Bridge Views: The Park Closes at Dusk

Seems April skies are in her eyes,
A living doll that talks smiling as she walks.

May she stay somehow sweet as she is now. 
Little Miss America take a bow.

-Gladys Shelley

I have such fond memories of Palisades Amusement Park—Casper’s Ghostland, the Caterpillar ride, the Archie Hot Rod ride, the French fries with vinegar, the games-of-chance, but there are two moments that stand out most. 

The first is Bozo the Clown bending down as I sat in my stroller, his soft white-gloved hand tickling my chin. I think I nearly lost consciousness when he told me with his trademark zany laugh that he loved my red hair. 

The second is hugging the application to the “Little Miss America Pageant” to my heart when I was five. 

For years, I waited patiently to make the five-year-old age requirement so that I could showcase my talent to the world. I had no idea what that talent was. I couldn’t tap dance; I couldn’t sing, and my attempts at cartwheeling resulted in the toe-heel destruction of many porcelain knick-knacks my mother had precisely scattered around the living room. 

But I knew that in order to “win it” I had to “have it,” and I was trying really hard to “find it.” (Surely if I ever found it, I’ve since lost it.)

Unfortunately, my father and I did not see eye-to-eye on my participation in the “Little Miss America Pageant.” The idea of my parading around a stage being judged was not something he condoned. Of course it didn’t help that my life goal at the time was to become a “go-go dancer,” and I made sure I told anyone who would listen. 

I freely and routinely paraded around the house in my blue leotard and white patent leather “go-go” boots dancing to “Chika-a-Boom (dontcha just love it!)” 

What can I say? I was a product of my times. “Laugh-In” was in, man; Goldie Hawn made dancing in a bikini with body graffiti and go-go boots cool. And Dean Martin’s “Golddiggers” turned everyone’s living room into a party.

I pride myself on having a pretty good memory, but I was so traumatized by the possibility of not being allowed to enter the pageant that I have no memory of the park’s closing.  

Images recorded in my brain literally jump from clutching the application in my hands in April 1971 to the park being swallowed  by flames. 

I remember watching the park burn, convinced that my father had a hand in it to prevent me from competing in the pageant. the family did nothing to dispel this rumor; in fact, they encouraged it with not-so-subtle jabs such as, “The Park would still be standing if only you didn’t want to be ‘Little Miss America.’” 

I remember that the fire started just as school was getting out. My mother drove me, my brother and our friends to watch it from the top of Route 5, at the curve where the road begins to wind its way down to Edgewater. 

There I stood, one mourner among many, watching the flames lick to ash all that was once familiar and sacred. I remember the resounding hiss and crackle of those icons of pleasure echoing as they collapsed; indelibly burning themselves onto the pyre of memory. 

There we stood in our Catholic School uniforms unable to move as we watched our park fall and crumble before our eyes. 

Standing there, shivering as night began to fall upon the cliffs of the Palisades. The Park did indeed close at dusk that day, and this almost-Little Miss America watched it take its final bow.