A Carnival Revenge

A Carnival Revenge

By 1981 I had barked my way up to being a co-supervisor of the games department at the Salem Virginia entertainment institution, Lakeside Amusement Park. I had started as a "Dime Pitch" attendant in 1978, where I spent my days wiping plates slick with a milky clear silicone solution so that no dime could possibly stick. I spent hours in lonely solitude as occasional contestants stepped off the droning Merry-Go-Round to try their luck. Mostly, I gazed into space, blocking out the monotonous music and contemplated my life ahead.

Then my boss saw something in me. I hadn't quit after weeks in the pitch. So, I graduated to a microphone game, "The Weight Game." There, I found my charm and voice. This wasn't an easy transition. I was a naturally shy person and was mostly afraid to speak up. I did perform in plays in high school, but I generally delivered my lines with a special and unique "Fear model of delivery." With my boss constantly zipping past me and motioning with his hand for me to get to talking on the microphone to draw in customers, I soon became amazingly good at guessing weights and ages, plus my school-boy good looks brought in all the toothless large old women. At "The Weight Game," I was transformed from shy scared kid to cocky huckster.

Fresh off my incredible ability to mash weights (rapid fire guessing...more money in the pot), I was moved to the marquee game, "The Birthday Game." At the Birthday Game, my partners and I broke a few all-time "Daily Take" records. After 1 1/2 seasons of running that and boosting my hourly wage from $1.80 per hour to $2.25 an hour, I was promoted to "Stock Man." Providing prize supplies to each game afforded me an opportunity to learn the inside of the carnival game business. I became familiar with such inside terms as "Slum"-cheap prizes like spider rings and "plush"- a stuffed animal. I was responsible for ordering prizes from companies and re-supplying the actual game Kiosks. I became a monster with a two-wheel dolly. With such an increase in responsibility, my hourly wage went up to $2.50.

The next season, I was promoted to co-supervisor of the entire games department and gradually increased my pay to $3.25 an hour. Since one of the two of us had to be on duty at all times and both had to be there on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; I racked up a lot of hours...sometimes as many as 80. I was dedicated and devoted to my job, as well as proud of my job effort and team results. During my stint as the games boss, I had occassion to hob-nob with celebrity: Loretta Lynn, Bobby Bare, Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, Hank Jr, boxer Ernie Shaver, Boss Hog, and Darth Vader were all stars that I met or introduced. These were the days...I was riding high and living the good life. As it would turn out, my hourly wage- the highest non-salaried wage offered- made me expendable by the increasingly financially stressed company.

Each morning when on duty, I would check out $1000 of seed money ($2000 on Weekends) for the games from the accounting office. Each evening, the seed money had to be separated out and accounted for before returning the day's take back to the office. My co-supervisor and I performed the ritual money counting each day in a messy backroom behind the front games gallery. Generally, the only people allowed access to that room were the two supervisors, the stockman, and the relief workers.

One evening, as I recall, the daily take was way off. Based on projections crunched by the park manager, about $1000 was missing. He had been doing his job long enough to know when the numbers looked out of whack, so he started an investigation. A week or so later, the investigation culminated with a lie detector test being offered to all who had access to the backroom cash.

I was really hurt that my boss wanted to give me a lie-dector test, and I was really afraid of it. I'm a naturally nervous person. Growing up with Catholic- sized guilt about everything, I naturally assumed that I had done something wrong. I remembered all the petty stuff I had done over the past five seasons...snatching a quarter out of my money pouch to buy a soda and scarfing a "dead" (dead=damaged in some way) plush toy to give to a cute under-aged girl. So when I went into the test, I decided to answer all questions truthfully.
"Have you ever taken anything from the amusement park?"
"Yes."
Of course then I explained what I had taken...quarters and plush...oh yeah and a really cool Lakeside shot glass. My partner did the same. An hour or so later, we were both called into the boss' office together and given the opportunity to resign from our jobs. Ultimately, I believed that we were really released to relieve the salary commitment that the park was in to us for. Now they could cut costs by hiring the next supervisor for much less money.

As for the missing $1000, I never learned for sure who took it, but I had my real suspicions. The boss' son was 16 years old at the time and worked as a relief worker which gave him access to the backroom. He was mean, spoiled, and suffered from an increasing drug habit. His father was blind to his problems and thought he walked on water. When the lie detector test came around, the boy bragged to us that he passed with flying colors. We were all shocked because we knew that he was at least as corrupt as the rest of us. He told us he passed the test by going into the room with a cool attitude and AC/DC blasting through imaginary headphones inside his head. "Back in Black. Hit the sack...” screamed inside his head as he answered the questions of the detector man.
"Have you ever taken anything from the amusement park?"
"No...(HIT THE SACK)"

To this day, I still suspect that kid took the money. Losing my job devastated me, but hey, carnivals are carnivals. It's not a big deal. I just moved on to the next level, baby.

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The Roanoke Times printed an epitaph for Lakeside on Oct. 22, 1986, four years after I was asked to resign:

"Just as children won't part with toys they've outgrown, the Roanoke Valley didn't want to lose Lakeside. . . An amusement park is one of the few places where children and adults can relate on the same level. Kids are free to act like kids, and so are adults. Without Lakeside, there will be a long drive to put a child on a merry-go-round for the first time. . . The valley now has one less place where people of any age can be young."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_Amusement_Park_(Salem,_Virginia)