006. CONEY ISLAND

Stepping off the bus in the city’s heart near Madison Square Garden rushed memories of my summer visits to New York in past decades. 

On overcast days like this, Manhattan traps the smells of buses’ fumes and hot dogs with the sounds of millions pounding the streets. The thick mishmash travels through the city’s narrow streets and alleys, bouncing aimlessly between the skyscrapers for hours until a transient early evening summer storm washes it away to bring a clear night. 

I went into the 34^th Street Herald Square Station to catch the F train for my pilgrimage to Coney Island. Once I found an empty seat, I took out my iPod and, for the umpteenth time, played the light-hearted song that I had only discovered a few years back. 

“My dear, you haven’t any idea; the thought of three solid hours there gives me chills.” The unpretentiousness of the first verse always claimed my attention. It was a proposition to come to a place where the unexpected waited near a stand where you could print your name on the shell of a one-inch turtle.

“You’ll never know what’s gonna happen at Co-o-o-ney Island.” The Strouse and Charnin song insisted that I’d be glad I came; it promised that by getting my shoes full of sand, I could see that life was grand. The invigorating, charming call to visit the famous New York resort assured me that I’d never come back the same. Today, I had succumbed to the song’s relentless demand.

Riding the N Train that Friday, I was still clueless why I had maxed out my credit cards to come to the United States for a few days to spend only three hours in Coney Island. But the promise of not coming back the same kept washing away doubts or hesitation. 

I needed a change; this was a journey I had to make.

By the time I reached Coney Island, it was early afternoon. It is hard not to dive into the neighborhood’s festive and entertaining atmosphere. There are many rides and attractions, with the Wonder Wheel prominent on the horizon. 

I walked up and down the boardwalk but didn’t go on any rides. I ate two hot dogs at Nathan’s famous iconic stand. I took off my shoes and walked to the beach, where I stood for a while, enjoying the breeze and feeling the Atlantic waters bathing my feet. 

As I let the water scurry through my toes, I thought of all the preparation ocean currents take to bring a wave to the shore for only an instant. Water has its own ideas; it may caress your skin, but when you think it will linger, it runs away with the riptide. Where does the swell go after that? Do the waters of the Atlantic ever mix with the Caribbean? Do the streams make it to the Gulf of Venezuela and finish resting at Lake Maracaibo’s shores? The tranquil lake where I spent hours splashing water around as a kid? 

I had been away from my hometown for over twenty-five years. However, the memories were still as fresh in my mind as the briny whiff of the sea breeze clearing up my sinuses.

When I was a kid, Mamá and Papá would take my siblings and me to any carnival visiting our neighborhood. 

An echoing heavy truck slowing down and idling outside our apartment would make me stop to look through the window just in time to see other trucks joining a disharmony of tired engines, screeching brakes, and gulping exhaust pipes. The long line of trucks and trailers driving into the empty lot across our block meant an amusement park would set up shop at our doorstep.

“Juan! Mary! They’re here!” I’d tell my older siblings the great news. “They’re here!”

“What’s all the fuss about, Luis?” Mamá would ask, alarmed.

“They’re here. The amusement park is here!” I’d say unable to contain my excitement.

“Oh, that’s nice, darling,” Mamá would say and return to whatever she was doing.

“That’s lovely; let me know when it’s up and running,” Mary, the oldest, would say with disinterest.

“Mamá! Luis and I are going to check it out! Be back soon!” Juan would say as we were out the door.

My brother and I would hold a vigil as the nomad crew set up their tents and attractions, planning the hours we’d spend there. The smaller fairs would usually be up and running by that evening, while the larger ones would take an extra day to set up.

“I’ll go on the Ferris wheel first.” I’d announce.

“You know we can’t ride it alone.” Juan would swiftly reply.

“Then, I’ll go on the bumper cars.” 

“They won’t let you in.”

“Maybe the Haunted house?” 

Juan would lower his gaze and shake his head, “Only for kids eight and older.” 

“Flying chairs?”

 “You’re only six.”

“What about the merry-go-round?”

“That’s more like it, but I won’t go on that one. It is only for small kids like you.” 

Later in the day, after the sunset took the heat away and the dusk blew a fresh breeze, we escaped into the amusement park, looking for thrills for hours, going on as many rides as possible. A place like this, where the smell of grease, loud corn popping in steel pots, and the cotton candy sticking to our fingers lived in a harmonious threesome, was so rare that we were determined to enjoy every moment spent there. We held tightly onto the happy memories created during our stay to relive every moment with rich detail until the next time. 

A magician doing card tricks, a big hairy man pretending to be a freak, and even a woman with a fake beard were among the sideshows traveling with the carnival. However, I was always intrigued by the fortune tellers with their magic balls and Spanish-suited cards.

I was obsessed with a popular telenovela featuring a fortune teller in a traveling circus foreseeing the naïve suffering heroine’s future. I’d imagine how cool it would be to know what destiny had planned for me. But Mamá would never let me go check with the fortune teller.

“But I want to know my future,” I’d argue. “What am I going to be when I grow up? When will I marry? How many kids will I have?

“That woman couldn’t tell you anything. Only God knows what’s coming to us and when,” Mamá would try to explain. “Come on, let’s find another attraction.”

I would drag my feet behind Mamá onto the next ride, disappointed and unable to understand why I couldn’t have a peek at my future.

A few attractions down the path, a man shouted, “Come see a beautiful girl transformed into an abominable snowman!” A large canvas poster depicted a young woman screaming while a menacing white furry monster hovered above her. 

“Let’s go in,” Papá suggested and joined the line of eager spectators. 

“You only want to see the pretty girl in the bathing suit,” Mamá teased him and laughed as she always did when they kidded each other. 

“I don’t want to go in,” I said as the line moved forward. The idea of a pretty woman morphing into a repulsive monster scared me. I wouldn’t let go of Mamá’s hand. “I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared about,” Papá reassured. “We’ll be in and out in no time.”

When we walked into the hot tent, my sweaty small hand had fused with Mamá’s soft shielding one.

We stood in the dark inside the crowded tent until a sinister voice set up the scene. A mad scientist traveled to the Himalayas to find a formula capable of transforming a person into an abominable snowman. We were about to witness the powerful formula as the scientist planned to try it on his faithful and unsuspecting young, beautiful lab assistant wearing a two-piece bathing suit. 

The scientist approached the girl, pushed her into a cage, and nailed a big needle in her arm. He waited as the poor woman held tight to the cage’s steel bars, convulsed, and twisted her body in agonizing pain. 

Suddenly, a furry and menacing monster stood where the girl had only stood a few moments ago. The two-piece bathing suit was gone, but it was clear that the girl was now a hideous monster. 

After that, there was nothing else but for the scientist to be ecstatic about his formula’s success and take a bow. Everyone wildly applauded except Mamá and me. I wouldn’t let go of her hand; I was scared shitless.

But wait! The monster becomes agitated and starts to rattle the cage. The scientist reassures us that we are in no danger. The pen is made with the most robust metal known to mankind. 

But in danger, we are! The Yeti takes a deep breath, bends the bars out, and comes violently into the audience.

Pandemonium! Everybody runs. 

Papá is the first to leap out of the tent, leaving us behind. Mamá keeps calling him out between bursts of laughter. Papá’s reaction amuses her, but I can’t understand what’s funny about it. The monster could have attacked us all.

On our way home, Papá explained that it was all a magic trick. There were two different people. They made it appear like the girl had transformed into the abominable snowman through smoke and mirrors. The monster was clearly a man wearing a costume. There was no reason to doubt his explanation, but I still had nightmares that night.

The carnivals would stay for a few days. Often, I’d wake up, and even before brushing my teeth, I’d run to the front door to catch sight of the rides and daydream about what I’d do that evening in the park again. But sometimes, an empty lot stared back. 

What the heck? My favorite place in the world stood there the night before, but now it had vanished. I could still smell the attractions’ fuel floating, mixed with the heavy moisture of the August morning breeze.

“Come in to brush your teeth, Luisito,” Mamá would call out.

“They’re gone,” I’d say as I drew the final strokes of the previous night’s colorful memories. 

“They packed everything up early this morning and left,” Mamá, joining me outside. “Go brush your teeth; breakfast is ready.”

“Why did they go?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Where have they gone?”

“To another neighborhood, maybe to another city?” Mamá would say, unsure if that was the reason. “Other kids need to enjoy the fun, too.”

“One day, I’m going to leave with them,” I’d say with the same conviction that I’d keep using to commit myself to do things in the future that would be only destined to be illusions. 

“That sounds like a splendid idea. Let’s talk about it while you brush your teeth, yes?”

After one last look at the empty lot, I’d go in to brush my teeth and start daydreaming of a life in a wandering attraction far from home. 

I never knew the official name of these itinerant amusement parks. Mamá called them El Coney Island, so I still call them the same.

As my visit to Brooklyn’s Riviera on the muggy summer day neared its end, I walked to the boardwalk and sat on a bench. I took out my iPod and played the place’s namesake song again.

For ten minutes, I plunged into the song’s rhymes and melody, breathing in the neighborhood’s spirit. As I deciphered the hidden messages in the hypnotizing accords, I kept returning to the start of the race that chose Coney Island as a pit stop. 

I never gave much thought to getting old. There wasn’t a reason to make a big deal out of it. Years went by, and I got through them the best I could. That’s as much thought as I ever put into it. It was life. However, as my fiftieth approached, I changed my views on getting old. Turning fifty was a special occasion, a milestone to observe, and I should do something to mark the moment. 

Around my forty-ninth birthday, I was reading American Journalist Jane Pauley’s Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life. In one chapter, she talked about things that, figuratively, we want to pack and bring with us into the future. Anything that will help us shape our older years and make us look forward to being seventy, eighty, or even ninety. One of the things in that suitcase should be a song that gives you goosebumps.

I decided that collecting not one song but several pieces would be an enjoyable pastime to mark the arrival of my fifth decade. So, it was settled: during the last year in my forties, I would make the ultimate playlist to bring along with me into the future. 

As I gathered songs – one a day for a whole year, I started to make notes on why I picked them. Little notes became paragraphs, small paragraphs befitted short stories, and short stories gave way to personal essays. 

Of all the songs on the list, I kept revisiting number 006, Coney Island. The song, which originated in an unsuccessful sequel to the 1970s smash musical Annie, kept pulling me away and carrying me to the sandy beach in Brooklyn in search of an experience that would make me change. I couldn’t understand why this unassuming ditty kept haunting me and stealing my concentration. 

After many months I realized that If I wanted to know what would happen in Coney Island that would make me not come back the same, I had to journey to Brooklyn’s Riviera and get my shoes full of sand. 

During the isolated minutes with my iPod on the Coney Island Boardwalk, I saw people frolicking among the waves, others riding the attractions, and a few eating at the nearby restaurants. This was the first day of the long Fourth of July weekend. The next few days would be a blast for the people gathering on this section of the North Atlantic shore. 

The folks walking up and down the boardwalk made me think of past generations’ tales. For almost two hundred years, people have come here to enjoy a day in the sun, ride the surf, or go up on the roller-coaster, returning home with exciting stories about their time on Coney Island. However, I couldn’t relate to their quest; nothing significant had occurred during my brief time by the shore.

It was frustrating. I was ready and eager to not come back the same, but I didn’t know how. I felt like I was six again, hoping a fortune teller could give me answers and directions, but it was clear I was trying to find meaning in randomness. 

However, an idea came to mind as the song geared to its grand finish. Maybe, this wasn’t my first time to Coney Island. The place where I returned to listen to music, celebrate my life, and pack a suitcase with songs for the future, that spot in my head where I got reacquainted with my older self was my own Coney Island. It was clear I had taken memory lane’s exit ramp to a mementos-filled amusement park, where I stayed for a year. 

The twelve months I spent getting prompts from songs and writing short stories, along with all the fun, thrills, spills, and emotions I re-experienced, were not in vain. Every day for a year, I awoke to stare outside my front door, daydream, and revisit the places where the flippers of life’s pinball machine bounced me around for fifty years. Relieving my life’s milestones, discovering new ones, upgrading and downgrading others, and embellishing a few gave me a new vision of who I was and where the next leg of my tour through life would take me. 

Well, it seemed that, after all, I had something in common with all the visitors to Coney Island who went back home with stories to share. On my lap now rested a dense repertoire of narratives to cherish and share. 

Did I have to come to the United States from home in New Zealand to reach this conclusion? Sure, why not?

By planting myself in Brooklyn’s Riviera, everything became real; it wasn’t the space I had created in my mind anymore. All the memories, feelings, and stories I relived for a year were genuine. They weren’t a product of a loner’s fertile imagination. Instead, they were as authentic as the smell of sizzling hot dogs on the boardwalk, the sand in my shoes, the wind touching my face, and the humid air entangling my hair.

When the song ended, I put the iPod in my bag and walked back to the Stillwell Avenue station to journey back to the city.

After returning to Manhattan from Coney Island that day, a big storm blew across the city. In the evening, as the humid day gave way to a crisp night and while delighting in summer’s calm, slow sunset, I decided to reassess the time I spent with my iPod. I wanted to revisit the themes and stories I explored during my year immersed in music. But this time, I wanted to expand on those memories, decide how to remember them and write new tales to keep me entertained, motivated, and grounded while waiting for the next ride. 

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