a four- year-old that refused to hold my hand with cars and buses driving by not paying any attention. Personally, I think if you're there as an invited "guest" for a party they should reserve you spots near the entrance. Seriously, it's not like I was going there of my own free will. If I was just popping in as a regular old guest patronising the Park, fine. I'd park wherever the parking attendants half-heartedly pointed me. But since I haven't been there in ten years, I think it's safe to assume that I wouldn't have been going there on my own recognisance.

But enough for now of the snobby side of me; I'm digressing.

Sean and I go into Group Check In. They're very nice, despite the fact that a horde of people are heading their way. We sign in, they give us our wristbands, they even cut the excess off. They're very friendly 16-year-olds. Then one goes to point out on the map where Tristen's party is. Turtle Island or something like that, the kiddie park's called now. So I immediately look for the kiddie park where it was when I worked there, but she's pointing below towards the base area.

"Oh, the old Roaring Springs?" I say. I also want her to know that I've been in her shoes and I'm not there because I want to be. It was code, you see.

But I shouldn't have tried to use code with someone who would have been about six when Roaring Springs was there.

"Wha?" says Ms. Not-Yet-Jaded-By-Her-Job, complete with head tilt and all.

"Yeah, the old Roaring Springs." comes a mysterious voice from the back door. I look over and I swear I could hear that old western music they play when it's high noon and two cowboys are squaring off for a duel. The guy's, I'm not kidding you, smoking a cigarette and leaning up the against the railing, obviously on break. I wonder for a minute if it's Indian or Wacky. Whoever he is, is definitely a throwback to the old days. Maybe he was a washed up Gladiator, I'm not sure. But he disappears, remembering the old rule about not allowing guests to see you smoke in uniform.

But we understood each other, so it was okay.

Off Sean and I go to cross the footbridge and head into the park. I'm met in the base area with Janie's Got A Gun playing out of Sirius radio. I won't bother trying to explain Alpine Center; we all know it's gone. The base area is looking not too bad. They're obviously putting some money into the park and it's starting to gain a Great Adventure feel to it. I think this might disprove my husband's theory. You can, in fact, shine a turd.

You have to get your bag "checked" before you can go up the hill. Imagine my surprise when the black teenager in front of me gets completely searched and the guy hardly gives my scrappy sac a jiggle.

I hoof it all the way up past the Wave Pool to the lockers to stash some stuff. My husband will be disheartened, I think, to learn that one of First Aid's favorite hang outs no longer exists. You can no longer hide out and watch women go down Surf Hill and lose their bikini tops. Surf Hill I believe is still there, but I didn't see the hang out.

Sean's playing around in Turtleland, or whatever it was called, for, like, 15 minutes when we head up to the old Tiki Bar for lunch. No Bob Marley playing that I used to hear incessantly as I worked that little retail gift shop by the wave pool.

We're there for a few minutes when Melissa and her son Nathan join us. Melissa greets my brother in law and I with a "I hate this fucking place," grumble or something along those lines (the same misery acknowledgement that I had earlier) and I tell her about the cloud of annoyance that settled over me when I walked through the Cobblestone Village archway. She understands.

After pizza, I take Sean to the old rock pool which has been mostly filled in to make a little splash pond that's about a foot and a half deep for the little kids. But, of course, teenagers thinking they're hysterical and the first ones to think of it, wander in to get their pictures taken on the animal fountains, invariably getting whistled at by the lifeguard who hooked the cush assignment that day.

There's a frog slide that Sean was taken with. The slide itself is about five feet long, so it's just enough for a kid his size to get some serious speed going into this little pool. After a little while, he starts bouncing a bit when he hits the water, then starts falling back a little bit, coming awfully close to hitting his head on the bottom of the slide. Now, I highly doubt he would have been seriously injured, but it did remind me of the scalpings guests used to get on the Aqua Skoot.

As soon as I'm reminded of that, we're outta there, heading back down the hill for the 20 MINUTE trek back to my car in the stifling heat, humidity and sun.

As I pull out of the parking lot the depressing and annoyed shroud I had for the last few hours lifts like the morning mist and I turn towards home with my climate control waiting.

Water World Wars

Most of my Park days were spent working in Water World. Someone paid me to stand around in a bathing suit and get a tan. It's what I would have done all summer anyway so why not collect a pay check? Of course, I took my life guard class and test, and I passed (Thank God my brother DJ was one of the instructors) but I worked as a "ride attendant". I spent my days watching people ride the tube ride and, one year, sliding down Surf Hill. I also gave a lot of "Hello good morning and welcome to the Park..." speeches. Water World was a cush job regardless of which ride you worked.

Every summer we had Water World Wars. All of the employees in water world came to the park one hour before it opened, broke into 2 teams divided by the rides we worked on and competed in the most absurd events you can imagine. We essentially rode every single ride in water world in a way the ride was not intended to be used and in ways that we would have kicked people out of the park for. Of course I don't actually recall there being a prize for the winning team. Maybe there was, but more likely not.

So in my first year as a ride attendant I competed in Water World Wars. In the midst of a tough race we came to the 21-man chain. Here every member of the team sat behind one another on the Green Water Slides, grabbed the person in front of them by the shoulders and the entire team raced down the water slide. There were 2 slides so it was a race to the bottom. The first team down and out of the pool at the bottom won. In true Jersey style, I had absurdly long nails (not elegantly long and manicured--long like talons). As my team got to the bottom of the slide and hit the small pool, the impact made me jump a little and I grabbed the shoulders of the guy in front of me harder. My nails dug into him and he jumped. His shoulder hit my nose and it broke-I immediately passed out. As everyone in my team ran out of the pool to win the race, I lay face down, passed out, with a broken and bleeding nose--someone actually had to come in and get me out. My team lost the race.

Truly a shining moment--I had 2 black eyes for weeks--my nose has never recovered.

An Interesting Short (Or, The Most Brilliant Patron Identifier)

I'll try to spin the most minor of The Park's idiosynchracies into something entertaining:

We all gaze longingly into the middle-distance and recall our own departments as the coolest areas in The Park to work- Bungee Tower had suburban testosterone and views of thunderstorms rolling into the valley from McAfee. Lola Cars folks got to race around "testing the cars," and scam food from the Lola Cafe all day. Alpine Base sat in AC and ruled over the slide-grommets' destinies. First Aid rolled the dice of potential HIV exposure mixed in with a healthy dose of boredom, spades, and laziness. GS got to pick up baby diapers from the Wave Pool. But nobody could beat the gig held at the top of Big and Little Gironomo.

These life guards truly had the cush show. They were the creme de la creme- or at least knew someone in a low-grade supervisory role- and hung out at the top of the cliff jumps. The cliff jumps were always shady as a lazy summer day- a cool breeze blew off the water of the 20-foot-deep pool below; the sound of waterfalls echoed from within this oasis of trees that was tucked between the bumper boats and the Tiki Bar. These guards were the most physically fit- they all looked good in The Park-issue shorts or one-piece suits. They could jump from 30 feet above and descend upon the hapless swimmer, thereby saving their pathetic lives from certain demise in the tragic and uncharted waters of Vernon Valley.

I was already working at The Park and into my second summer season when I had noticed it. My middle-distance gaze today cannot recall if I was tending to a nondescript head injury, or maybe boarding and collaring a neck injury in the Colorado River Rapids, but there it was. "CFS."

As the kind of person who usually plays off something I don't understand, waiting until it's meaning or definition reveals itself through casual conversation or some other means of learning it's context, I waited curiously. But I kept seeing "CFS" on the wristbands of patrons, written in black sharpee marker. Sometimes in the Base area, online at Tarzan, hanging poolside at the Wave Pool, at the Signal Six Code Yellow at the queue pool- everywhere I went.

The mystery was solved for me one day at the top of Big, in the shade. I had been hanging around there with Steve and Jimmy- two lifeguards who were supposed to be The Shit and had graduated from saving a dozen a day from The Wave Pool- and I casually posed the question about "CFS."

I had a good segue. Steve had just turned away a patron from the 30-foot jump after checking his wristband, which even I could spy had "CFS" conspicuously emblazoned in bold black upon it. I said, "Hey, why could'nt that guy jump?"

Steve glanced down at the next patron's band- which was clean of this demarcation- and let him pass on to the jump. He responded, "Care-Free Swimmer."

"Huh?" I asked. That patron had passed and jumped; the line empty.

"Can't Fuckin' Swim. These assholes come here and jump into 20-foot water thinking it's as deep as their bath tub and they sink to the goddamn bottom. I see CFS on their wristband, I know they've already been rescued from drowning once today. Probably at the Wave Pool. I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna jump off of this into that ice-water and pull him out again. I swear, these fuckers sink right to the bottom, and they're always 200 fucking pounds."

He paused, realizing he had to clarify the dual meaning "CFS." "If someone asks what CFS means, though, we tell them 'Care-Free Swimmer.'"

"Oh," I said. Mysteries solved.

Yeah, these guys had the cush show, and I guess they jumped off that cliff to rescue folks a lot less often than I had figured. After all, the Wave Pool guards had already screened out most of the victims for them.