443: Amusement Park

From WBEZ Chicago, it's this American life. I'm out of glass. Okay, so we're going through the gate here into the park. Yeah, we're going. This is our morning, this the morning walk into the park. So everybody will split up into their different sections and get the park open and we'll start putting out prizes. We're at an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri called Worlds of Fun. We're going to be spending the entire hour today at amusement parks. It's five minutes before opening and I'm walking with Cole Lindbergh, who's 25, with permanently muster in the cheerful vibe of the Bus and Buddies era Tom Hanks. He's been coming to this park since he was a little kid, started working here as a summer job at 14 and then basically just never left. It became his real job. Love and years later, he is a full-time year-round employee. I love amusement parks. Any time my family would go on vacation, we'd schedule it around an amusement park. Because I love rollercoats because I love the amusement parks. I mean, I've walked this pathway that we're taking right now. I've walked it thousands and thousands and thousands of times. When he was little, his family had seasoned passes here and they would come a lot. He traveled to any new roller coaster to try it out, daydreamed about a job where he would design parks and build roller coasters. And when his dad drove him here at the age of 14 for a job interview, he wore a suit to that interview. Just sitting inside the park's offices, which are utilitarian, picture the principal's office at a public high school. Even that was exciting. I remember being like, "Oh wow, this is the inner sanctum. This is the inner working. This is where all the cool stuff happens." And then, first time actually getting in the uniform, actually working in the park. I remember to me, it was like, "Wow, this is kind of surreal. I'm actually working in an amusement park now." And to me, that was kind of like awesome. That was awesome. I'm so excited about this. You may think that enthusiasm would diminish every time, but what's incredible about Cole is that even after a decade here, even after becoming an adult and working 60, 70 hour weeks every week, all summer. Even with the pressure and his current job of running a whole department and hitting financial targets and buying all the supplies and hiring and supervising over 100 young people, he is still pretty psyched about working in an amusement park. And it is not a glamour job. The department Cole runs is the games department at Worlds of Fun. This is 32 games, kind of that you would see at any carnival or midway, where you get three softballs to try to throw them into a milk can, or you throw bean bags at targets, or you shoot darts to knock over a stack of cups. Nobody comes to an amusement park with the games. Cole himself never went to an amusement park with the games. But, he's an extrovert, and he has filled the department with extroverts, like Mallory. The park is barely open, hardly any customers here at all, when Cole stops by her game on this morning rounds. Yeah, Mallory loves talking on the mic. Mallory does a good job in the mic. Thank you. I appreciate it. Let's hear it. Go for it. Try to get people to play. Alrighty. We're over here at three point challenge today, looking for our first winner. You come on over here. You have 40 seconds on the clock. And you can be walking away with some awesome prizes. This is exactly how Cole trains the kids to talk on the mic. Don't stop. Get a flow. Have fun. If you have fun, that's what's going to sell the game. Watching Cole run the games department at Worlds of Fun is watching somebody who was raised here, and who completely thoroughly mastered everything. It's rare to witness somebody so happily great at any job. Alright, let's get it around, guys. Is there still people in cash controlling by now? It's the first shift meeting of the day. About 30 teenagers and college kids mill around a big tree before the shifts start. Alright guys, listen up. Get around. Let's do this. Here we go. Quiet please. Real quick. Real quick. Here we go. Today is Saturday. Today is a busy day. Today is the day that we have a very good day, because there are going to be a lot of people playing. Games. And today, of course, is one of my favorite days of the season. Is the second round of the Sweet 16 tournament. Let's take a look. Sam, you want to hold this up a little higher? Okay, we've got it. One of the guys, Sam holds up a poster board with tournament brackets on it, like Randy sports tournament. The Sweet 16 tournament pits the kids in all 32 games in the park against each other, in pairs, in a four-week competition to make the most money. Last week, half the games were eliminated. Koas, you're letting the remaining games know who they're competing with today. Pigs of Fury Bowl pen versus Goblet Toss, Lion City. Now. Wait, hold up. Where are you going further? Could this possibly be a precursor for today? Yesterday, the number one game in the park, was Scale Africa. Okay, Scale Africa is a scale, a game where they guess your weight or age. And it's in the Africa part of the park, hence Scale Africa. And it's no surprise that it's number one. It always makes tons of money. All the games in the park are grouped together into four different teams, which they call Games One, Games Two, Games Three, and Games Four. And these four teams, Games One Through Four, compete against each other all summer long, like teams at summer camp in a three-month-long color war. Most other amusement parks don't go this far to make things interesting for the workers. This park, World's A Fine, is owned by a company called Cedar Fair, that owns 11 amusement parks and 6 water parks. And Cole knows the guys who run the games departments at the other parks, and some of them do competitions like this between the employees. But I don't think they do it to the extent of what we do. I mean, every year, I talk about, you know, we have the Deathmatch tournament. We have the sweet 16 tournament. A couple years ago, we did a thing called Toss the Boss. And basically, what happened was, is that every single day I'd pull a game out of a hat. And if that game was the number one game in the park for that day, then that section would get to throw me in the pond. The pond is not a good-looking pond. It's gross, and, you know, it smells. And the deal was, is that if you are the number one game in the park, you get to throw me in the pond. So finally, one day, the game that he picked from the hat that day, tried the hardest and actually became the number one game in the park for the day. And ready? Two, three! Of course, they made a video about this because, you know, the present day, America. And Cole went and told his peers, his colleagues, the guys who run the games departments at the other parks, all about what happened. I go and I tell the other parks about this, and I showed a picture, you know, like, "Oh, there's me all soaked and wet," and I, I mean, I kind of got laughed at, you know, like, "Why would you ever do that?" And to me, in my mind, I was just like, "Why would you not do that? You know, why would you not want to get people excited about working in the game that they're in?" At least they may try. They may do a little bit more. And if I can get a little bit more out of them, we're good. Even if the game only makes a little bit more money. Also, it's more fun for the kids. Exactly. It's all about more fun. All right, so there's a lot of people in the park today. Now, I have composed a song about today, which I now want to sing for you. And you can all sing along. Okay. Saturday. It's Saturday. Saturday. Saturday. Saturday. Saturday. Wait, what day is that for God? Saturday. Today, I don't feel like riding in a ride. I just want to play all the games. I don't really like playing mamba ball when a giant top frog or a big basketball. Yesterday, I don't feel like riding in a ride. Just playing games. All right. Let's have a good day, guys. Everybody in, all right? All right, games are three. One, two, three. All right, let's have a good day. Well, today on our radio show, we go to amusement parks all over the country. We see stuff backstage that we had. No idea what was going on. Like that song. We were Jonathan Goldstein's story about moving to the Jersey Shore for a summer when he was 16. And we hear your stories. We asked you to call him with your amusement park stories. And you told some great ones. Today's show first round a few years ago, but we're airing it again now because it's summer. It's hot. Let's spend an hour at the funnest place possible. Let's ride the rides. Let's gorge out on terrible great food together for this hour. Cue the roller coaster sound now. Stay with us. It's American Life Act 1. Game Boy grows up. Following Cole Lindberg around and his early morning tour of Wards of Fun Park, I learned a couple things. First of all, people play the games because they want to win the prizes. And so an important part of his job is actually guessing what prizes are going to excite people. He kind of just go, it is what it is. Oh, I got to show you the lemur. You want to see what a lemur is? Yeah. People love these. This is a lemur. People play for this all the time. This is one of our number one prizes. Really? Yeah. Who'd have thought? It's a fluorescent colored monkey, the size of a teddy bear with huge eyes and a super long tail. When they put it into the dark game, the dark game became one of the most popular games in the park. doubled its business. I also learned the call "invents games." You like Angry Birds, right? We round a corner and I see why he asked. What we're looking at right now is a giant slingshot with a launcher that you launch basically bean bags at pigs and we built this. So you got permission from the Angry Birds people? Well, this turns out to be kind of an awkward question. Cole points out that this slingshot game is not actually called Angry Birds. It's called Pigs of Fury. Pigs of Fury. So now this is one of our number one games. People love shooting a giant slingshot. Before I go out to Kansas City to meet Cole, I watched his YouTube videos online. Yes, he has YouTube videos and I heartily recommend them. They are shot, directed, and starring Cole. They are low tech. They're low budget. In this one, he wears a Viking helmet and fake mustache and wire m glasses and he's walking through a video arcade. Those are his echoey footsteps that you're hearing. Next he's inside what looks like. You know this old arcade machines with a mechanical car that picks up prices. This one is big enough for a person to stand inside and Cole is inside it, surrounded by huge stuffed animals and he wraps. Okay, I'm going to stop the video right there. When he says, "A bear, a dog, and a giant monkey," then we have three quick shots of stuffed animal prizes. "A bear, a dog, and a giant monkey." This video continues. The teenagers on his staff join him and they're all dancing around and they're hitting whack-a-mole moles on the beat. And everything that they do in this video is so deeply uncool that you know that they must really like and trust each other. And their total commitment to what they're doing actually flips the dorkiness and makes it kind of cool. [Music] There are over a dozen videos all set in the amusement park. With the stuffed animal prizes, always playing surprisingly central roles, like the sci-fi special effects movie they made, where a mysterious ray from outer space hits and the stuffed animal prizes all come to life seeking vengeance. Keyline? The prizes attacked me. I was in my game, the earth's shook, and next thing I knew was being pummeled by fares. The only semi-normal video of the bunch is a training video. This one opens on call. He's in a suit and tie in front of a bookcase reading a book. He looks up, startled, as if the camera surprised him. Hello! How are you? I was just reading. Welcome to the world's fun games training video. My name is Cole. I'll be taking you on this wonderful journey here. When he says wonderful journey, he mugs at the camera with his gesture that communicates the idea. I know this is completely ridiculous. In fact, the entire video seems to be making fun of the idea of training videos while at the same time. It is a training video, explaining how to sign in, how to use the till card, how to stock prizes. I saw these videos and all I could think of was these people really love their jobs. I thought about Michael Scott, the fictional boss on the office. I'd say that there's a lot of Michael Scott in this job. I say there's a lot of Michael Scott in me, probably. I do silly things that everybody looks at me later and go, why did he do that? Why was it deemed necessary for Cole to dress up wearing a big beard and a raincoat until everyone he lived downtown under the bridge and he was there to motivational speaker them today? Hi everybody, I'm Field Bridges. I go out and talk to people. What went through his thought process and I've run out with a squirt gun all the time. I got my big supersoaker and I'm busy days. I'll take the supersoaker and I'll fill it up with ice water and I'll sneak around the corner. Just and they're all standing there and I'll just go, light them up. I just spray across the whole group. That's what makes it fun. They're going to remember Phil Bridges more than, you know, like anything else throughout the day. And so if they're talking about, did you get to see what Cole did at the shift meeting? Even if they say that was stupid or that was not funny, they're still going to be talking about it and that's still going to get them happy about this job. So does that work in practice? After all, if you think about it, amusement park jobs are not on their face very fun. You know, taking tickets, strapping people into rides, convincing passers-by to throw three balls into a can. Well, the Saturday that I visited turned out to be one of the busiest hottest days of the summer. It was a concert at the park which brought in thousands of extra people. And of course, this was sweet 16 round two, which did seem to matter to the kids. Before the shift, Haley and a couple of the other kids from games three pulled Cole aside and crowded close to kids some other teams couldn't see. So this is, you have a secret weapon that is going, they're going to show you the secret weapon of what. It's a banana costume. So open up. Is that? You made the costume? I made the costume, yeah. Because he's awesome. Because we have a game with bananas that's in sweet 16. So we're going to have somebody running around in this costume to try to sell it. It's kind of big and it's kind of rough because they didn't use a pattern. Did you just go by fabric? No, I've had this fabric since the head hole, the arm's hole, and it's going to look like the bananas in lines did. I like it. We're pumped. I like it. That is more than exciting. People are going to be stopping, taking pictures. Oh, maybe I'll win one too. Meanwhile, guys in games four were doing great in sweet 16. All their games had survived the first round. Games one was eliminated completely in the first round of sweet 16. As for games two, Max and Oaksana are pulling a double shift, hoping to break the record for how much has ever been made ever in their two games. They're not so secret strategy. All right. So strobe light, strobe light. You want two black lights out there. Max and his team leader Dominic are setting up at a game called Rolla Ball, which is one of the older games in the park. Basically, it's just a ski ball, but as you get points, it moves a little wooden pig, which is in a race with all the other writers. This doesn't make any sense. It actually doesn't matter. Here's what you need to know. Games two is hoping to turn this creaky 16 year old game Rolla Ball, which never does well into a crazy dance party. They call techno ball. Max and Dominic have brought in a disco ball. They brought a lighting gear and Dominic is explaining to Max how he wants to set it all up. We're going to put a light on that toy chest. We're going to put a light on that box. They're shining at the disco ball. Disco ball is going to be moving. It's all dark in here. People want to walk on it. They'll be like, "Whoa, what am I stepping on? Whoa, lights!" Maybe it'll be too much for people to handle it. Half an hour before the park open, Haley and Claire had gotten to work early, and we're down in games three by scale Africa. We wanted to set out the most prices that we could make the piles, extravagant, do a lot of flash, and that takes a lot of time, so we came out here early. So just describe what we're looking at. There's a pyramid here of turtles and there's pandas, lions. There's going to be one of tigers. Each pyramid has over a hundred stuffed animals in it, which is bigger than I think you're probably imagining it. It's like nearly waist high, and so there are four big pastel colored piles of push toys right in the middle of the walkway looking so, so easy to win. Basically, every prize we've got, every prize we've got, yeah, we're throwing it out here. We're going big or go home. We really want to win. We brought in streamers, balloons, energy drinks. We got a whole bunch of energy drinks. We got a whole bunch of gatorade. We brought in food for everyone. In case energized, get pumped up for the whole day. We lost deathmatch. A very painful battle. Years ago, I was lead of games three. This was my section. Cole gets just as excited as the kids do when you get him talking about all the fun things that he did back when he was Haley and Claire's age, working here running games three. His team would dress as pirates for the guessing game. And they'd be out of the skill and they'd do guessing pirates. Gar your age beat. Gar, you know, stuff like that. 2004 came around. We dominated. We beat everyone. It was awesome. And I so, I'm it is still so alive for him. They dominated in 2004 by tricking out one of the games with music and all kinds of commotion and turning it into a party, doubling its take for the day. We brought my fog machine in from home because at the time I was in high school and I had a band. And people flocked to it. And we destroyed games too. We destroyed him that year. It was the happiest I've been because in 2003, we had gotten so close to winning. And I just kept on saying 2004 is a year. Games three, we're bringing the sweet 16 back 2004. And we did. We won. And I was really happy. - What do they do with that tree? I think I don't get anything different. - Late morning, when I checked back at Games 3, the pyramids of plush toys look pretty much exactly as big as they had earlier that morning. Things were slow, and to use the business, one of the supervisors, Sarah, was standing on the roof of this little hut. - 88 more guesses, until I'm coming out for room. - She's staying on the roof, and so she gets 100 guesses. - I mean, until I get 88 more guesses, and then I'm gonna allow myself to take a bathroom break. So any of you guys, welcome by. If you guys wanna come play my game, help me out, get me off this roof. It's only $5 to play. I can get your age, weight, or a brick to a month. - This is a technique that I recognize from a thousand public radio pledge drives, and it was working about as slowly for her as it works for us. Strangers, just don't care if some girl on the roof gets to take a bathroom break. - I'm stuck here, so I can get 88 more people to play. - Do you see? No, you people don't wanna help me out. Thanks, thanks. Thanks for the luck. You should come, I dare you guys to come feel these turtles. It sounds like a weird thing, but we really have the softest turtles in town. You should feel one. They're really soft. - After a while, Sarah's switch technique, and finally managed to wrestle up a crowd, through the simple tactic of making a series of insanely terrible guesses. First, there is a dad who looks like he's 42, and in fact is 42. Sarah guessed is 25, then a grandmother, who is standing there with kids and grandkids. Sarah writes her guess for this woman's age on a white board. - This could be really wrong. I get the feeling it's really wrong, but that's okay. We'll see. You guys like this guess, maybe? All right, turn around, how old are you? - 52. - I guess you're 37. It's sunglasses. Sunglasses really throw me off. But congratulations, you guys have got any plans you want. Later, Sarah privately confirmed for me that she did intentionally take a dive, which is fine with Cole because it turns out it doesn't matter if the kids guess right. The game costs $5 to play, the prizes cost less than $5. Sarah can be wrong with every single guess, and they'd still make a nice profit. In fact, it's good to lose, because people carrying prizes around the park are a walking advertisement for all the games. Cole's journey from summertime employee like Sarah to full time year round boss happened in a couple of steps. He said there's a kind of nerdy kid in high school in a small town. It was nice to come to a place where his personality was rewarded. - I couldn't wait 'til the summer, because when it was summertime, I get to come to World of Fund and work with people that are just like me and enjoy our whole summer together. - It's actually years of that. In his senior year at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, he got a phone call offering him the job of games manager. And he dropped out of school to take it. - It's probably one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. But I said, okay, this opportunity's probably only gonna come along once in a lifetime. - As you'd imagine, it hasn't been such a popular decision with family. - So I mean, I have a full year left. I'm like one full year of college left. It comes up when you least expect it. It comes up when they're like, oh no, you're working real hard, but when you get back to school or my grandmother, now before, you know, I pass on, you need to make sure that you've completed college. I'm a grandma all the time. And I get a lot from the girlfriend too. When you get to finish. 'Cause she just graduated college. - This girlfriend and Cole are pretty serious. They just moved in together. They met in games back in 2006, though she moved on from games. - I get that all the time. She's like, we're not gonna be together forever if you don't finish college. I get it a lot. - How often would it come up once a week? Maybe once every two weeks depending on the week? I don't know, I don't know. - Lots of very accomplished people that don't have college degrees. - I know. - Steve Jobs? - Yeah. - But Steve Jobs, he changed the world. I'm just a lowly little games manager in a small mid-sized park in Kansas City. (screaming) Who wants to play some games? (screaming) - By midday, down in games three, that is Dustin, who's wearing the full body banana suit that Haley handmade for him, which looks amazing. But it is 94 degrees, which is sapping everybody's energy and business is slow. - Oh, all right. Hey, you guys have a great day. - Though is the day, wears on. People slowly migrate from the rides to the games. And by nightfall, when it cools off, the guys in games too, finally get techno ball working. Max and Oaxana are covered from head to toe in glow lights. Cole and I round a corner together and we see them in the distance and there's a crowd of three dozen people surrounding the game. It's fantastic. - Oh my goodness. Oh, let's go look at techno ball. Look at this. (cheering) - No, it's six of your staff and two, three other guys all dancing. - In a big circle. - In a big circle, yeah, four other guys all dancing in a big circle to check no music. - And how many people are actually playing? - Zero. (laughing) - A Dominic. A Dom. - That's Dominic, the team leader here at Games2. - Oh, look, Dom's all the way, I can bear this. Hi, Dom. - What's up? How many people are playing the game, Dom? - Trying to be a lot of attention. - Yeah, why are we turning that into gameplay? Supposed to just, maybe they should dance inside the game instead of on the walkway in front of the game so people would be pulled into play. Dom does not want to do this. And listen to what a good boss call is. He's firm, but he's very nice about it. - You're so close. - I know. - You're so close. - Did anyone's attention that just affected? - No, they did. But then you didn't have anybody I hear talking to them saying, hey, why aren't you playing the game? - I know, I was hoping that they would realize that. - I don't know, they're not going to realize that. You know that, you, and better than anyone, you should know that. They're not going to just be like, oh. It looks fine. I mean, all the lights, I mean, I'm not going to deny the awesomeness. But I am going to say that no more to have parties. I really think the dance parties are not going to help you win. - I walked down to check on games three. It is 10.30 at night. Claire has been here for 13 hours since I saw her setting up pyramids of push before the gates opened to the park. Those pyramids were now raggedy piles, maybe half their original size, which means that they did great. They got lots of people to play. They'd probably given away 500 prizes for wrong guesses. And Claire has had exactly the kind of day that Cole wants for all the kids. Did you have fun today? - Yes, I had a lot of fun. I had no idea what time it was until about 20 minutes ago when I checked. It just didn't occur to me that I needed to check the time. - 'Cause it was going by so fast. - Yeah. - When did you take your first break today? - I haven't taken a break. - Wow. - Yeah, I guess, I'm kind of used to it. - This is of course third year here. She's 18, going to Missouri State in the fall to study nursing. And she tells me what a lot of kids here tell me. She wouldn't keep coming back to work at Worlds of Fun. If not for Cole. - Definitely not. I don't think any other boss would do, like the rally days, the death match, a sweet 16, the toss the boss, just all the fun stuff that we do that keeps us going through the season and just keeps this job exciting every day. - Sam, one of the leaders we're games for, has been here for three summers. And he also says the call is the reason that he keeps coming back. - Honestly, no one else could do a better job. He was made to do this. - It's funny like watching him do something like sing a goofy song for you guys in the morning. - You can imagine high school students and college students sort of rolling their eyes at somebody doing that, but nobody does. - No, it's weird, it's almost like that's the thing to do. Whatever Cole does is the thing to be doing at that moment. And we just all feel like that was the right move. - Do you remember what it was like the first time you saw one of his videos? - Uh, I do. I remember seeing it and I was like, that's my boss. And he just made that video. And it was so cool, 'cause I went and even showed some of my friends that are like, like, who's this guy? It's like, that's my boss. - That's so weird because a lot of people would say, well, it's an amusement park. You know, you're great at working at an amusement park. - That doesn't mean by the way that he has seen by his bosses as some kind of superstar. He gets respect, sure, that everybody likes him. He's a media boss, Matt thinks that there is nobody better at games in any of the 11 amusement parks owned by their parent company, Cedar Fair. But Cola's working at one of the smallest of the 11 parks. So other games managers at bigger parks bring in way more money than Cola does. And games and the grand scheme of things is actually the smallest revenue producer at most amusement parks. The biggest money at an amusement park comes from ticket sales, then just food, everybody buys food, then merch. And then bringing up the rear is games. What Cola does has less effect on the company's bottom line than lots of people in the company. And as much as Cole loves this job, he cannot but wonder how long can a person do this job? - So the one thing that I always say is, I mean, I'm 25 now. I started here when I was 14. And the weird thing is is that I'm getting older, but everybody else in the department staying the same age. - I'm gonna set the tape right there. Yes, I know. Matthew McConaughey is confused. Cole's seen the film too. But the thing I'm wondering for you is, Do you feel like somehow? I'll accidentally in this job, you got stuck in high school. You got stuck at 15. Like there's a part of you where you're still back there. - I like working on the park with the kids. - Absolutely, 100%. - The goofball part. - The goofball part. - The part where you get to act their age instead of your age. - Yes. - Does that make me sound bad? - I mean, I'm still a manager. I'm still overseeing 100 people that work for me, you know. But at the same time, you know, 10 years from now, I mean, I don't think I can still be a goofball. I think that just kind of get creepy. (laughing) You know? I mean, you're 35 and you work with a bunch of high schoolers and is that creepy? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. - Do you worry that you'll never be happier in any job than you are in this one? - Yes. Absolutely. - That's a weird fate to know that you're in the best job you may ever have at 25. Especially when it's a job that you know in your heart. I can't last. (upbeat music) - Okay, so we first broadcast that straight long ago back in 2011 and so much has happened for Colson Sen. He finally did leave his job at Worlds of Fun. That was years ago and they worked for a while on sales, their toy company gave some motivational talks about being a boss in an amusement park. He got married very happily, not to the girlfriend in the story, by the way. Now he has a six year old daughter who has the same rollercoaster amusement park bug that he has. They ride rollercoasters together when they go on vacation. He is still putting himself on stage in different ways. In 2024, he won the US Air Guitar National Championship and yes, who knew there was such a thing. He went on to Finland for the international competition where he placed fifth in the world as an air guitarist. He's competing there again in two weeks for the world championship. These days he's also writing music, he's performing, he's going on auditions. He turned 40 this year. Says that he has had jobs that were satisfying in ways that the amusement park job never was. But he said so far, it's still the best job he ever had. Well, coming up, Karnie's floating the air, scary things happen on rides, and bold steps forward for paintball targets everywhere. Our amusement parks continues, in a minute, Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. Just American Life, America. Glasses, you're going to show, of course, which is a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme today's show. amusement parks, it's August, it's hot. We wanted to go someplace fun here on the radio. We've arrived at act two of our program, act two, great adventures. Well, we asked you, our listeners, to call in with your amusement park stories, nearly 300 of you did. And one of our producers, Jane Marie, listened to all of those voicemail messages. She joins me now. Hey, Jane. - Okay. - So Jane, trends, patterns. What can you tell me? - Karnies. - Oh. - Yeah, there's like creepy karnies and hot karnies and karnies that people married. And a bunch of people called and told stories about karnies, like making the ride go too fast, or keeping them on the ride too long. - Tumana karnies, okay. - Yeah. These two calls that I'm going to play are from Barry Silver and Penny Delaney Coffron. And they had the same exact, like, crazy karnie story, only, they happened years apart and in different cities. But it's fun to imagine they're talking about the same guy. - My amusement park story involves the Gravitron. - Yeah, oh, and let me interrupt real quick 'cause the Gravitron. That was like the most popular ride people talked about in the phone calls. - Huh. - That's the one where it's a cylinder and you climb in it and you put your back up against the inside wall of the cylinder. - I bet it spins around and the floor drops out. - Yep, and you're stuck to the wall. - There was a karnie there and he was waving us all in and we had purchased tickets and I guess our first song, this is going to be an interesting ride, was when he said no to the tickets we offered him and just kind of waved us in. - I was working for the World of Wonders side show last month, I had made friends with the karnie who was running the Gravitron. - He started up the ride and the music was blaring and I remember it was Motley Cruz, Dr. Feelgood. - Anyway, he gave me a private chilling where I'm riding inside this thing, music's blasting. - And the lights were going and we were spinning around and the centrifugal force was pushing us up against the wall and the next thing I know, this karnie, steps out from behind his operating box and comes out into the centrifuge and proceeds to pull himself up and place his feet on the spinning wall and walk over the rider, step by step, with his body completely horizontal to the earth. - He's standing on the wall next to me surfing the inside of the Gravitron, that's right, the ride operator left the control panel to start surfing the inside, parallel to the ground. - The force was holding his feet against the wall and it was just the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. - Best experience of my life. - So I know because you told me right before we sat down and I divided the stories that people called and tell where it loves stories. - Tons of love stories or like like stories. (laughing) You know, like summer flings, summer romances, first kisses. There were people that lost their virginity on rides. - No. - Don't do that. But then there were the proposals. There were a lot of people proposing at amusement parks, some more successfully than others. - My name is Natasha and in May, my boyfriend proposed to me on a roller coaster. We were on a viper. He said, will you marry me and he popped open the ring box and the ring fell out of the box and down into the pits of viper. It was a pretty awful. I started trying to get the ride operator to stop the car, the director of operations at the park. I assembled a team of about 20 people and they searched for the ring for hours and that happened in May. So the kicker here is that that ring was actually my grandmother's ring and they're actually still searching for it. We have yet to find it. - So I called Natasha actually to see if they'd found it yet and she said that the park had called her recently and said they found her ring but it wasn't hers. It was another engagement ring. - Really? - Well, it's good to know that her fiance wasn't the only dummy. - Right. - And then we got a bunch of scary calls. So this is a scary one, Wendy in Austin, Texas. She and her friend went to the fair and they were getting on a roller coaster. It was like one of those medium sized fare roller coasters where there's one big drop and then a loop de loop. And as she was getting on, she was like fuzzing around with her purse. - I reached up to pull the harness down over me and it locked above my head and I have nothing holding me into the roller coaster. So I look over and horror as the carny guy that was running the ride looks at me and he pushes the button to go and the thing starts to go and I'm telling you wait, wait, wait, stop, stop. I don't have a seatbelt on it. - But he doesn't stop. So I know. So now she's like going up the hill. So she said she turned to her friend and she just decided to wrap her arms and legs around her friend. - I know. - And so they go down the hill and then they go through the loop de loop. - So she's upside down. - I know, just like hanging under her friend. - It's tight as I can to stay inside the ride and what really got scary is we whipped around the corners. I almost got thrown out that I didn't. - She said that she had whipped lash for a week and that she was too young to realize that she probably could have sued them. So there's another story from this woman Susan. Her three year old wanted to go to the fair but it was super late at night. And so they humored him and they were like sure we'll take you but they figured he would fall asleep on the way there. But he didn't, he stayed awake. - So I said, okay, I'll take you in for one ride on the fairs wheel and then we'll go back to the car. My husband, he knew and put his shoes on because we didn't think he'd make it there. So he took him to the fairs wheel and he kept pointing to the scrambler saying that he wanted to go on the scrambler. And I said no, no, no, and we got off the ride. I held the chain for the person behind me to come out and when I turned back around, he was gone. We could not find him anywhere. And as we're looking around and we have a whole group looking for this little three year old boy. I looked at and he was inside the gate of the scrambler and the scrambler was going. His head was just at the car level and the car name woman stopped the ride and she stopped at an time. She walked over, picked him up, handed him to me. She didn't say a word and I took him and he said she was really scary. And they said that woman was an idiot. and so I will never badmouth a carny again. I'm glad we finally have some unequivocally pro-carny material in this story. Me too. Hi, my amusement park story takes place in Disneyland and I was really excited to go on the haunted house ride. I don't forget what it's called. Anyways, the door opens and you are led into a room. And the door opens and the dark empty room and there is a little person. He was in the room already and I thought I was part of the haunted house. So I started screaming and he was looking at me because I was screaming. He was screaming at me when we were both and we met each other. And then we both realized that it was not part of the haunted house. And that we were just waiting in the line with each other. And we pretended like nothing happened. And finally there were the puke stories. A lot of people called that puke. And is the story more than just that I was on a ride and I puke? Yeah, I was on a ride and I puked or I was on a ride and I got puked on. Was there any that had a twist? Was it a surprise pot twist? The one that stands out for me is this lady was on that potion motion ride. That's like a big boat that swings back and forth. It basically just goes up and down. Yeah, just swings. It's like a pendulum. And so she was up in the highest part of the boat. And she saw the guy on the other end of the boat start puking. And so then she was like swinging down at the puke. And did she see the puke in the air of like slow motion the main course? I could see in slow motion this line of vomit coming towards me. And it hit her? Yeah. About two seconds later it splattered the entire right side of my body. This is nowhere to go. You can't get off the boat. Jay Marie. She used to be a producer here these days. She is the host of the podcast, The Dream. She has a book based on that show called Selling the Dream. But those are about large scale quintessentially American scams. And the people who get caught up in them. Which brings us to act three. Act three. What I didn't do in my summer vacation. You know, sometimes somebody ends up in an amusement park. It really has no business there at all. It was not built to thrill at the thrill that the amusement park offers. As a teenager, Jonathan Goldstein spent a summer working at an amusement park. One that was situated right on the beach in Wadwood, New Jersey. It is your typical amusement park on the beach. There's a boardwalk. Three wooden piers with roller coasters and a ferris wheel. And lots of dropped popcorn and hot dog buns for the Seagulls to eat. It's been decades since Jonathan went to work at Wadwood. And he always wanted to go back. And so we sent him along with one of our producers Jonathan and Hevar. A quick note to listeners this story has nothing explicit in it, but it does make reference to the existence of sex as does this warning. The smell of garbage is really bringing it all back in a rush. Maybe I could bring back a bag with some saltwater toffee. After a whole religious rebirth that I won't go into here, the summer of my 16th year found me seriously considering Yashiva, rabbinical school for the fall. My rabbi suggests that I spend the summer at this religious camp just to give me a better idea of what was to come. But my best friend Evan said that summer camp was for suckers and religious camp was even worse. And that if I came with him to Wildwood, he'd personally make sure I had a good time. I'll get you Eld really good, he wrote like a blood oath in my 1986 high school yearbook. That's Eld as in the letter L. And getting Eld seemed important, especially if I was going to be giving my life over to the Torah, a text that placed greater emphasis on getting seed as in circumcised. And so I went to Wildwood. And now I was back. How close did you live to the pier? I mean, as you've seen getting here, my sense of direction isn't my forte. Man, it's like the whole summer I was just like floating around and then I got jarra from aldehyde. The plan was to go down and get jobs. It was what a lot of teenagers in my town did. Evan's older brother had done it years earlier and had arranged a job for Evan, handing out darts to Patsy's eager to pop balloons on the boardwalk. And I was supposed to get a job too. But on our fourth night there, still without work, I sat on the edge of my bed and felt that sense of being a failure. This feeling would eventually become a staple in my life, something I'd grow comfortable with, in bars, gyms, offices, and bedrooms. But just then the feeling was strange and new, and I didn't quite know what to do with it. We lived in a co-ed boarding-house run by a woman with a face like a clenched fist, named Mrs. D. I spent my days hanging out at Evan's balloon stand, where his boss finally became so tired of having me around, that he pulled some strings to get me a job, working as a change boy at an arcade. If you walk down the boardwalk, there was a point where it looked like the fun had come to an end. My arcade was just a few yards past that. Do you remember where? Yeah, I'm thinking. I'm trying to, like, I think, I mean, if anything, maybe that little shack right over there was the arcade, where there's a roller coaster going over it now. It's sort of like the little house that I'll be singer grew up in in any hall. You've still got pizza parlors, games with unwinnable prizes, and the vague threat of violence about to erupt. In other words, Wildwood hadn't changed much. Back then, everything looked like 1986. Now, 1987. Though as it turns out, the arcade I worked at is long gone. Even at the time, all the other arcades were carpeted in air-conditioned, but mine was like an outhouse with all the oldest, skankiest games, all their joysticks having had the joy jerked right out of them years earlier. On the 4th of July, I remember watching the fireworks through a little crack in the wall, right above the Donkey Kong machine. I felt like a young Tony Montana just having come to America, except the only person I wanted to kill was myself. Being a human-change machine is just one of the jobs that seems only to exist on the boardwalk, like the guy who's paid to dance in front of the t-shirt shop to draw customers, or the girl who blows bubbles all day outside a souvenir store. Yes, that's my job. I take money from there. That's nice. Your whole job is just blowing bubbles? Yes, it's just blowing. And signing with laser. Trying to laser in people's eyes? No, of course. The bubble girl tells me she is from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian bubble girl is very young looking, like first time away from home young. And as she explains to me her work responsibilities, she is approached by a man who turns out to be her boss. He plants a big kiss on her cheek as though marking his territory. Is it a good summer? It's alright. This boardwalk is getting bad. And nighttime this boardwalk is bad. People stabbing people and shooting people. You go two blocks off the boardwalk. They're shooting and stabbing the other day. So where's under the boardwalk? What goes on under the boardwalk? Sex and drugs. I park underneath my store and you can see underneath the here. Catch them all the time down under there. They go right down them steps. And underneath the boardwalk. Wow. Sex and the boardwalk. Cool. Me and you. Yeah, you want to do it? Yep, alright. See you later. Oh boy. That was creepy. My old boss, Mike, was creepy too. Mike always wore sunglasses under red, skin-tight bathing suit that for some reason I could never quite fathom, always appear to be wet. My friend Evan said that it was unwholesome how Mike's arms were so short. He's like a tea rack, Evan said. The first time Mike paid me, he had to get all crooked to get his wallet out. Most of the time I was in the arcade all by myself and hardly anyone ever came in. Just little kids who sat on the ancient ski-ball machines asking for free games. Those old ski-ball machines haven't really changed. Now my technique used to be I kind of do a sort of bank shot. Like there was this kind of sweet spot that I would hit on the right bank. That was really close, wasn't it? You got the lowest amount of points you can get. I feel like my son that I'm taking out. You got the lowest one, dad. That little beer cozy is going to be mine. No longer all my hand have to be so frigid when I'm drinking a Budweiser. Mike was an alcoholic and he left me to open and close the place most of the time. of the time. Sometimes he would stagger in in the middle of the afternoon and lay down on the lopsided pool table. Once comfortably spread out he'd ask me to cover him from head to toe with the stuffed animals for ski ball so he could sleep without getting caught by the old woman who ran the pier. Every time I put Mike to bed I became more and more convinced that Yashiva was the place for me. When he wasn't goofing off drunk Mike was furthering Evan's work of trying to get me held. He would invite Nancy the 19-year-old redhead who ran the water-squirt game next door over so he could tell her about how she should "Divergentize me." Nancy was a Jersey girl who wore low-backed shirts that showed off a large complicated dragon tattoo. She told me it was a Chinese wind god and that an old biker boyfriend had given it to her. It started at her neck and slithered all the way down into her pants to blow across the tundra. In the afternoon when business was slow Nancy would come by and tell me about how Mike had just been over pleading on my behalf and how she tried to explain to him that we was just friends, right? Oh yeah I'd say, swallowing back the hard lump of foul-tasting virgin tears can jeeling in my throat the best. Listen to this music. You know you feel like you're going to round like the corner and you're going to see like Joe Pesci beating someone to death with a baseball bat? It's all I could think about. It's a song called "Wildwood Days." Do you hear it? "Wildwood Days and Wildwood Night." My producer Jonathan and I walked down the boardwalk where we discover what's got to be the very worst job in "Wildwood." Most of the stuff I do is just off the top of my head. It's whatever I can pick up on the spot. This is Dutz bonus junior. The sounds you hear are of people shooting at him with guns. Dutz bonus junior is a human paintball target. He shuffles back and forth in eggs on the crowd, warping splattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. You know I'll put it as blunt as I can because this is how it is on my tax forms too. I'm an entertainer. Not the dancer kind but basically I get suited up in a hockey gear and I get shot at all night. And that doesn't, it doesn't start to get to you a little bit. Do you dream about it? I love it. It's entertaining to me because this is one of the jobs that I could be as creative as I want to be. It's just like web page design. When you go in, you can do whatever you want. Before Dutz, human paintball targets simply shuffled from side to side holding a shield. Then one day Dutz dropped his shield and began to moonwalk. Soldier Boy was to follow. He also invented shadow boxing at the paintballs and running towards the shooters. Dutz is protected by a suit that looks like what you'd come up with if you tried to build a Michelin man costume out of moist newspaper and epoxy glue. So people are armed with paintball guns? Yep, that we provide. Because a lot of people try to, you know, they want to bring their room but we don't allow that. It's just not going to happen. So the suit that you wear protects you from, from any pain? Um, we're the most part, yeah. There's some weak spots but, you know, I can't say where the weak spots are because then a lot of people will find out and then, you know, then it becomes a little dangerous, you know. Before agreeing to talk with me, Dutz wanted to finish his break with the woman who works next door at the old timey photo place. As it turns out, she's his wife. We met on this fairy boardwalk. Dutz might spend his day getting fired at in a cage but at least on his time off he has someone to talk to, someone with whom to share the secret weak spots in his armor. Back when I lived there, Wildwood had this reputation for being a big party town. People were supposed to be scoring like nuts on the boardwalk every night and actually they were. The only real action I got that summer though was in the form of a single kiss. I later referred to it as the kiss that ruined my summer. It happened while I was out walking on the boardwalk late one night. I saw a group of older girls maybe in their early 20s coming toward me. One of them, a little ahead of the others, was sort of spinning with her arms stuck out and her long blonde hair all over the place. Just as she got right up close to me, she grabbed the back of my neck and put her lips right on mind. I remember as she pulled back, I spastically grabbed onto her wrist. I didn't want her to leave. Her friends had to pry my fingers off one at a time as she stood there smiling at me, all stoned and airy. That night back at the boarding house in our room, I spent the rest of the evening obsessing. As it might have been the last one I'd receive until I got married, that kiss pretty much felt like my swinging bachelorhood. In Yashiva, I'd be the mysterious one with a past. For the rest of the summer, I couldn't pass a woman on the boardwalk without thinking that we should somehow be meeting in a kiss. That's how life should really be. It turned walking along the boardwalk into a relentless drizzle of small but horrible disappointments. I didn't know it then, but that summer would prove the best one I'd have as a teenager. Even though I was worked like an indentured servant giving every penny of my earnings to Mrs. D, even though I made no friends and even though I only made it to the beach but once, where I sat on a mildly boarding house washcloth, exhausted in pale, that whole summer felt like some big fat vacation, just because I was 16 and away from my parents for the first time. When I got back home, I didn't end up going to Yashiva. I didn't bring home any pen pals money or happy romantic memories. But I did bring back a pair of black pants, covered in small white skulls. They were really baggy and I had to wear them with 10 inch cuffs at the bottom. But when I showed up for my first day back at school, I thought I looked really punk rock. I thought, like anyone who'd never been held, that they were the pants of someone who got held, all summer long. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the podcast Heavy Weight, which returns for a brand new season next month, so you can find an amazing archive of old episodes wherever you get your podcast. A lot of winners today, who would you say to get a guy like me to come over? Was he saying that I'm too cool a customer or was he saying you're too cheap a Jew? Well, the program was produced today by Jane Marie and me with Ben Calhoun, Sarah Kenning, Jonathan Benhebar, Lisa Pog, Robyn Semyon, I was the ship and Nancy Updike. Senior producer for today's show is Julie Snyder, production up on this rerun from Adrian Lilly, Stone Nelson, Ruby Schwartz, and that tyranny. Special thanks today to Bill Childs, David Outhoff, Ken Martin, Jeff Potts, Dave Dickerson, Amy Silverman, Lindsay Young at Mori's Pier and Wildwood, New Jersey. Original scoring an act, one of our show by Dave Hill, featuring Dave Hill in guitar. Thanks today also to this American life partner, Sarah Coppolo. Life partners here at the show support us with monthly or yearly donations with a very straightforward goal to help us continue making the show. If you would like to help us keep doing that, please consider becoming a life partner. You'll listen ad-free, you'll get regular bonus episodes, you'll get this little newsletter that I just started where I recommend stuff to see and hear, and I also do some behind-the-scenes stuff about the show. Including this week, Jeff about the Cole Lindbergh story, that act one of today's show, that was interesting to me. I haven't really talked about much and didn't make it into the story. Anyway, to join to read that, go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thank you for considering this. This American life is delivered to Public Radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Jory Malatia, whose turtle breeding experiments are finally paying off. I dare you guys to can't feel these turtles. You should feel one. They're really soft. I'm out of glass. Back next week, for most stories of this American life. Next week on the podcast of this American life, Janet McNamara is a stand-up comedian. And this weird thing of happening to her, people would come up to her after shows and say, "I'm autistic, and just to let you know, you are too." So she got tested. I am a writer of the test, and the guy he just looked up from his notebook, and he goes, "Well, people with Asperger's generally have above average IQs." So. I'm not smart enough to be mildly autistic. That's thanks to you in the podcast or in a local public radio station.