Action Park (Summer ’85) by Holden Wennekers

This is dedicated to the ones who lost their lives at Action Park. Fun should never come at the cost of human life.

Entry #1 (07/30/85):

We’re going to Action Park: tomorrow. I don’t wanna go. Never been to Action Park. Heard terrible things about it. Billy Parwell broke his neck at Action Park, on the Alpine Slide. Charlie, Ben, Stanley: they’ve all been to the Park. Showed me the scars they all got on the Cannonball Loop. Their backs, arms, legs all ripped up, little red scratchings of a hundred winged bats.

“The slide did that to you?” I asked.

“Yeah!” said Charlie.

“Did it hurt?”

They all laughed at me.

“It felt like I was zoomin’ in a rocket-ship goin’ about a million miles an hour, like I was a cannonball. And the loop wasn’t shit compared to the Alpine Slide.”

All my friends were imploring me to ride on the Alpine Slide.

“Why would anyone wanna get hurt on a ride?”

“Because,” said Ben, “It’s fun.”

“Trust us,” said Stan, “You have to try it for yourself.”

“You’ll see tomorrow,” said Charlie.

“I’m not coming.”

“What!? No, you’re coming. You don’t have a choice!”

“You have to come with us!”

“No two ways about it!”

“Why, why do I have to come?”

“Because, fool, summer’s almost over, and in three months, we’ll be in High School. High School! You know what happens in High School?”

“What?”

“Everything happens in High School. Everything. And if you’re not prepared, you’ll be buried alive.”

“It’s the truth,” said Ben. Stan nodded.

“What does Action Park have to do with High School?” I asked.

“I- I can’t explain it,” said Charlie, “you’ll find out tomorrow. Trust me.”

I brought up Billy Parwell—still laid up at Hudson Regional—but they weren’t hearing it. So, I guess I’m going to Action Park…

I don’t know how I feel about it.

I’m kinda scared, the same way I’m scared of High School. I’ve heard horror stories about High School. Like High School was some jungle, and Middle School was the training ground.

Duncan Townsend’s older brother got his head dunked down a dirty toilet by some football playin’ assholes. I heard teachers at Columbia let the football players do as they please to the other backpack’d weaklings. Some kids sell drugs, roll with gangs, beat the dog piss outta you for your lunch money. Cynthia Davis’s younger brother was stubborn about giving up his lunch money, so he got beaten up so bad, he’s laid up next to Billy at Hudson Regional.

Christ, all this talk of High School has my stomach gurgling nervously. I don’t know which is activating my amygdala more so: the thought of High School, or Action Park.

Entry #2 (08/01/85):

Don’t gotta clue where to begin. Whole day was one big incoherent blur of madness. I have a migraine, maybe a hangover. I can’t get out of bed. My mom’s mad at me. Don’t think I’ll be going outside today, damn shame considering it’s such a beautiful day today in sunny West Orange, New Jersey.

What a day it was.

I’ll start here: Charlie’s older brother Derrick pulled into my driveway at 8:30 (am) in his mother’s caravan, his buddy Raphael sitting shotgun. My mom heard their radio blasting. Looks of concern as I left. Charlie and the others squeezed in the back. Derrick and Ralph appeared hopped up on speed pills, eager like beavers to get to the Park.

“You guys ready to party!” All my friends whooping it up. Electric excitement radiating all over. Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. blasting loud on the radio. Derrick took off, north towards the forest lands of Vernon Township.

I felt light-headed. Mouth shut the whole way there. Many cars along Interstate 280, all headed to the Park.

We got there, the parking lot was packed with people everywhere: drunken teens, drunker adults, all giddy, laughing, children running all over; mad cacophony echoing about the hilly woodlands surrounding the Park. Drunkenness everywhere, smells of marijuana about, everyone drunker than cowboys in the roadhouse, Colorful clusters of people around the front entrance.

We enter: more people, everywhere: men in tight-Ts and trucker hats drinking beer, boys in bathing-suits running around, dressed in baggy RUN D.M.C T-shirts and basketball sneakers. Line-ups looping out from Motor-World, where the rumblings of speeding race carts zipped around. Lines of adrenalized animals whopping and hollering uncontrollably excited.

Charlie wanted to slide the Alpine first.

“Let’s hit Motor-World!” said Stanley.

“No! Alpine Slide! Alpine Slide!” Those words ringing in my mind like a smashing gong.

I saw a group of boys run past a soccer-mom with her video-camera, filming the crowds, Naked Eye’s Promises Promises playing from some speaker in the distance, one of the boys flipping her camera off, a beer in his hand; she laughs, zooming in on his finger. Across the grass, past more kids in bathing suits running around, a group of teenaged girls hidden behind shrubbery smoking grass.

Girls stood by a beer stand, past the crowds of laughter and screams of kids on rides, down slides. Beer stands everywhere. Not a place in this Park you couldn’t get a beer, more than half the people I saw had a can, or cup of beer held limply in their hand; people drinking stood in line, riding bumper carts with beer spilling all over, beer in the pool, park attendants giving not a shit in the world, themselves drunker than a couple of shit skunks in purgatory, perhaps paradise, based on the radiance of the unified giddiness and glee.

It was all like summer camp on steroids. One big whoopin’ party.

And before I knew it, there it was.

“The Alpine Slide!” yelled Charlie, rattling with anticipation. “COME ON!” He shouted. All the others followed, I lagged along.

I was so damn nervous, I couldn’t feel my knees. I felt like collapsing in on my self, like a bag of bones, like I was headed for damnation. Passing giddy people with giddy smiles on their radiant faces all sunburnt and sweating, beaming sun reflecting in their sunglasses, taking polaroids of one another, mothers of their kids, teens of their friends in groups giving thumbs up and middle fingers to the cameras, next to lines of hundreds waiting to get onto the next ride or slide.

We passed crowds around the Slide, stepping over sizzling hot black asphalt paving the walkways looping around the Park. It was 90° outside, and the asphalt was heated, making it quite unbearable to step on if you were barefoot—which many were, in their bathing suits with their beach towels—stepping painfully over the hot blacktop, equivalent to fire-walking over burning embers on some tropical beach near Honolulu. Wasn’t so bad for me and my friends though, since we had on our basketball sneakers (I’d worn my new Jordan 1s—muddied and beaten by the time I got home). I saw this one little girl trip trying to run over the asphalt, scraping both her knees off, screaming as blood poured everywhere; staff slow and negligible as they moseyed on over to help her, parents nowhere to be found. Charlie laughed at her. I felt the pit of my stomach swirl like a sizzling vat of acid.

Heard her screaming cries as we approached the line to the ski-lift up to the tip of the Alpine Slide. Kids screaming and laughing all over. We passed this other kid, coming down the Slide with his buddies. He’d broken his nose. His face was all purple and his battered nose was bleeding down his white iron maiden T-shirt; he looked to have a concussion as he limped along lifeless, with the assistance of his buddies, all laughing, drunk. Even he was laughing, drunk, like his nose didn’t bother him.

“You good?” Stan asked me. I didn’t answer. Time passed slowly, my head cold in the summer heat. Nervousness doesn’t quite quantify what I was feeling in that moment.

We went up the ski lift to the Alpine, me and Charlie. No seatbelts, the lift was wobbly. I could see the Slide in it’s immensity down below; complex, dangerous twists, turns, sharp curves looping around the trees, shrubbery and jagged rocks.

Danger doesn’t seem to bother kids my age.

Guys, I can’t do this, I thought about saying, but I knew they wouldn’t have it. I’d never seen them more excited about anything, ever. I swear, just last summer Ben had been too scared to see Ghostbusters with me and Stanley at Cinema 15 down at the Livingston Mall—going to see Nightmare on Elm Street was also out of the question—but now here he was, all giddy to ride the Slide.

Billy Parwell haunted my mind.

I let all my friends go ahead. No way in hell was I gonna be the first one down. Charlie would be first, in-front of Ben, both giddy like they’d won tickets to see Black Sabbath. Behind me were two younger teens talking, one looked like Wally Cleaver, the other like John Denver.

“I’ve been on this one before. It’s not so bad.” said John.

“Does it hurt?” asked Wally

“Yeah, but it’s not that bad.”

“You know about that kid who died on the slide?”

“Didn’t that happen like five years ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they fix the slide since then?”

“I don’t think so.”

Charlie was up next, then Ben, then Stan.

“Next!” yelled the slide attendant. “Next!” She looked right at me, in her orange lensed sunglasses.

I was next… I approached timid.

“You sure you’re old enough to ride?”

“Yes I am!” I said all sour.

“I’m just messin’ with yeh, kid.” She laughed, a lot, clearly high, maybe drunk. In the glare of her glasses I saw the hundreds in-line to ride, all backed-up by me. “Alright,” she said, “hold on tight to the handle-bars, don’t stick your hands or legs out, for any reason. Don’t go too fast. Don’t brake for no reason. And—well… just, be careful.”

Billy appeared in my frightened mind.

“You ever been on the Slide?” she asked.

“No…”

“Didn’t think so. Just pretend you’re at the playground.” She laughed. I blushed.

“I don’t wanna go down.” I said.

She laughed, harder. Got a real kick out of me.

“Sorry kid, but the ski don’t take people down. So either you roll down the hill, or go down the slide.”

John Denver got pissy behind me.

“You’re holding up the line, ass-munch!”

She grinned at me like I’d shit my pants. Fear intensified, in that moment, it pushed me over the edge. Adrenaline kicked in. Fear magnified, pushing me forward, over the edge.

“Kid?” She said, “you good?”

“I’m good,” I said. “I’m only kidding.”

“Sure you are.”

I got in the cart. No seatbelt. No helmet. Cart rickety and made of cheap plastic.

“Enjoy the ride,” she said.

“Wait-“

Too late. Down I went.

“HOLY JESUS!” I went FAST! Zippin’ at like 177 mph. ZOOOM! Curving downward, looping, barely able to hold on. Humid wind in my eyes. Screaming my head off. Complete lack of control, zippin’ fast. I could see the whole of the Park from the peak, all the people, pathways, the Waterpark, Motor-World, Route-94 slicing the Park in half, and I swear, I could see the whole of New Jersey’s sprawl from up here, as I zipped down the slide, all the urban pollution, industrial decay, and in the distance past the haze I could see the whole of Manhattan Island, and the immense expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Then the Slide zipped downward, and all I saw was forest zoomin’ by like I was at the helm of some rickety old rocket ship.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!” What was going on? How was I going this fast? One wrong move and I’d be flung like a flailing meat-sack from an unforgiving catapult, my last memories petrified on this slippery slide from hell.

Screaming, everything zooming, handlebars rattling, like the damn mine-cart chase in Temple of Doom. My ass jumping up and down, suspended in the air as I skidded left, curving the loop, thinking I’d fly forward or fling off. I saw Stanley up ahead, near the flat part of the hill, stopped, like some poor mini van parked on train tracks. I was headed right at him faster than grease-lightning, and I squeezed the livin’ hell outta the break stick, with all my might, rattling like a goddamned fighter pilot; took me a minute to realize the breaks were shot.

“OH DEAR MOTHER OF GOD!!!”

WHAM! Right into his ass. Could feel the weight of both of us. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. It felt like I’d been football tackled by the Terminator. Flung forward, bashing my forehead into Stanley’s upper back, jolting backward in my seat. Pain. Stopped in the middle of the track.

“You DUMBASS!” I yelled at him.

“FUCK YOU!” He yelled back.

“MOVE!”

“I CAN’T!!!”

John and Wally approaching behind me.

“OH SHIT!” I heard them both yell. Plowed right into me, me into Stan, and just like that we were all back on track.

I began laughing, more excitement than I could contain, as we all continued on down the slide. Stan ahead, I could hear him screaming, whooping it up, many laughs. And in that moment, something strange happened. All the scare had washed away, and I couldn’t contain my excitement. I felt free, like some spiritually enlightened hippie ridin’ on a zippin’ motorized magic carpet over Death Valley towards the ocean.

I can’t explain it.

Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. Bottom of the slide, my heart beating out it’s chest, breathing heavy, brain rushing, a strange pungent euphoria like a bubble bath in my body. I lay in the cart a moment, before some drunk angry slide employee grabbed me and said “get a move on, twerp.”

I couldn’t hear him, I was buzzing, buzzing buzzing all over. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Was this real? Was this the greatest moment of my life?

Odd invigoration. All the fear: gone.

Charlie and Ben waiting by the side. Stan’s upper back a little bruised, like my forehead.

“Well?” asked Charlie. “How was it?”

I guess I looked a little delirious. I was dizzy. They looked concerned, until I smiled. Then they all started freaking out, cheering, whooping.

“I FUCKING KNEW IT!” Yelled Charlie. “I KNEW YOU’D LOVE IT!” They all grabbed me, hugged me, jumping all around like I’d beaten some tough Rico case on a lack-of-evidence.

Cheering and screaming all around me, everywhere. Motor roarings from the race track in the distance, carts going 90 mph, sounds of bumper cars smashing, ramming, kablaming into one another. Kids laughing, drunken adults whoopin’ it up, howlin’, people screamin’ down the slide, screamin’ their lungs out, happier than they’ll ever be the rest of their lives. Kids with fractures, broken bones, ambulance rides around the clock. Drunken staff smoking weed and dropping acid in the woods, as kids scrape, tear, rip, break, and hurt every-which way, yet the laughter never stops. Somewhere way off in the distance someone playing New Edition’s Cool It Now loudly from a bassy ghetto box, electric thumping, sun beaming, laughing all around, setting the scene for a day that I’ll hold near and dear for the rest of my life.

“What now?” asked Ben.

“The Cannonball Loop!”

“I didn’t bring my swim trunks.”

“They must have a lost and found.”

“Let’s go down the Slide again!”

“What about Motor-world!”

“What about Motor-world?” said Charlie. “There’s still plenty of time. Plenty of time for the slide, the Water Park, Motor-World, the Tidal Pool, the Tarzan Swing, the Banzai Pipe, we still need to get into the Raging River. There’s still plenty to do, my friends, and plenty more time to do it.”

He wasn’t lying. Raphael’s buddy Dylan worked as lifeguard at the Tidal Pool. Dylan was cool with all the workers, and with Gene (the owner) so he’d let Ralph and Ralph’s friends hang around after closing, which meant that we could also hang around after closing. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t imagine leaving this place. This place was Heaven: The Bee’s Knees.

“It’s like that story about the buffalo, down the hill. The day has just begun. We’ve got plenty more time, plenty more rides, don’t you worry a minute, plenty more fun.”

I’ve got many more things to say about the day, but I’m beginning to run out of space in my journal. I may have to crack open another journal, take my bike down to the pharmacy and get two more journals, and some more pencils. I wish they put more pages in these things. Safe to say, what I’ve just described to you, only really skims the tip of the day and all that happened. All the fun I had. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ll try to write about it in my next journal. I still have a bad headache and I don’t think I’ll ever be touching alcohol again. Not after last night. Funniest part: as fun as the day was, things really got funny once the park had closed, we’d stuck around, us and the staff at the park dancing drunkenly in the moonlight.

I’m pretty sleepy now. My mom’s still pissed. Told her I’d be home at six (pm), yesterday. Got home like, maybe four hours ago—it’s nine (am) right now. She says I’m not allowed to go out anymore this summer. Can’t go to my friend's house. Can’t go to the mall. And I most certainly cannot go back to Action Park.