Piece of the Action

I usually watch streaming concerts on Sunday. I decided that I just didn’t feel like it today. My plan was to listen to Irish Music on WFUV while I write. Then just as I was starting I got a message on FB that Rod Picott was going live and I haven’t seen Rod in ages. So now I’m listening to him while writing. I was going to say, “Good thing he’s not a cute woman so it’s OK for me to not watch,” but then I found myself watching anyway. I want to write so I’ll force myself to. Rod distracted me again but now I mean it. I’m writing.

Yesterday I was good and recorded Gord’s Gold for Folk Music Notebook. Like anything it gets easier with practice. I no longer write them out, I just make a few notes. That’s going to make it much easier when I go to a full hour a week. I’m already planning sets and segues. The show will have less of me speaking but I’ll still spotlight one artist every week. My mission in life is get everyone to know the things I love. I understand everyone won’t love everything I love, but I my taste is good enough that I think people should give it a try. When the show starts you should make it appointment listening the way I used to for Vin Scelsa. I always tell musicians to not be shy about promoting themselves. I’m taking my own advice. I just have to be careful to not overdo it.

I watched Class Action Park last night. If you ever went to Action Park you should see it. The documentary emphasized it as a place for teens and kids, but I was 21 when it opened and probably didn’t go until they started advertising on TV when I was 23. Calling Action Park, a water park is like calling Mt. Everest a hill. It’s was built on a ski resort and the rides were built going down the mountain. They were huge. There was also an alpine slide, essentially a street luge on a concrete shoot and motor areas with go carts and boats. The reason the film is called Class Action Park because as you could tell by looking it was not built with safety in mind. It wasn’t build using much mind at all. It was like something little kids would put together if they had the access to materials of Phineas and Ferb with none of their intelligence. There was one slide that was a closed tube with a full loop in it. That was never open when I was at the park. Watching the film, I learned that the problem was that the later riders were getting cuts on their bodies from the teeth of the early riders that  knocked out.

I didn’t do the things I could easily see were dangerous and I would have done less if I knew how dangerous everything was, but I loved it. It was without doubt my favorite amusement park. It’s one thing to race down the hill in roller coaster than to go down just as steep a hill where you feel your bare skin moving against the water slide walls. Nothing gave me the adrenaline kick as those water slides. I could tell things were somewhat dangerous if you didn’t follow directions. I asked about it and one of the kids working there, the employees were almost all teens, said that the most dangerous ride was the wave pool. You know it’s bad when more than one person died in it. It was something I never felt dangerous as I’m a strong swimmer and grew up playing in the breakers at the beach. The problem is that people that couldn’t swim would go into this crowded pool with waves. When someone went under it was difficult if not impossible for the lifeguard to see.

The only thing I ever got hurt on was the alpine slide. Have you ever watched luge or bobsled on TV and seen the sliders wipe out? That could happen on the alpine slide except we weren’t wearing any protective equipment and we landed on rough concrete unless you were really unlucky and were thrown from the track totally. One person died because his head hit a rock. Nobody warns you that anything like that could happen. You therefore assume that was made with safety in mind. But as I said, not at all. I wasn’t hurt too bad; I had the skin ripped and burnt off one elbow. The movie said that when this happened they took you to a shack and sprayed you down with an antiseptic that burned like hell but prevented infection. Not me. Nobody even noticed I wiped out. I went to the bathroom and washed if off with soap and water. When I got hope I put on bacitracin and discovered liquid skin. I could see that band-aids were not going to be big enough., not even the big pads. I now realize I should have wrapped my arm with gauze then taped it. It didn’t get infected. One thing I learned early on was the importance of cleaning a wound with good old soap and water. Everything else is icing on the cake.

The last time I went must have been in 95 or 96 based on who I went with. The last season was 96 so I was there from early on until near the end. By then I was almost 40 and my friend and I were the only people over 25 there without kids. I never cared about things like that; Action Park was fun, so I wasn’t going to deny myself enjoying it. Could the place have been as much fun if it were safe? I’m not sure, I would like to think so. If they had ride engineers design the rides and gave people helmets, elbow and knee pads when needed, and had better trained lifeguards I think it could have been done. I wouldn’t do the alpine slide now, but the water slides and speedboats I’d be fine with. I never came close to hurting myself on them and I never saw anyone get hurt. I never did things that involved dropping 20 feet into the water. People would dislocate their shoulders on that. I always followed the safety directions to a tee. Now I know that they didn’t really put much thought into those directions. The people that worked there would test the rides out and when they got hurt they would add a direction, “don’t do that.” “Go down feet first with your hands crossed over your chest. If you did those things, could keep your cool, and could swim well, the water rides were safe enough. I’m sure they were safer than surfing or skiing.

From the film I could see that the owner could be charming and fun but was also callous. He had a lot in common with Donald Trump. He didn’t pay his bills and fought things by being as difficult as possible. He was a schmuck that has got people killed. No matter how much fun I had it wasn’t worth that.