Oh, The Many Amusements of Merry Youth

As was becoming quite the regular weekly routine, Lois came home with me on the train at the beginning of September, the second as it was. We had dinner and went to the Exton Drive-in. By this time our visits to the drive-ins had passed any such previous experience for me and definitely did not include any snacking on my thumb. This is not to say we had progressed beyond some very close hugging and a lot of kissing. I was very slow to give up my gentlemanly approach to ladies. (The photo is Lois in the backyard at Bucktown. Behind her was the mowed field and beyond that the hill of forest.)

On Saturday we made one of our frequent outings to Willow Grove Amusement Park. You know, I’m kind of puzzled why we were so attracted to Willow Grove. Maybe it seemed closer between our two homes, but there were several parks around we could have visited. Granted, Lenape Park was small compared to most of these with limited choice of rides, so I can understand skipping it. There was Lakeview Park in Royersford, another relatively small park. (Lenape closed as an amusement park in 1976; Lakeview closed in 1988.)

Still there were larger parks abounding. I had always loved Rocky Springs out in the countryside outside Lancaster. I still remember that one with great fondness, especially the Iron Works picnics,  and consider it one of the best. It was intimate, yet diverse. It closed the first time in 1966 and just sat there for years rotting away, like some spooky movie set. It was reopened by new owners in 1979, but only lasted another four years before being sold off piecemeal at auction. Something very melancholy looking at pictures of the rides of Rocky Springs abandoned and crumbling.

There were the bigger parks that have survived even into the current times, such as Dorney Park in Allentown and Hershey Park in, where else, Hershey aka Chocolate Town. Granted Hershey was a bit of a hike, but my family and Lois had spent a day there on August 21. Whatever our reasoning, we went to Willow Grove a lot in those early years. Willow Grove Park closed in 1975. It was torn down and now there sits, what else, Willow Grove Park Mall. I understand the mall does have an operating Merry-go-round. Big hoorah!

You might say we were amusement park groupies in our younger years, but never on the roller coasters because of my fear of height.

As I write about these amusement parks I grow very happy I was young when I was. We had so much about us to go and enjoy and we weren’t isolated by technolgy. Besides the glut of amusement parks we were surrounded by bowling alleys, drive-in theaters, miniature golf courses, roller rinks and other diversions. It was a golden time to be young.

Even Fast Food hadn't taken foothold yet. There was a variety of diners and independent hamburger joint all over the country, my favorites being Dick Thomas' Brick Oven in Exton and Jimmy John's Pipin' Hot Sandwiches, about 5 miles south of West Chester. There were a few chain restaurants around, but they were not the dominate places like todays franchises. There were Howard Johnsons, especially along the turnpike and here and there were a White Tower Hamburger shack, although I don't remember any of these being near my territory. There were some White Towers in Philadelphia, such as the one pictured at broad and Race Streets. We hadn't become a cookie cutter society yet.
The first places I recall being around that would fall into today's fast food category was Gino's. These 15 cent hamburg

providers began to be seen abut the county and for a while dominated the market. They were started by two former Baltimore Colts players, Alan Ameche and Gino Marchetti, from whom they took the franchise name. There was a third partner, a friend of theirs named Louis Fischer. The chain began in Baltimore in 1957. McDonald's didn't begin really showing up around our area until around 1961. Of course, we are still stuck with McDonald's, but Gino's has long ago disappeared into fast food history and probably been forgotten by most.

I think Gino's teamed up in the early days with Colonel Sanders to peddle his chicken. And actually the next fast food chain that popped into my history came before McDonald's as well, it was called Burger Chef, not Burger King, but Burger Chef.


Somehow in-between amusement park runs we squeezed in another fishing expedition. Once more we set off in the darkness of early morning to depart Indian River Inlet upon a charter. It was pretty much the usual gang of idiots, except this time Lois was aboard.

Beginners luck prevailed and Lois landed the first catch of the day, a pretty sizable tuna.Unfortunately from the moment her prize was securely on deck she came down with a case of seasickness that lasted the rest of the way. Now I had never suffered from motion sickness up to that point, except that time the Tilt-A-Whirl operator wouldn't let us off his infernal machine. Nonetheless, I suppose out of sympathy, I also came down with the green skin and churning innards, wobbling over to sit beside her and try to control what my stomach so badly wished to rid itself of.

There was another neophyte along this trip, Patty Lilly. Way back in the dark ages you may recall seeing Patty and I in a field together. We weren't very old, but we did stay friends through all those years since.
In the OJR Ledger blurb for Paul Miller it mentioned his frequent trips to West Chester. What was in West Chester? Patty Lilly was in West Chester. They are the other couple hoisting fish in the photo above. Take note of how they tower over  us. Were they that much taller? Yes, they were. Keep in mind, I was six foot tall and Lois was 5 foot 10. Eventually Paul and Pat would get married and I guess, raise giant kids.

Ronald did make it home that Labor Day weekend, but I missed him most of the time because we were away here and yon. When he called to announce his arrival, Lois and I were at Willow Grove. The next day, Sunday, the family, including Lois and I went somewhat north and spent the day at Roadside America, a giant train layout, and exploring Crystal Caves. On Labor Day itself I did pick up Ronald, then we went and got Lois and spent the day at my house. Doesn't that sound exciting? 

The next weekend Lois and I visited her Uncle Albert's bungalow in Maryland on the banks of the Sassafras River. Lois looked so demure sitting on the pier in her blue bathing suit. There was no hint of what some of our future outings would be like. There was no sneaky skinny-dipping this time, nothing unto forward...yet.

The most that was going on under the surface as we swam was the nips of these tiny fish. Lois did not find their “kisses” very pleasant at all.

Summer 1960 was coming to a fast end. In September television broadcast the Richard Nixon-John F. Kennedy Debate on the 26th. This was the first time ever a Presidential Debate was broadcast. Nixon, nursing an injured knee and the flu, wore a gray suit and blended into the gray background while Kennedy popped out in his black outfit. Television proved unkind to Nixon. During the affair, John Kennedy looked directly into the camera, which gave the appearance of his talking to the audience in their living room. Nixon, more accustomed to non-televised press conferences and interviews, stared off to the side of the stage at a gathering of live reporters. This sideward glance and indirect gaze gave him a sneaky countenance since it seemed he was afraid to look the camera directly in the eye. People listening to the debate on radio declared Nixon the winner, but those who watched TV said the opposite.

In my life there  was the Sonja-Lois debate and Lois was clearly winning that campaign. I purchased an engagement ring for $125, equivalent to just over $1,000 today. I didn’t consider it a great ring, but it was the best I could afford. I bought it on the 29^th, but even though we had a date that night, I wasn’t ready to propose quite yet. And then an accident on the Schuylkill Expressway delayed my drive home from her house for 45 minutes. There were three people killed. I hoped this wasn’t a bad omen.

On September 30, 1960 the Howdy Doody Show did its last broadcast. Talk about another nail in the coffin of my childhood. I use to watch this show every afternoon when I lived at 424 Washington Avenue from the first week we got a TV until well into high school.  For the first time in its long history Clarabelle the silent clown spoke. At the end of the thirty minutes he said, “Goodbye, kids”.

Ronald Tipton completed his training at Fort Devens. They gave him a choice of his permanent assignment based on class ranking. Although he had finished ninth in his class it wasn’t high enough for the plum assignments.

“My recruiter told me that 99% of the assignments in ASA

were overseas. And that is where I wanted to go, but the only overseas assignment I had a choice of was Ankara, Turkey, which isn’t supposed to be too good. Our class also had two allocations to England, but they were chosen right away. All the rest of our allocations were stateside.”

Ronald, who joined the Army to see the world, would serve out his commitment at Fort Meade, Maryland. He was often able to come home for the weekends. He wanted to see foreign shores, but never got off the Eastern coast of the United States.

Bill Brookover (pictured left), our friend from Downingtown, flunked out of college. His father bought him a $2,000 boat that Bill was to pay back when he got a job. For someone such as Ron and I, whose parents told us to forget college, this seemed a waste of an opportunity. It also seemed strange to see someone rewarded for such a failure.

I was not about to waste my opportunity. October 15 was Lois’ birthday.  I took her to dinner at the Black Angus restaurant in Ludwig’s Corner near where I lived. Valley Forge Battlefield was on the route between our homes and as I drove through this historic site I pointed to the glove compartment.

“Do you hear that rattling?” I asked.

She said no.

I said, “Something keeps rattling in the glove department. It’s annoying.”

        I pulled into one of the parking areas along the road. I got  out of the car, walked around to her side and opened the door. “I want to see what’s causing it,” I told her and opened the glove compartment.

I took out the ring box I had placed there, got down on one knee beside the car and asked her to marry me.

She said yes.

The rest of 1960 was anticlimactic. On the Third of November I again took the Atlantic Excursion to New York, the last one I traveled to alone. I saw the Broadway show “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” starring Tammy Grimes. It was a musical based on the life of a survivor of the Titanic sinking and was written by Meredith Willson.
On November 8 a razor thin majority, less than one percent,  elected John F. Kennedy President of the United States.
On December 6 Ronald came home on leave. He made a date with Vivian Beale, a woman he had dated off and on during his high school years, and the four of us spent a night out. I guess all was forgiven. Vivian was Ronald's date for the Downingtown Senior Prom, but he couldn't get a ride that night and he stood her up, he didn't call her or anything.He says this is something he regrets having done to his day.  Ronald went down to Aberdeen, Maryland to Fort Meade the next day. 

I began the countdown to my marriage.

Lois was literally doing a count down. Despite the fact we saw each other every weekend and ate lunch together as often as possible, she wrote me regular love letters on the days we didn’t get together. In most of her missives there would be “only 286 1/2 days” or “190 1/2 days” or “85 1/2 days”.

With the engagement came a time warp. At moments the marriage felt far off and like it would never arrive. Others moments the time rushed by too quickly to get everything done. The events and occurrences became a jumble in the mind.

On November 26, we attended the marriage of Dottie Bender to Jack Walls at the West Chester Methodist Church. Dottie’s parents were longtime friends of my parents.  Her father Joe had served with my dad in the Navy during World War II and I believe Joe helped my dad land his job at Hines Trucking. The Benders had moved to Downingtown around the same time we moved back and for a brief period Dottie was my babysitter. Now that she married she would become one of our social friends after our own marriage.

The next day Lois and I were at Tommy Wilson’s birthday party at the Norco Fire House. I do not know exactly what happened, but Lois apparently felt she did or said something to be embarrassed about. Two days later I received a letter from her typed on Atlantic Refining Letterhead.

Darling,

I’m sorry if I embarrassed you at the party Sunday night. I was only kidding you, but I know it must have sounded awful. Please forgive me, honey. I know I shouldn’t have been so impulsive and I promise it won’t happen again.

Oh Larry, I love you so much. I promise that I will never ever embarrass you like that again. I feel so bad now but I know that nothing can be done now except to watch myself in the future. Once again let me apologize for my foolish actions. I just hope your folks aren’t too mad at me. I love you.

I wish I knew what in the world she could have done to feel this way. I also wish it was true that such things would not happen again.

These moments of doubt were something deep seated we didn’t realize. She suffered from poor self-image. She spoke of herself as if she was a homely person, but she was really quite good looking. She was 19 and it was incredible how much she looked like her mother at the same age. That is her mother, age 19, on the left and Lois, age 19, on the right.

From Circus Freaks to Funhouse Fears

The main intersection in downtown Downingtown had five streets. Route 322 running north south from West Chester joined the east-west Lancaster Avenue. Route 322 became part of Lancaster (Route 30) for about a mile before it turned north again as Manor Avenue. They called Route 322 Brandywine Avenue on the south side of Lancaster. On the north side two streets ran north off of Lancaster. Thelarger and longer was Wallace Avenue (left: looking from Brandywine at Wallace). People referred to both Brandywine and Wallace Avenues as Creek Road. The other street was short and called Park Lane (right: looking from Brandywine at park). It went back into Kerr Park and dead-ended at Pennsylvania Avenue.

 The buildings at the mouth of these two streets had a triangular shape. The little white building on Park was a sandwich shop during my boyhood. George Karahalis owned it and called it George’s Restaurant. It would be what we call a sub shop today. That was their signature sandwich, but no one called it a sub. We called it a zep, even though Zep changed in a lot of places to Sub during World War II. Zep was short for Zeppelin, because of the shape of the roll. Zeppelin was German. (Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had designed the airships bearing his name).

There was a large empty lot along Park Lane that ran behind the stores along Wallace. People used this field for special events. Every year there was a town fair on the lot. The Cole Brothers/Clyde Beatty or Hunt Brothers’ circuses used the lot when they played the town. One time Stuart Meisel and I decided to go to the lot and watch them set up the Big Top.

The roustabouts were very busy getting the tents up. There was a long line of men pulling the rope to lift the center pole. There were a few elephants standing nearby, but it was men doing the heavy lifting.

There was a smaller tent already erected off to the side. Stuart and I wandered over to it. A flap, comprising the doorway, was up and we could see it was empty inside. We stepped a few feet inside.

A voice said, “Hello, boys.”

We were both ready to run for it, but we didn’t. We turned around and there was a woman leaning against the side of a small platform. She struck up a conversation with us and we learned this was the Ten-in-One tent, more commonly known as The Sideshow or Freak Show. The lady was a sword swallower. Stuart thought sword swallowing was fake, the sword telescoping into itself like a trick knife. The lady explained there was no trickery to the sword. She explained the method and demonstrated that she did indeed swallow it.

She was very nice to Stuart and me. I don’t know her name. There was a female sword swallower named Lady Jean traveling with those circus in the 1950s, but I don’t know if this was she or not. Female Sword Swallowers often used the title “Lady”, such as Lady Sandra Reed and Lady Aye (usually mispronounced as “A”) Pyrate. Lady Sandra was an Albino swallower who made the Guinness World Record book by swallowing the most at one time, but she didn’t begin performing until later than the 1950s (pictured right).

Lady Aye (left, with a fork up her nose) is a present day practitioner of the art who also does fire eating, escaping, blockhead arts and grinding (yes, bump and grind like strippers do). Meeting that sword swallower was the start of what would become another of my obsessive lifelong passions – sideshow people.

I had personal reasons for my interest in sideshow people, but we won’t get into those until many chapters down the line.

My parents still forced me to Sunday school weekly. I probably needed it, but I hated it. My family was nominally Christian. No one else went to church, but the family had been traditionally Christian so that is what we called ourselves. There were Bibles in the house and my grandmother had read to me from a volume of Bible stories for children, but beyond a quick grace said at holiday dinners very little spiritual activity occurred at home. Still there was one day a year I was happy to go to church, the annual Sunday school picnic.

If Sunday school picnics were a lunch basket in Kerr Park followed by sack races I wouldn’t have gone, but our picnics were at Lenape Park. There was all the difference in the world between Kerr and Lenape Parks. Lenape had amusement rides; Kerr Park had squirrels and sliding boards.

Now Lenape wasn’t a huge theme park so common today. It was one of a number of small amusement parks scattered about the country, perhaps the smallest. It had a swimming pool and canoe rentals on the Brandywine Creek. There were picnic pavilions and a stage (pictured left) where Hillbilly Bands and other entertainments occasionally appeared. It had many food vendors and booths where you played games of chance and skill, much as at a fair or carnival.

You could count the rides on one hand.

There was a carousel, which we always called a Merry-go-round, bumper cars, Funhouse, giant swings and a Roller Coaster. I would go on three of these. My fear of height made me avoid the giant swings and the Roller Coaster, at least until one particular year.

Lenape and other parks of that time did not charge a General Admission Fee and parking was usually free. They charged for each individual ride. Our church, Downingtown Methodist Episcopal, gave each of us a string of ride tickets and a couple of vouchers for refreshments. If we had some money of our own we could ride and eat even more. It was worth putting up with a short sermon and a prayer at a pavilion.

The Lenape Carousel (pictured left) had beautiful carved horses, which went up and down n brass poles, except on the outer row. The outer row horses were stationary and interspersed with sleigh shaped seats for the “older folk”. The only reason we kids would ride on the stationary horses was to catch the brass ring. There was a long metal sleeve hanging down on one side of the building. At the lower end of this was a slot out of which peeked a metal ring about the size of a half dollar. If you could grab a brass ring as you circled, you got a free ride.

I never caught the brass ring – story of my life!

My favorite ride was the Bumper Cars. Nice and grounded, nothing up high. It was fun to be driving these little rounded vehicles, but it was even more so to slam into other people. Maybe I released my pent-up aggressions this way. The cars were electric. There was a pole that ran from the back of the car to the ceiling and sparks flew from where its tip touched the metal roof. You pressed a large button on the floor to move. There was this special electricity smell to the place.

        The Funhouse was a series of dark passageways that twisted about inside as a maze. Every so often lights would flash and something would come toward you. It might be a stack of crates that looked about to tumble over you or a Devil jabbing with his pitchfork. It could be a monster or mummy reaching or a giant spider in its web. Between these displays it was black as a coalmine. You stumbled through, arms outstretched, bumping into walls until suddenly you burst through two swinging doors into daylight.

Now you were facing a long trough of water that was crossed on wobbling round pegs. At the end of the trough, just before you went back into the dark, a noisy puff of air would shoot from the floor and blow the girls' skirts up, and in those days all the girls wore skirts to the park. This narrow path was open on the front of the building so the public could watch you struggle over the water or get a brief view of the women’s panties.

At the very end of the Funhouse journey you came to the Magic Carpet. The Magic Carpet was a giant conveyer belt that moved downward over rollers for about thirty feet. The exit door was at the bottom. At the top you sat down on a kind of bench, which would suddenly collapse beneath you, flattening out and allowing the belt to pull you forward. You had to jump off at the bottom because it never stopped moving. You could walk down steps by the side if you were afraid. There were very few kids who used the steps because nobody wanted to be called chicken, but there was also a good deal of fear of jumping on that thing, too. The trepidation was because of an urban legend. Rumor had it that some children died because they could not jump off quick enough at the bottom and were sucked under the rollers. You always rode down the belt with butterflies in your belly thinking, “Remember to jump, remember to jump.”

That’s why they call it the Funhouse, folks – fear!

Now one of the things I feared were the Giant Swings. The Giant Swings were just that, great big swings shaped like boats. Each sat a dozen people at a time. The swings were not motorized. An attendant would give them a push to start, but the riders had to pump to make them continue. They would go almost vertical to the ground. I didn’t ride these because of my fear of height.

Yes, at some early age I developed acrophobia, an irrational fear of being up high. For me, being up high meant anything above three feet. It wasn’t mere fear I felt either. It was sheer terror and panic. This was to be detrimental to me during my life, especially the early years.

This was the same reason I never road Roller Coasters, sometimes called the Scenic Railroads, until this one particular summer on the Sunday school picnic.

In Fifth Grade I was more shunned with fewer friends in Sunday school than I had in public school. When we went to the annual picnic I set off alone after the opening sermon and dispersal of the tickets. No one wanted to go with me and I didn’t care. I never had a problem doing things alone after my years in the swamp. This time things worked out differently.

There was another boy in Sunday school who was shunned even more than me. I forget his name, but people today would call him “Challenged”. I apologize ahead of time for what I am about to write because it isn’t politically correct. Well, hard cheese, I hate euphemisms. What in the wide world does “Challenged” mean?

I am suffering from arthritis, mostly in my ankles and feet, but in my hands as well and often it hurts to walk, stand or write. The pain challenges me because it is intense. In fact, some of my fingers are paralyzed due to the disease. Maybe I would call that challenging. Yet if I lost my ability to use my hands at all or couldn’t walk upon these feet anymore, should I still be considered challenged? No, I would be crippled, not simply challenged.

That is the actual definition of crippled, “unable to walk or move properly; disabled”. Cripple is the legitimate word for someone with such a condition. But somewhere people decided the word cripple is offensive, so instead of facing the facts and stating the truth we must hide it behind a non-descriptive term for fear someone’s feeling will be hurt. Then we decided to throw the word “Challenged” at everything so nothing has real meaning.

This boy was “challenged”? What does that mean exactly? You tell me he is crippled then I know he can’t walk. You say he is challenged; in what way, he struggles to do algebra? He can’t conjugate a verb? He can’t put his pants on right side front?

The plain truth is this boy was a Moron; simply meaning he had an I.Q. somewhere between 50 and 69. He wasn’t an Imbecile and he wasn’t an Idiot, but he was below Dull. These words are not insults; they are measurements.

You see, such words once had very specific meanings. A moron was someone who had a mental age between 8 and 12 years old when their chronological age was older. Such people are mildly retarded. People don’t want to face facts and deal with the reality, plus somebody called someone else a retard, so we can’t say retarded anymore even where it is applicable. The words Moron and Retarded have been declared offensive even though the word retard simply means held back or slowed. Retarded refers to being less advanced in mental, physical or social ability than one’s age group. Socially retarded is what I was and to some extent, still am. I’m sorry, I should have said socially challenged. I wish people would stop hiding behind semantics and just deal with reality. Either that or lets call Geniuses “highly unchallenged”. In other words, let become adults. But it is easier to use a generic, non-descriptive word to hide the truth than to deal with the reality and actually do something. 

The best description of that boy was mentally retarded. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t dumb. His difficulty was not contagious. He was simply behind his physical age mentally. Both he and I were 11 years old, but he talked and acted like he was 5 or 6. Others avoided him. They teased and made fun of him and of anyone befriending him. They called him names, such as dummy and stupid. Teachers said he was “slow”. Yes, adults were ignorant in the 1950s and kids are cruel anytime.

For some reason this boy decided to tag along with me. In all honesty, I didn’t want him hanging around. Those other kids teased me enough; if they saw me being a pal to this guy I would just get more razzing. But I couldn’t shake him, so I started talking to him. He was curious about things, just like any five or six year old would be. Obviously he could learn if you took your time explaining things and didn’t mind repeating yourself a few times. He was having a good time. I found him very likable. It was like having a kid brother who was tall for his age, that’s all.

He was fearful of the rides, especially of going in the Funhouse. I took him through, holding his hand the whole time. He was scared, but he did it and he was so happy he did. His mother came and took him home early. I was then on my own again for the rest of the day.

I wandered to the Roller Coaster. I was scared to death of that thing. The Lenape Coaster wasn’t even a big one. There was one high hill at the very beginning and then a series of curves. I stared at it. It didn’t look that bad. If that boy could go through the Funhouse that scared him so badly, maybe I could ride the Coaster.

I bought a ticket and took a car near the middle. I scrunched far down in the seat as it started the climb. There was no one else in with me. The higher the coater went, the further down I slid on the seat. My knuckles were white grasping the safety bar. The Coaster topped the hill, seemed to freeze where it was and then plunged downward. This didn’t take long. It jerked around the first turn and I went sliding across the seat toward the side with the cutout where you climbed in. I was going to fall out. I gripped the bar like death awaited. I rode the beast to the end.

Then I handed the guy another ticket and road again. I did a third turn after that.

They tell me the way to conquer your fear is to face it. I’m here to tell you they’re wrong. I rode the Lenape Coaster three times that day and have never been on a Roller Coaster since, except for a kiddies’ one at Dorney Park with my own child. I’ve never been on a Ferris Wheel even once.

A few years after that roller coaster ride, when I was around 13 or 14, I hiked up to Rock Raymond with two friends named Jim Dawson and Dickie Dietz. Rock Raymond was beside a country road of the same name above Downingtown. The elevation atop it is 210 feet or so,but the exposed side of the rock was maybe thirty. The picture on the right isn’t Rock Raymond, but it was similar. The cliff side was perhaps a little less straight up vertically, but it was pretty close. My friends decided to scale the Rock. I resisted, but gave it a try. I shook the whole way up and was terrified to look down. My friends urged me on. One went ahead of me, and one behind. I don’t know how anyone thought this made me more secure. If I fell no one was going to catch me.

I made it to the very upper lip and there was a slight ridge to go over. When I began to climb further I discovered the ground here was a lot of loose dirt. It was hard to get a grasp and stones would roll out from beneath my hands and bop me on the head. I had no choice now though. There was no way I could climb back down. There was only up and up I went and I conquered Rock Raymond. But I didn’t conquer my fear of height. I’ve never climbed another rock cliff in my life again either.

I preferred my risks closer to the ground, and there I could be much more daring. Some would say foolhardy.