austin_dern

We haven't seen Conneaut Lake Park in one of its important phases, that of when it puts on its Halloween livery and presents itself as if ghost-haunted. Given the state of things it's very easy to imagine the park as haunted, and it's hard to imagine what could be done to make scarier, say, that abandoned jungle path, or the tunnel which the Blue Streak roller coaster goes through that's got all these rotted boards with holes in them and garbage bags collecting stale rainwater that sometimes spills out. But there's some traces of it. Besides the Hostile Hostel front --- the attraction put in by that Mission Amusement show for the Travel Channel --- there's ``Missing'' signs that have to represent some Halloween stuff left up because Conneaut Lake Park.

But the ``Missing'' signs are done with a very nice touch, showing faces and such mentions as ``last seen on July 25th 2013 refusing to smile at the person taking his photo'' (this to a person who's just glaring at the camera) or ``last seen on July 22nd 2013 with a paintbrush, a paint bucket and a dream''. This is so nice and normal and park-healthy that it's reassuring to see and only maybe later you notice that the ``Missing: George Christon'' poster (``last seen on August 1st, 2013 drawing pictures of roller coasters using sidewalk chalk'') ends with the line ``If you have any information or have seen Rita [sic] please contact the police immediately!'' If you don't feel warm and fuzzy about that this isn't a place you should ever be.

And we had by now spent nearly the whole day at the park, between rides and exploration and sitting in the carousel building waiting out the rains. We did spot a couple of American Coaster Enthusiasts in the park --- they're easy to spot, generally, because they're generally middle-aged guy nerds wearing cargo shorts and T-shirts that either have the ACE logo or show off obscure or distant parks, so imagine a guy holding forth on how it's Joss Whedon's critics who have a problem with female characters whilst wearing a Polar Coaster T-shirt from Story Land in Glen, New Hampshire, and you know who to look for --- and enjoyed a weirdly long ride of the chair swings. The ride had gone about a normal cycle, but then stopped because a kid needed to get off because of some reason or other. The ride operator told everyone else they could stay on if they wanted, and then we went through a whole ride cycle again; it was enough swings, really, to risk being too much swings, but you can't argue with the general niceness of having so much ride time.

Still the evening was coming, and the wonderful glow that a park gets around sunset, and there was a bit of rain and then it let up enough that we decided to just try riding the Blue Streak and the Carousel for as long as we could. Blue Streak is a wonderful roller coaster, and as often happens, it's even better at night when it's harder to see just what's ahead of you. I remember we'd thought last time that the back was a better ride than the front --- not that either was bad, but that the return leg is less exciting in the front seats --- but this time around, and especially at night, we didn't have that sense. Maybe we just didn't get it last time, perhaps because the whole Conneaut Lake Park experience was overwhelming us. Maybe they've been getting the Blue Streak in better shape yet. Maybe we just had a better roller coaster day.

So that's what we did for the rest of the night, until the park had to close and release its handful of guests and larger handful of employees. We took a long slow walk back out, taking in what might be our last visit there --- though, if we did use our Idlewild rain check for their Halloween event, and took in Kennywood's, wouldn't Conneaut Lake Park just be perfect to see then? --- and regretting that the miniature golf course had been too rain-soaked to play, and went out to the parking lot where mine was the only car still present.

We drove north, to our Erie-area hotel, and wondered about what the journalist was doing there.

Trivia: Beginning in 1281 the government of Venice began paying subsidies on salt landed in the city from other areas; merchants could then use these funds to dominate the spice trade and lead the grain trade in the Mediterranean. Source: Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky.

Currently Reading: Bob-Lo: An Island In Troubled Waters, Annessa Carlisle.

The carousel, as it did last year, had Artie the Artizan band organ playing, in good order and without needing any emergency repairs. We spent a bit of time watching the horses, and trying to guess which of the ones on the inner row were originals (nearly all the carousel's animals have been sold off and replaced with Carousel Works replicas) --- we can find documentation only of one but apparently five of the inner-ring ones are antiques to the ride --- and noticing the ride still had one of the horses facing backwards with a giant plush rabbit strapped across the saddle. No idea, still. We also paid more attention to the pales on the center of the carousel. They seem to depict stuff in the Conneaut Lake area, and we realized one of the panels shows the Log Cabin. The gift shop on the midway, the one with the curious collection of Geauga Lake merchandise (Geauga Lake, in northeastern Ohio, closed nearly a decade ago), is called the Log Cabin Gift Shop. Is there a connection?

When we got to the gift shop we asked the cashier. She said she didn't know about the panel but apparently the Log Cabin used to be a restaurant. There are a series of short bar-type stools at the main window, the way that a diner or a soda counter might be organized. Perhaps the gift shop really did used to be a restaurant of enough local note to be memorialized on the carousel boards. It's yet another mystery of the park.

The carousel has the arm for a brass ring dispenser, and it's on some older lists as a carousel with a working brass ring machine. We did not see it work, but that might be a result of it being a low-attendance day. There were never more than a scant few people in the park and there were not operators running every ride. (Some were running back and forth between several rides based on where people wanted to go.) Running the brass ring dispenser would require at minimum two people on the carousel ride, and there wasn't the staff for that. Stil, on one ride we did take outer row horses and reach for the imaginary ring, which we credit as practice for when we get to Knoebels next. (If all goes well that will be in about a month.)

The Turtle ride, or Tumble Bug depending on which park you go to, was there and running again, and the rearmost car was open to passengers again. Our operator this time didn't tell anyone the object was to not hold on to the center --- which made such a thrilling ride last time --- but it did have a guy riding who noticed the Leap-the-Dips shirt I was wearing and talk about how he wanted to Altoona and enjoy Lakemont Park.

And we rode the Devil's Den, one of the park's prized dark house rides. This was repainted as part of that Travel Channel program's renovation work last year, with the main thing being the infamous gum wall, where you stick chewing gum, changed from showing off merely painted flames to also including a prominent devil's head and the encouragement ``Stick it to the Devil ... before he sticks you''. There's still a staggering array of bits of gum on the wall and the top of the ride at that part. On the inside there's a string of dark-house stunts like fake spiderwebs and fluorescent-painted monsters, which I believe have been repainted pretty much as they had been before. The ride looks in really good shape, considering, and I trusted that if the park has a future the Devil's Den ride will be part of its prouder attractions.

We stepped into Kiddieland --- there were even fewer kids around than there were regular patrons (I suppose that's logically necessary) and maybe two people working all the rides --- where we really hoped to see the Little Dipper since now we know that junior roller coaster is one of the oldest steel coasters still operating. Also we got to see a kid taken on the junior carousel. We were surprised to see the mechanism was working this time: the operator, who was talking quite nicely with the kid, who must have felt quite privileged to have the whole Kiddieland to herself, didn't have to grab a pole and walk it around. She just turned on the ride and it went. We expressed amazement about this to one another and realized that maybe wasn't tactful. We tried to be quiet.

We also had to rush out of the rain because the storms came back and threatened to drown the park. Fortunately Kiddieland is right next to the main carousel and has a direct entrance so we could wait out the storm in the bench seating that surrounds the carousel, but the rain kept going on, feinted an ending, and then came right back up again. After a slow beginning at the park the rain was promising to make things worse. The rain did start to pass, and we ventured out into the Kiddieland again to wonder at things like what was obviously some kind of stage for puppet shows or the like, and then the rain came back and we hid again.

While considering how very much this was like Roller Coaster Tycoon scenarios, where a bit of rain will turn any enclosed ride into people's favorites, we noticed that just across the road the bumper cars were working. We had passed on the bumper cars last year but heard that was a mistake because allegedly the cars run wild. We had no reason to doubt this, so we ran through a relative lull to catch them.

Unfortunately bunny_hugger and I were the only ones at the bumper cars then, which limits the fun of the things. And there was a puddle of water on part of the track which would make for an obstacle. But the cars could go pretty quickly. But the cars are quite swift. Or ... well, we'd learn on the next time around when two other people came on, and four functioning cars (possibly all there are) were on the track. Three of them move really quite fast, but on the second go-round I got one that was noticeably slower than the others. This happens. Also, the cars really do smash much more intensely than any other bumper cars I've ridden. Two cars crashing their fronts at an acute angle will have metal smash against metal, no question, and that is a livelier ride than any I've had, even in the ride's slow car. We waited out more rain in the carousel house, getting close-up photographs of all the horses, original and replacement.

Trivia: In 1968 an average of ten fully containerized cargo ships sailed the North Atlantic per week, carrying a total of 200,000 twenty-foot containers holding 1.7 million tons of freight. Source: The Box: How The Shipping Container Made The World Smaller And The World Economy Bigger, Marc Levinson.

Currently Reading: Bob-Lo: An Island In Troubled Waters, Annessa Carlisle.

We were driving roughly north from Pittsburgh and trusted that we'd find somewhere to eat along the way. We didn't exactly but we did stop at a gas station for a bathroom break, and to pick up some kind of snack, and on an impulse I decided to fill up the tank. It struck me that while we had half a tank of gas left, it's not like I was likely to cry out in the middle of a tiny Pennsylvania town, ``darned it, if only I hadn't refilled the gas!'' While I was filling it up --- and bunny_hugger was checking the rest stop's recreation areas for pinball machines (they had none) --- a pretty heavy rain got started. This wasn't a long-lasting one, but it was a warning for the day ahead.

We were returning, if all went well, to Conneaut Lake Park. It's hard to picture things quite going well for Conneaut Lake Park, given its postapocalyptic shape and the way stuff that should kill small amusement parks keeps happening there. Since our short visit last July they'd had some renovations done for the pilot episode of a Travel Channel show, including the installation of a new ``Hostile Hostel'' attraction for their Halloween shows, and suffered a catastrophic fire at the beach house, and been scheduled by the county for a tax sale based on nearly a million dollars of unpaid property taxes. By sense, the park was dead. They'd opened this year, and got volunteers out to help spruce it up and paint it. That's the sort of park it is. (It's also, bunny_hugger would learn, near the Pymatuning Reservoir, referred to as the spot ``where the ducks walk on the fish'', because the habit of people feeding wildlife is so prominent and respected there that every fish in the world comes up to be fed, and every duck in the world follows them. Roadside America has pictures, and they're stunning.)

This was Thursday, scheduled to be their first operating Thursday of the year, although we were not positive they wouldn't call it off, particularly when the morning was so heavily rainy. When we got to the parking lot, what we thought was the main parking lot, about twenty minutes after the park's scheduled opening, we saw ... nothing. Not a soul. This was a bit unsettling. But after all it was a weekday afternoon, and it'd just been raining, and we heard the rattling of the Blue Streak roller coaster's lift chain so that was running at least. And someone else came up and parked some distance from our car, so the scene wasn't completely abandoned. We could've gone to where the ducks walked on fish instead. (Actually, our contingency plan in case the park were closed for the day was to continue north to Waldameer park, and take the day there, and return to Conneaut Lake on Friday.)

The first thing we saw besides emptiness was that the front of the park had been repainted. The admission gates had fresh colors to them, even if the admission gate interiors were still dusty and abandoned, wooden folding chairs in various states of foldedness sitting around. You get ride tickets from a booth inside the park anyway. Behind the entrance were some Christmas wreaths. (This isn't a uniquely Conneaut Lake thing, I should point out; in the ride queue at Kennywood for The Phantom's Revenge we noticed their holiday decorations, sitting underneath the elevated launch station platform.)

There's still a curious empty spot where some flat ride used to be --- we noticed a rusty old screw thread on the ground and chuckled about the souvenir (which we didn't take) --- but the fences and the rides up front, doing test runs, looked fresh-painted. Some of the benches were also clearly newly painted in nice, bright and cheery colors. The Tilt-A-Whirl was still nonfunctional, but, the Flying Scooters and the swing ride were in good order.

Along the path to the midway is a miniature golf course, by reputation a great one, and also a narrow-gauge railroad. The station was visible but the train wasn't running; our understanding was that the engine --- historic and old and renovated thanks to a fundraising drive around 2006, memorialized in the walkway up to the station by bricks with people's names on them --- was destroyed in the fire that ruined the beach house and their Fascination tables and their spare Blue Streak roller coaster train. But we later found the train, sitting in the open, parts taken out for what looked like maintenance. Apparently the report was mistaken, or the damage was repairable.

In short, while the park didn't look like a normal, functioning spot with a healthy attendance and more than four months to run until it was sold to pay back taxes, it looked better than it had last year. It turns out that last year the park was also looking better than it had in years. In short, as much of a disaster area as Conneaut Lake Park had looked to us last year, we were seeing it on an upswing, as the place pulled itself together.

Last year we'd visited the park only because we realized it was conveniently on the way to Waldameer, and it'd give us the chance to see an antique carousel and a classic roller coaster, and it kept fascinating us more and more. The result was we had only a partial day at this park, and only a partial day at Waldameer. This time we set aside full days for both parks, and if the rain held off, we'd have plenty of time to explore Conneaut Lake Park. But the abundant time came also with an awful knowledge: barring a truly bizarre turn of events this would be the last time we'd ever see this tiny, ancient, clinging-by-the-love-of-its-community park before it was sold off and almost certainly closed.

Trivia: In early 1943 Alfred Hitchcock planned to direct a movie starring comedian Fred Allen. Allen objected to a plot twist by scenarist Sally Benson and the project was shelved. Source: Fred Allen: His Life And Wit, Robert Taylor.

Currently Reading: Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind The Myth, Marion Meade.