My first trip to New York City was in 1964. My father had business with NY Tel, the parent company of New England Tel. He drove our Ford Station Wagon down from Boston. My mother sat in the front seat. My older brother and I were in the back. New York was a city that we knew from movies and TV. Nothing could have prepared my brother and me for that view from the Bronx.
Skyscrapers, bridges, and people.
My mother took us sightseeing during the day. The Empire State Building, the Hudson River, and Battery Park. We saw the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry. My father bought tickets to the Rockettes at Radio City and we ate at Tad’s Steak House in Times Square.
I should have been a happy camper, however New York’s attractions were a detour from my true destination.
Palisades Amusement Park across the river in New Jersey. Every one of my comic books had tickets for rides. I cut them out before my father tore the comic books to pieces. He hated them as low-brow entertainment. he never found the tickets and my pockets were bulging with the flimsy pieces of paper. They were valuable only one place and I begged my father to take us there.
“It’s only across the river.” Freddie Cannon had a hit song about the park in 1962. Rock and roll bands appeared nightly and I had heard three advertisements for the park on the radio.
My father refused on the grounds that it was too far away and that might I sat in the hotel staring westward. The park was on 130th Street. A long way from the Manhattan Hotel. I swore that I could see its glow. My brother told me to go to sleep. He was a light sleeper.
The next morning my father drove north, telling me that the following weekend we would go to Paragon park at Nantasket Beach. It had a great wooden roller coaster and fun houses.
“It’s just as good as Palisades Park.”
“How would you know?” No one had ever written a song about Paragon Park.
“Because I wanted to go there as a kid too. The closest I got was the same as you.”
“So why didn’t we go today?” Like any young boy I couldn’t picture my father as a boy my age.
“Because there wasn’t the time.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t a good answer, but I had a feeling that it was the same thing he had heard from his father.
“Maybe we’ll go to Palisades Park next time.”
Only there wasn’t a next time.
Palisades Park closed in 1971. The owner sold the land to developers, who promised one more summer atop the cliffs. I was a hippie then more into the Jefferson Airplane than golden oldies such as PALISADES PARK. Like my old teddy bear Palisades Park disappeared from the now that was from the now that will be.
There was a lot of that going around those days.