Dec. 27, 1985
The sign on the gate to Bertrand’s Island says “Closed.”
And it doesn’t mean for the season, but forever. Someone had written a
note on the jungle boat ride saying “Condominiums” which is the likely future
of a place that has such fond memories for all of us, especially, me, Jimmy and
Frank, who the last time when came here together, we were drunk.
Woody Allen just concluded filming “Purple Rose of Cairo,” here and we
keep finding film canisters among the ruins as well as plastic Champaign
glasses Jimmy holds over his eyes like goggles.
Jimmy turns 35 tomorrow and this is the closest he will ever come to
becoming Woody Allen, although he once mistakenly named a rock band “Sleeper”
and because he looks so much like Woody Allen, everybody assumed he meant the
Woody Allen movie, not the race horse that comes from behind. Back when “Annie
Hall” got released, he and Ginger went to see it together – strangely looking
exactly like the two main characters, but completely by accident, as if that
movie was made about their lives, and perhaps it was – in spirit.
This place haunts me in a lot of ways because it is rich with history
that the wrecking ball will demolish unless I keep its memory alive, something
difficult to do as we roam around the ruins, Jimmy setting up pictures for me
to take, Rich Haas and his sister, Karen, bundled up against the chill.
We need to be here to bear witness, though Jimmy complains about our bringing
our boss, Bob Adams here, from Fotomat – as if the man doesn’t fit, even when
we with our beards and overcoats look the part of mountain men.
Sixty years ago, this place had the same fame, Great Adventure has now,
with people flocking to here for the entertainment and for a dip in Lake Hopatcong
in the summer, trolly tracks running all the way here from Landing, Pennsylvania,
people spilling out every window and door – cars filling the twisted road up
from Route 10 and Route 46 (Route 80 didn’t exist then) in an early foreshadowing
of Woodstock.
These days the cost of repair and insurance makes it more economical to
tear it down and sell it off to developers for a place where people can live –
the spread of civilization finally making it out this far from New York as to
spoil it for those who remember when it was rural. There is a mall within a 20-minute
ride, always a curse.
The wooden roller coaster is the last of its kind, the last to pass
federal regulations. Its merry-go-round (recently stolen by Great Adventure) cost
$60,000 to refurbish, too costly for the ten cents a ride to afford. But the real
death of this place is the upperly mobile population of people who wouldn’t be
caught dead in a place like this, and in moving out of the cities to the
country, ruin the place like all diseases do, killing the host that gave them
life.
Although my family came here in summer, the amusement park was a
neighborhood treasure for generations, a back yard luxury they didn’t have to
travel all the way to the shore to enjoy, a gathering place for families, who celebrated
most of the significant holidays here.
Frank and I came here during the 1970s, foolishly thinking it might be
a good place to pick up girls. Jimmy, Frank and I made a trip here looking for
a house that Rich supposedly lived in just up from the park near the lake. We
got drunk at a local bar, got lost before we found the park, climbed into the
bumper car ride where Frank did his best to bash Jimmy’s car the most, and then
strolled up to residential area only to have two large Doberman dogs charge out
of us from one of the driveways, Jimmy leaping into Frank’s arms like a frightened
child. We never did find Rich or the house that time even though later, I would
find it on my way back from Scranton accompanied with my ex-wife and my child,
meeting Rich, and Jimmy and Ginger there with all of us stumbling down into the
park where Jimmy kept my daughter amused.
Now Jimmy lives in that house near the lake with Rich, and we have come
here to pay our last respects before the authorities close the place to public
view. Even now, a cop sees us and yells for us to get off, and we pretend to do
so, but sneak back when the cop car has gone – Jimmy breaking into the building
where the merry-go-round once was, and then climbing into a silver space ship
ride. Later, he sees coins frozen under the ices and tries to get out at it
with the heal of his shoe.
We are all sad, seeing something vanish that we thought as special, and
having it come at a time when our lives are changing, too – Jimmy no longer dating
Ginger who is married and living in Pennsylvania somewhere, while I still make
the trips to see my daughter in Scranton.
Jimmy moved out of Passaic earlier this year and lives year-round here
in Rich’s house. I still live in Passaic, but I make the trek out here
regularly, to see him, to keep that part of our lives alive when we see it
vanishing in the same way the park it, lost to some new reality none of us
expected a decade ago when we all presumed Jimmy would be married to Ginger,
living in New York City as a rock star or at least a famous painter.
We pose for a few more pictures before the cop car comes back, and the
cop tells us to leave or get arrested, and slowly, we make our way back to the
lakeside house, sad, and confused, puzzled about the future, Christmas just
over, and Jimmy just turning 35 tomorrow.
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