July 4th at Coney: An American Dreamland

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_952.shtml

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When I was just a boy my parents would take me to Coney Island for July 4th. This was 1947, a few years after WW II, when the Cyclone roller coaster roared down from the sky, the Wonder Wheel rose in the hot sun and later the great parachute jump spilled its screaming couples 220 feet down to a jolting halt, a few feet from the sprawling boardwalk, the planked wood stretching from the proletarian Brighton Beach to the elegant gated community of Sea Gate. All this life punctuated by disastrous fires and marvelous restoration, shedding its stars, like Durante, Mae West, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, into America.

Between them, Nathan’s hot dog stand grew on Surf Avenue to the mother of all fast food joints, with the greatest hot dogs, French fries, fresh fried seafood, roast beef and hot buttered corn you could imagine on working people’s wages, plus a July 4th hot dog eating contest. Is this America or is it just Brooklyn? Or are they one?

Among the arcades and narrow lanes, there were still side shows, freak shows, bearded ladies, the fat lady, the strong man, Siamese twins, midgets, dwarfs, The Fun House, the House of Horror that rivaled even today’s White House. All the elements of entertainment that built an audience for 1955’s July 4th, the biggest crowd ever, 1.5 million people, when America was rolling again, ready to battle its own forces of reaction, the perennial undertow ready to subtly sweep us out over our heads, while the crowds watched from a distant shore and lifeguard whistles rose above the roar to save the drift towards going under, pushing an unseen hand from our heads.

And what was our fascination with freaks, the odd, the strange and the weird? Did we see ourselves in them, as in the fun house mirrors, twisted, wide, skinny, tall, the little people, the joined at the hip? Did the strong man at once amaze and frighten us like our politicians? Did we want to hammer the catapult that sent the weight zooming to the gong, measuring our strength against theirs? Was the vast crowd sprawled on the beach and boardwalk America compressed, delivered by the sky-screeching elevated subway cars just as they had been by sailboats and steamers from the four corners of the earth?...

[grasswire]

1. that was an exhilarating read!

Thanks for posting.