Break Man to Watchman
by Jay Ducharme
copyright 2016

In 1986, I returned from my short tenure in Mississippi with a Master's degree.  The first thing I did was return to Mountain Park to see my boss Roger Fortin and get a summer job.  Roger was happy to see me back, though he couldn't understand why someone with a Master's degree would want to work at an amusement park.  Over the nearly two seasons that I was down south, he had found people to replace my duties on the merry-go-round and other rides I usually ran.  So instead he hired me as a break man, relieving the other ride operators.  I had no problem with that assignment, and enjoyed the variety of being able to walk through the whole park and run different rides.

Roger also began to take a little more time off, which was unusual for him.  He occasionally would ask me to take over his job of checking in the ride operators at the start of the day and assigning rides to them.  I didn't enjoy that nearly as much as running the rides, but it gave me a sense of worth standing there at the front of the park office, checking off the ride operators' names and telling them which ride to run.  Some of them were long-time employees and always had the same ride (like my dad).  Others were new and I would try to cycle them through different rides (usually starting in Kiddieland) so that they could get familiar with as many as possible.  Sometimes I'd have to train them on the rides, which I enjoyed.  The rest of the time I would walk through the park giving breaks.  By the time I finished giving a ten minute break to the last ride operator (I say "ten" minutes, but sometimes they would disappear for a half-hour), it was time to begin the whole cycle over again.  Each operator was supposed to get a ten minute break every two hours.  Someone taking longer than ten minutes would set back my schedule.  Then I would give a 30 minute dinner break starting at about 4:00.  Luckily I wasn't the only one for that; Roger's crew (Al Monroe in my first few years, then Bert and Bill Smith and Daniel Pomales) would usually help out.

When the season ended in 1986, I didn't have a full-time job.  Roger said he needed a night watchman and wondered if I'd be interested.  Basically, all I needed to do was walk the midway once every hour and punch a time clock, from 11 at night to 7 in the morning.  I agreed to it.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into.  I had never before worked a "graveyard shift."  To supplement my small wage, I took a job as a school crossing guard in Easthampton.  I would have to be at the White Brook Middle School at 8 am and at 2:30 pm.  That allowed me the luxury of about four hours sleep a day.

George Clifford ran the kiddie merry-go-round for many years.  He was also the second shift watchman in the off-season, leaving as I would be arriving.  He took me around on my first day and showed me what to do.  George was extremely large and couldn't walk very well, so he would drive around the midway in his huge station wagon.  His daughter would then get out of the car and punch the clock for him.

The clock was a heavy-duty steel mechanism about six inches in diameter and two inches thick, with a small glass-covered face.  It had a leather cover and shoulder strap to make it easy to carry.   At the bottom was a small crank and an L-shaped slot into which fit the various station keys.  Each key had a number in bas reilief.  Inside the clock was a paper disk demarcated with 24 hours.  When a key was inserted and the crank turned, the key's number was embossed into the paper at that particular time.  Roger had a key to open the clock and would change the disks to make sure the watchmen were making their rounds.

Our base was the workshop underneath the merry-go-round.  Since the merry-go-round was constructed on a slope, the workshop and its concrete floor went back only about 20 feet and ended at a wooden wall.  There was a small doorway there that opened up into a storage area directly below the ride.  The huge concrete footers were visible and dirt steeply sloped upwards towards the floor of the merry-go-round.  The workshop stretched the width of the building.  The wall facing the dirt slope was lined with shelves holding all sorts of replacement parts for the rides: bolts, cams, seat belts, etc....  There were also machining tools including a table saw and a drill press, plus a vat of a highly caustic cleaning chemical.  After the park had closed for good, a makeshift wooden wall with a door was constructed to split off the north end of the workshop.  The wall was built so that there wasn't as much room that needed to be heated in the winter.  The heat was provided by a large old gas heater mounted to the ceiling next to the entrance door.

At the back of the workshop's south side (near the door that led underneath the ride) was a large old beaten-up wooden roll-top desk and an old beaten-up swivel chair.  That was our station.  Above the outside door was mounted a Radio Shack intercom system.  It was set up like a baby monitor; the microphone was on the top of the merry-go-round building, and the slightest noise on the midway was amplified into the workshop.  Mostly it emitted a drone of white noise coming from the constant stream of cars on the nearby Interstate 91.  There was a button to turn the speaker into a microphone, so if needed a message could be sent out onto the midway.   Also on the desk was a small old black-and-white television set.  At least, I thought, I would be able to watch David Letterman; normally I'd be too tired to stay up that late.  Against the wall beside the desk hung the punch clock and next to it was one of the clock keys.  It was hooked by a chain to a small metal tray with a hinged cover.

So I slipped the key into the clock and turned the crank with a satisfying THWACK.  George took me around the midway to show me the other stations, starting at the south end.  I had a thick ring of keys and would have to figure out what went where.  I also thankfully had a flashlight.  The midway looked eerie and threatening in the dark, not the happy place of my childhood.  There were just a few lights left on.  The south end was lit by the small flourescent shield lights encircling the rounding boards of the kiddie auto car ride, casting long shadows across the midway.  Our first stop was the Clambake Pavilion.  The lights from George's station wagon were comforting.  We stopped at the big garage door next to the food counter.  I placed the key in the lock and turned it.  The handle spun with a loud squeak.  I raised the door and it rumbled, the noise echoing violently throughout the huge empty pavilion.  George told me where the circuit breaker was.  I walked across the wood floor, my footsteps resonating in the dark expanse.  I flipped one of the switches and one of the arches lit up.  I walked all the way down to the far south end of the pavilion and found the first station to the left of the stage.  I took the key out and punched the clock.  Then I walked all the way back to the circuit breaker and switched it off, exited the pavilion then closed and locked the garage door.

The next station was close by.  On the north end of the Clambake Pavilion beside the Cutie Caddie was a door that led into the pizza stand.  That area was known at The Towers.  I had never been in there before.  I found the key and unlocked the door.  It was pitch black inside, and I couldn't find the light switch.  So I searched around with my flashlight.  There were several large stainless steel tables and countertops for the preparation of food, along with two large walk-in freezers.  A doorway led into the main grill section overlooking the Pavilion.  That's where the station was.  I inserted the key, cranked the clock and exited.

George briefly drove back down through Kiddieland and stopped near the boats.  Station number three was in an alleyway between the Chocolate stand and the Pirate's Den, hidden behind the geometric flourescent light fixtures.  Next I walked over to the sheltered corridor that led to the park office.  That was station number four.  We then headed down the north end of the midway, which was illuminated by the triptych of tall flourescent lights at the center of the Tilt-a-Whirl.  The next station was in a narrow alleyway between the Baseball Game and the big arcade.  The final station was located between the Color Game at the end of the midway and the entrance to the Mountain Flyer.  After that, George and his daughter bid me farewell.  I was on my own until 7:00 in the morning. 

I had difficulty forcing myself to stay awake through the long night.  The routine of walking out into the brisk night air every hour helped.  Plus, I was tense from listening to all the various noises picked up by the speaker, not knowing if the sounds were footsteps on the midway, animals or simply tree branches bending in the wind.

Once in a great while, Roger would ask me to come in on weekends during park operating hours to help run rides, if other workers didn't show up.  That meant I was extra tired during my watchman shift.  But the extra money was a good incentive.  The watchman job was sort of sad for me, though, because I really wanted to be running rides.  I'd usually get to the park just as everything was winding down.  I'd say 'hi' to my old co-workers as they closed up for the night.  Then I'd head down under the merry-go-round.  In the morning, I'd usually see Walter Marek, the games supervisor, coming in as I left, as well as Roger.  One day Roger found me collapsed over the desk, sound asleep.  My fragmented sleep schedule was catching up with me.

All in all, the job wasn't very hazardous.  My fears were unfounded, but were hard to shake.  I would continually change the patterns of my rounds, worried that someone might be watching the watchman.  One night I was walking south on the midway, past the Bowler Roller game, and saw a large stick on the ground.  I pulled my foot back, ready to kick it out of the way, when the stick began slithering away into the night.  It was actually a large rattlesnake, of which the mountain range had many.  That was about as dangerous as it got.

One good thing about the watchman job was that it was year-round whereas being a ride operator was seasonal.  Winter brought its own challenges.  One of my other duties was to make sure that paths were shoveled to all the clock stations.  The years I was watchman saw some record snowfalls.  One brought nearly three feet.  For that one, I was going out repeatedly during the night to shovel three or four inches worth.  The snow brightened up the midway a bit.  But it was also  more eerie because the rides were dismantled for the winter, leaving the remaining ride structures looking like skeletal sentinels.

Roger's assistants, the Smith brothers, would come in during the day and use an ancient truck with a plow blade to clear the midway so that they could continue their off-season maintenance routines.  The ride platforms, cars and statues from the midway were placed in various buildings, some in the Pavilion, some in the merry-go-round, some in the Dodgem building.  The Color Game was converted into a paint shop for the winter, where rides were given a facelift.

I really wanted to return to running rides, but I also liked having a steady job.  I was torn as to what to do.  But in 1987, the decision would be made for me.  Roger and MaryAnn Goodwin owned the concession next to the merry-go-round that sold cotton candy, candy apples and chocolate-covered frozen bananas.  They lived in an RV that was parked behind the Clambake Pavilion during the park season.  In the off-season, they would live in Florida.  On the final day of the 1987 season, I arrived at the park at about 10:30 to start my shift.  Roger Goodwin came hurrying over to me to tell me that the park was closed.  I told him that I knew that, the season was over.  "No!" he insisted.  "Jay CLOSED the park!  He's not going to re-open!"  I thought he was playing a bad joke on me.  I could never have imagined Mountain Park closing for good.  Just as the sun rose in the morning, the park would open for another season.  It seemed as inevitable as that.

But Goodwin was right.  The next day I saw Roger Fortin, who told me it was true.  He was vague as to the exact reasons, basically saying that insurance costs were rising.  It wouldn't be until years later that I discovered the real reason, that Roger had announced his retirement to Jay, and Jay couldn't imagine running the park without Roger.

My job continued unabated, however.  Since the park wasn't going to re-open, the property and all its assets still needed protection.  Jay Collins had thought he would be able to sell the park to someone else fairly quickly.  But the state was in a recession and no one seemed interested.

Roger hired John Sabot, a ride operator known to most of us at the park as Lucky, to work the graveyard shift, putting me on second shift from 3:00 to 11:00.  George Clifford switched to first shift.  Second shift was like a new lease on life.  I finally got back to a normal sleep schedule.  I gave up the Crossing Guard job and had the whole day to do whatever I wanted, which during that time meant I was working on music.  Then I would go to the park just as I was starting to wind down, walk the midway when there was still some light on it and leave just as I was getting tired.  Occasionally, I would take a friend of mine who worked at the park, Eddie, out to Bickford's in West Springfield after my shift ended.  We would get their famous Big Apple Pancakes and talk about "old times" at the park, and wonder if it would ever re-open.

By 1988, it was obvious that the park wasn't going to find a buyer.  So Jay began placing ads for everything in the park.  It was like a giant clearance sale.  Daniel Pomales was the only helper who Roger kept on.  He and I were assigned to dismantle rides as people bought them.  Within a few months, all the rides had been sold and most of the midway was bare except for some fenced-off areas where the rides once stood.  Roger and Daniel erected chainlink fencing to block off the north and south ends of the midway.  The only way in was by the merry-go-round building, where the watchmen were stationed.

One Sunday, a man came to the park.  I heard him calling out.  I met him outside the merry-go-round.  He said he was the Orange Trader and that he had paid Jay $5000.  Jay told him he could take whatever was left in the park that wasn't nailed down.  He talked as if I should have been expecting him.  I should have immediately called Roger.  But instead I naively trusted him and ushered in his tractor trailer.  Like the Grinch in Whoville, he took everything -- every piece of artwork Dominic Spadola had done, every piece of merchandise, every nut and bolt.  He cleaned us out and headed back to Orange.  The next day I saw Jay and told him what happened.  "That bastard!" Jay exclaimed.  "He didn't pay me one red cent!"  But Jay didn't want to prosecute the guy.  He was his usual philosophical self: "At least now I don't have to worry about getting rid of all that stuff."

The Orange Trader still had most of the merchandise in his store room decades after the park had closed.  He was notoriously obnoxious and beligerent, asking hundreds of dollars for the things he stole.  He eventually went out of business, and his entire stock was sent to the Freight House in Erving.  I have no idea how much of the Mountain Park memorabilia managed to survive.  I wish that at least it had gone to people who actually cared about the park.  That incident remained my biggest regret from my years there.

One day I saw a young couple out walking around the midway.  They didn't seem particularly threatening, just another of the many people trying to relive their memories of the park.  They introduced themselves to me as Betty and Steve Wilda.  They had romanced each other at the park and were sad it had closed so suddenly.  Betty was also a videographer.  Steve was an artist.  Both of them wanted to make a documentary about the park.  Over the next several years, we talked at length about that project (which had been a desire of mine as well).  They gathered a remarkable raft of historical information about the park, dating back to its formation as a picnic grove in the 1800s.  They researched the archives of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company and discovered correspondence between PTC and the park when the roller coaster and merry-go-round were being purchased.  They flew to California and interviewed actor Hal Holbrook, who created his famous Mark Twain Tonight production at the park.

And then Steve suddenly became gravely ill and was confined to a hospital.  His immune system was shutting down and the doctors didn't know why.  It took them a long time to figure out that he had developed an allergy to the paints he used.  His recovery took years, during which time their Mountain Park project was put on hold.  In 2001, local public television station WGBY decided to make its own documentary of Mountain Park and came to me for help.  I referred them to the Wildas, who had already done most of the work.  I was hoping that the station would hire them on to finally finish their video.  Instead, the station took their work and gave them a small byline during the end credits.  I felt really bad for Betty and Steve.  Their work finally received an audience, but certainly not in the way they expected.  (I also had my own issues with the historical inaccuracies of the piece, facts changed to suit the station's motives.)  One bright spot is that Steve did finally fully recover and continued as an artist, just in different media.

Jay Collins would come up to the park fairly regularly during after the park closed, along with his mother.  We would spend hours talking about all sorts of things.  His mother was sweet, and was always trying to give me spare men's clothing that she had at her house.  Jay also rented an apartment on Riverdale Street in West Springfield.  He would stay there during the summer, so he wouldn't have to commute back and forth from his home near Boston.  Eventually, he decided to move out, since he wouldn't be staying in the area for very long any more.  Eddie and I helped him clear out his apartment and pack up.  That day had a sort of finality to it, a sense that Mountain Park was truly gone and with it the man who helmed its golden era.

Every year as a sort of bonus, Jay Collins would take Roger Fortin to the World Series game, wherever it was.  Both of them loved sports, especially baseball.  So the two of them would head off for a week of well-earned relaxation.  Jay kept that tradition going even after the park closed. In 1989, the Series happened to be in San Francisco.   During the game on October 17, a massive earthquake struck the city.  I was watching the events unfold on the little TV under the merry-go-round. My cousin lived in Marin County and worked in the city.  And I knew Roger and Jay were there.  There was so much destruction, I couldn't help but wonder if they were all right.  I had no way to contact any of them.  So I kept glued to the TV for any information that might give me a clue as to whether they survived.

Lucky came in to take over on the graveyard shift while I was watching the news broadcasts.

"Watcha watching?" he bellowed in his usually gruff voice.

"It's a broadcast about the massive earthquake in San Francisco.  Roger and Jay are down there in the middle of it!"

"I don't give a damn about that," he retorted.  "I wanna watch the Law and Harry McGraw!"  And with that, he changed the channel. That was Lucky at his finest.

Both Jay and Roger did finally made it home.  They later told me that when they were watching the game, the entire stadium began shaking and people began running for cover.  Then the shaking stopped.  But no one at that time had any idea how much damage had been done.  As for my cousin, he had just narrowly missed being caught in the collapse of the Bay Bridge.

When it was apparent that the park wasn't going to be sold, Lucky asked Jay if he could strip some of the wire out of the park since it wasn't needed anymore.  Jay gave his okay.  Lucky went to work cutting and stripping every single wire and cable he could find in the park, digging it up from underground and cutting it off poles.  Eventually he found that manually stripping it was too much work.  So he got one of the big trash barrels from the midway, filled it with scrap wood, set it ablaze and threw the wire into it, melting off all the insulation.  He didn't get as high a price for the copper, but it saved him a lot of work.  (Really, though, what else did he have to do for eight hours a night?)

By 1990, George Clifford was laid off.  I was put on first shift and Lucky was put on second.  At that point I was constantly writing and performing music.  So I'd bring my guitar and keyboard up to the park and practice and write for eight hours a day.  During that time I was also working with the band The Dots, and we'd use the workshop as a rehearsal space.  There really wasn't anything left to protect at the park, except for deteriorating buildings.  So I went on the rounds much less frequently.

Roger would still come up to the park every day and walk the grounds.  He also planted a small vegetable garden in a grassy strip in front of the area where the Stardust Ballroom used to stand.  He grew radishes, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, peas and green beans and would spend each summer tending to them.  In late summer of each year he would have a bounty and gladly shared it.

Vandalism increased in frequency as word got around that the park was basically abandoned.  There were just a few incidents early on.  Shortly after we closed, someone -- and I have no idea how it was done -- stole the big Frankenstein stunt from the Dinosaur Den.  It was constructed with iron and had to weigh about 700 pounds.  One day while I was making the rounds, I noticed it had vanished.  There was no indication of how they managed to take it.  It was set back into an alcove in the middle of the bottom level of the ride and had to be maneuvered around scenery panels and through two sets of doors.  We never found out what happened to it.

Once the rides and games were gone and the buildings were boarded up, I would hear noises on the midway every so often and go outside to find a group of kids -- always white kids from well-to-do families -- armed with sledgehammers, bolt cutters and crowbars.  They'd be emerging from a building and look at me defiantly, saying, "You got a problem?"  Eventually they'd leave.  But another group would take their place, often cutting up the fencing rather than entering by the merry-go-round.  Since in the later years no one was on the graveyard shift, that's when the most trouble would happen.  Kids would climb the roller coaster tracks, rip out the iron handrails and hurl them through the roofs of the buildings below.

After Arnold's Park in Iowa bought our roller coaster trains, cars, brakes and chain lift, Jay Collins placed ads trying to give away the structure of the Mountain Flyer.  It was basically a giant erector set that could be disassembled.  Jay had William Cobb, designer of the legendary Riverside Cyclone, come the the park and advise if that was feasible.  Cobb walked the track and said that the coaster was in remarkable shape and could be moved for a relatively low cost.  But no one came forward with a solid plan to take it.  So in 1990, knowing that the structure was becoming a serious liability, Jay contracted with Allard Lumber to demolish the coaster.  Roger, sadly and ironically, helped to take apart the ride he spent so many years maintaining.

It took Allard Lumber over two weeks.  The ride was stubborn.  They used chainsaws, bulldozers and backhoes, but the structure somehow kept standing.  They started at the turnaround and worked their way toward the lift hill, careful not to damage any of the buildings.  Lucky and I stood on the roofs of the midway buildings and watched.  It was a really depressing sight.  After two weeks, all that remained was a thin strip of dirt about 30 feet wide running the length of the park behind the buildings.  All of the wood was bulldozed into a pile where the turnaround used to stand.

Another diversion during my job was hosting a songwriting workshop.  I had been a member of various songwriting groups in the Valley, all of which eventually dissolved.  So some of the members and I continued meeting at the park.  One of the members was Davis Johnson, and after one of the gatherings he asked me if I'd like to go to a special "World's Biggest" disc golf tournament with him.  I didn't have a clue what he meant.  It turned out that Davis was an avid Frisbee player and actually held a world record in the '70s.  He was talking about golf played with Frisbees.  I was intrigued and agreed to go.  It was held at the Wachusett Ski Area.  I had a lot of fun, even though I sucked at the game.  So I decided to construct an 18-hole course at Mountain Park.  In those days, disc golf wasn't so rigidly regulated and many courses used improvised targets instead of the now-standard baskets.  There were plenty of steel posts lying around the park, so I used those and spray-painted their tops bright orange.  I concocted a layout that started at the merry-go-round and headed into the picnic grove, up onto the ballfield and then over to the mini-golf course.  That comprised the front nine.  The back nine snaked through the actual park midway toward the south end, then doubled back through the parking lot to the merry-go-round.

Davis liked it and made some suggestions to improve it.  One big problem was that the pavement tore up our discs.  So I shifted the back nine to where the roller coaster used to be and tried to keep all of the targets in grassy areas.  That made it a lot more enjoyable.  Eventually, Davis asked some of his friends to come play the course, and we had a mini-tournament using the park's old miniature golf scorecards.  Everybody had a fun time, and that cemented my love of disc golf.

In 1990, local contractor Jimmy Curran came to the park to dismantle the merry-go-round.  He had never done anything like that before, but he was a clever and resourceful guy.  He, with help from Roger, numbered all the pieces, marking how they all went together.  And then with his crew and a crane, they took it piece by piece and stored it in trailers.  They had just one mishap, dropping the centerpost.  Luckily, there was no damage done.  In a surprisingly short time, the merry-go-round pavilion was back to its roots as a dance hall, nothing but a giant empty circular space.

One of the final memories I have of that period is not pleasant, unfortunately.  More and more vandalism was occurring, and more and more of my time was spent chasing kids out of the park.  The kids always came with an attitude, as if they owned the place, and I had little patience for that.  It was bad enough watching my childhood disintegrate before my eyes, but I also had to contend with kids who were hastening that process.  And I think that's what confounded me the most.  They weren't coming to the park to steal anything.  They weren't desperate for money.   They simply wanted to destroy things.

One day I heard some yelling over the intercom, so I went out onto the midway.  There were two girls walking toward me through Kiddieland.  They looked upset and said that some boys were chasing them.  I looked down the midway toward the south end.  About a half-dozen boys were standing outside the fence.  So I yelled to them, giving them my usual line about this being private property and to get out.  They all climbed the fence, swearing at me.  So I turned and headed back for the workshop, planning to call the Holyoke police.  I told the girls to head in that direction.  I felt something hard slam into my right arm.  One of the kids had thrown a rock.  I turned and again told them to get out.  I was seething, yet powerless.  I turned and continued walking.

And then I felt the strangest sensation.  It was like a massive electric shock.  My entire body went rigid, and I collapsed down onto the pavement like a block of stone.  One of the kids had thrown a large chunk of cinderblock and hit me at the base of my skull.  I could hear their feet running, fading away.  I hoarsely screamed out for help, hoping the girls were still around.  I couldn't move, but heard the girls' footsteps returning.  "Are you all right," one of them asked.

"I need an ambulance.  Go to the workshop.  You have to call an ambulance."  They didn't know where the workshop was.  In the era before ubiquitous mobile phones, the only option was the desk phone in the workshop.  My whole body was tingling, numb as a whacked elbow.  "Help me up," I said, hoping they could drag me back there.

They struggled to pick me up by my arms.  Gradually, my senses started to return and I was able to shakily stand.  One of the girls said I was bleeding.   We made it back to the workshop and I collapsed in the old chair.  I called the Holyoke police.  They said they'd send someone right over and asked if I needed an ambulance.  I told them yes.

I asked the girls to stay until the police arrived and they agreed.  I called Roger to let him know what had happened.  It took the police about 20 minutes to get to the park.  The ambulance arrived about ten minutes after that.  The police took my report, but said there was nothing they could do because the boys had left and the girls didn't know who they were.

The two EMTs from the ambulance struggled with the stretcher for a few minutes and then told me, "We can't figure out how to get the stretcher out.  Can you just walk into the ambulance on your own?"  I told them I could.  They steadied me as I climbed in.  When we arrived at Holyoke Hospital, they escorted me into the waiting room.  I sat there for a few hours and was finally called into the examination room.  I told the nurse what had happened.  She looked at the back of my head and said, "It's just a small cut."  She put a bandaid on it and told me I could go back to work.

A few days later, Jay Collins came up to the park.  When I told him what had happened, he was shocked at how I was treated.  "They didn't even take an X-ray?"  He told me to go back to Holyoke Hospital and get a CAT scan; the park would pay for it.  I did, and afterwards was told that the CAT scan showed everything was normal.  I didn't have the greatest confidence in Holyoke Hospital at that point.  But, I guess they were right since I'm writing this decades later.

I remained at the park for only about a year after that incident.  From then on, I wouldn't go out on my rounds if I heard people on the midway.  If I thought there was trouble, I simply called the Holyoke police.  Jay let Lucky go, since there really was nothing to protect anymore.  There was no need for me to be there, either, but Jay kept me on anyway.  He said it helped lower his insurance on the property, and I was grateful to still have a job.  I worked weekends at the new Holyoke Merry-Go-Round beginning in December of 1993.  I would occasionally be hired to run the ride for private parties there as well.  But I didn't start full-time there until June of 1994.  And that's when I bid farewell to Mountain park.

About a month after I left the park, the Clambake Pavilion was set ablaze and was turned to ashes.  Even the tree next to the Flying Jets -- the one every rider thought they were going to hit -- was incinerated.  A few months after that, the entire stretch of buildings at the south end up to the office was burned to the ground.

I would meet Roger up there on occasion.  He still walked the grounds every day.  He no longer tended his garden, which had gone to seed.  Paintballers had taken over the area, and it had become too dangerous.  As the years wore on, the rest of the buildings began to cave in.  The last to go was the first building at Mountain Park -- the merry-go-round pavilion.  Paintballers had broken into it and placed one of the old trash cans in the center.  They would fill it with wood, as Lucky had done, and set it ablaze to keep warm in the winter.  But there was so much grease on the floor of the merry-go-round that the fire engulfed the whole building.  The heat was so intense that the large steel I-beams holding up the clerestory melted into unrecognizable shapes.

Roger couldn't bear to look at the mess the park had become.  So with Jay's permission he hired a bulldozer to plow everything flat -- everything except for the Dolly Pitch stand.  The remaining skeletal structure with its once colorful roof was left standing in memory of their friend James Parsons, known to everyone at the park as Pippo.

The final time I visited the park grounds was in 2011, in late spring.  Roger had become frail, but still wanted to go for a walk.  I had met him there every so often over the years.  Since there was nothing left of the park, he had started walking the long trail around Whiting Reservoir, behind the park.  He would bring a ski pole with him in case he became unsteady.  He always took time to point out the one spot along the trail where you could see the memorial on the side of Mount Tom that Bob Schwobe had erected to honor the victims of a plane that crashed there in 1946.

This time when I drove him up to the park, he had brought two ski poles.  His walk had turned into more of a shuffle.   Eric Suher had bought the park from Jay in 2006.  Three years later, the park re-opened in August as a music venue with a free concert for the public.  And each year since then, Suher had announced an ambitious slate of performances, only a handful of which ever materialized.  In 2011, a total of 25 concerts were advertised.  Roger knew better:  "He'll be lucky if he has ten!"  And he was right.

We strolled through the entrance gate and slowly walked up the hill toward where the back of the Clambake Pavilion used to stand.  The grounds were unrecognizable, with just a few trees and no landmarks except for the blue picnic pavilion, which Suher had relocated to where the office once was.  When we reached that pavilion, I puzzled over its assembly.  The steel structure had been elevated onto concrete Sonotube structures, but the legs hadn't been centered properly on the concrete and were barely held in place by a single bolt.  I couldn't imagine it lasting long (and in fact the entire structure irreparably collapsed after a heavy snowstorm that winter).

Throughout the entire walk, Roger was telling me about the water lines that he had installed throughout the park, and where the sewer lines were located, and all the trouble they had with infrastructure at the park.  The sewer line traveled across the bridge spanning Interstate 91.  One winter, it ruptured sending who-knows-what flowing down onto the traffic below.  So Roger suspended himself from the bridge, hangin over the traffic below in the dead cold, and singlehandedly repaired the sewer line.  When anyone asks how Mountain Park kept running so well for all those years, there's the answer.  It's unusual to find people who have such a dedication to their job, and an obsession to perform that job with such determination and integrity.

It took us three hours to walk a single circuit around the park and back to the entrance.  Several times we stopped to chat with hikers, all of whom knew Roger.  It gave Roger a chance to catch his breath.  Knowing how he spent his life working twelve hours a day and expending seemingly inexaustible amounts of physical exertion, it was difficult to see him struggling to walk across the land where he spent most of his life.  He didn't give up, though.  I offered several times to drive my car over to him, but he insisted on walking all the way back.  His determination never left him.

I still miss Roger.  I can still hear the sound of the intercom under the merry-go-round, and the creak of the huge door to the workshop.  I can still hear Lucky's gravelly voice.  I can smell the mustiness of the room.  I can still visualize walking on the rounds, along a path with three feet of snow to either side.  And I'll always be grateful to Jay Collins for keeping me employed when he really didn't need to.  Those years were the most creative and productive of my life, all because I had eight hours a day of peace and isolation at my favorite retreat, Mountain Park.