When I was Little -- A Coney Island Carousel

When I was little my father used to take me to Coney Island, where I fell in love with the B&B Carousel on Surf Ave. & West 7^th Street in Coney Island. 

I loved riding the beautifully carved horses. They were fierce and wild, brightly painted, ornate wooden creatures, fantastic and sublime.

A few years ago I gave my father a book called Coney Island Lost and Found. I scanned this page from the book.

(That's Jimmy McCullough & his granddaughter at the bottom right, descendants of George Tilyou, the man who created the Steeplechase Park, not me and my dad. See below for that.)

The caption on the page reads: "B&B Carousel: Named for original owners Bischoff and Brienstein, the carousel is the last remaining ride on the north side of Surf Avenue. The magnificent 1919 ride was built a block away, at the factory of William Mangels. The horses and chariots were carved by the great craftsmen of the golden age of carousels: Marcus Illions, Charles Loof, and Charles Carmel. At the center of the ride is a brightly painted Gebruder organ that plays classic carousel tunes, and to the side is a brass ring holder."

I remember leaning out as far as I could to grasp those brass rings!

"At left is the king horse, an armored Illions with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln painted on its side." (I couldn't scan the whole picture in without harming the book.)

My dad doesn't like sitting around and reading. He likes going out and doing stuff - which is why, when I was little, my mom, my sister and I got taken not just to Coney Island but to the Catskills, Sterling Forest, Washington D.C.,  Pennsylvania's Amish country, Gettysburg, Canada, London, Paris, Milan, Rome, Geneva & Madrid. My dad somehow managed all this on a civil servant's salary.

Anyway, I got some of these photos from that book; others are from this web site http://history.amusement-parks.com/bandb.htm

My mom and dad and me, pre-carousel age:

As I grew older I became more and more besotted with carousels. When I was 13 or 14 I bought my mom a miniature glass carousel, and wrote one of my first short stories about it. ‘The Carousel' won second prize in a short story contest sponsored by the Manhattan Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. The poet Nikki Giovanni gave me my award at an afternoon tea I attended with my mom.

I am still obsessed with Coney Island and continue to work on a Coney-Island-inspired short story  that I began writing when I was 18! Many years ago! ‘The Monster in the House Across the Street' was first rejected by The New Yorker in 1981. Charles McGrath wrote: ‘Much of the writing is strong and original, but I'm afraid that some of the fantastic or surreal passages seemed to us a little strained or self-conscious." Thank goodness they didn't publish it!

After many years of rewrites and rejections I met a young producer who wanted me to turn it into a play. And so began that arduous but fascinating process. Nothing came of it.

I am still working on the story.

Postscript: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=40459851@N00&q=carousel&m=text

Pictures of the carousel being dismantled in March 2006.

B&B Carousel info on the Coney Island museum's message board: http://www.coneyisland.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=histy;action=display;num=1093544390;start=15