Say Hello to my Toad...

...and say farewell to my faithful truck.

Ranger Rudy has served me well for eight years. It runs beautifully, looks great, and aside from a faint odor of cat urine seems almost new. It has less than 50 thousand miles and best of all, it’s paid for. I remember exactly why I bought a pick-up truck back in 2004 – I was annoyed at the delivery charge for bringing mulch to my house each spring. So I decided I’d haul it myself. As it turns out, not a single shovel of mulch even soiled Rudy’s dark emerald green bed. It did haul a lot of plywood in my model railroading days and more recently it pulled Penelope Pop-Up to various campgrounds in the Northeast.

Ranger Rudy was named after a beloved cat who kept me company for fifteen years and Penelope Pop-Up was named after another departed feline friend.

Ranger Rudy was very good at towing. It is rated to tow 500 pounds more than my behemoth motorhome, the vehicle with the powerful V-10 engine which gets all of seven miles to the gallon. But Rudy isn’t so good at being towed. In fact, unless you load it on a trailer it can’t be flat towed at all. (That’s with all four wheels on the ground, the preferred method for pulling something behind a motorhome.)

It was inconvenient not having something smaller to drive around after setting up the motorhome in a park. I worked around it as best I could. In both Savannah and Nashville I stayed at campgrounds where the narrated tour bus comes to pick you up. In the suburbs of Atlanta, I stayed in a campground that was a short walk to the city express bus stop. In Fort Lauderdale I rented a car. But often I felt stuck in the campground. There were nearby attractions I wanted to see but not so badly that I was willing to break camp – stowing everything in a motion-safe place, bring the slides in, the jacks up, disconnecting the hoses and electrical cables, and then driving around in a 35 foot long, 12 and a half foot tall tank.

I needed a dinghy that I could tow behind the motorhome. Some people call a dinghy a “toad” presumably because they are “towed” behind the coach. RVer’s have such a sense of humor.

So Ranger Rudy had to go. Yesterday I traded her for a Suzuki something-or-the-other SUV, a car that ranks on the automotive sexiness scale in a tie for last place with the Ford Pinto. I really wanted a Jeep. Now that’s a sexy car. It conjures up images of macho men in the outback, surfers enroute to the beach, the studly older brother of my childhood best friend.

I weighed the pros and cons. The Jeep is fun. The Jeep is heavy, expensive, lacking in cargo space, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, noisy, rough, gets terrible gas milage and has a nasty tendency to roll over. The Suzuki is practical. Both are four wheel drive vehicles that can be flat towed. Seemed like a dead heat.

In the end it all came down to money. Whatever I decided to get, it would be have to be a used vehicle. Let someone else pay all the initial depreciation. The Suzuki dealer made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He would take Ranger Rudy in exchange for the something-or-other and give me a check for $500. That’s right, he paid me to take it off his hands.

I haven’t named the something-or-other yet. I haven’t even decided if I like it. It’s kind of fun, has a ton of room inside, a sunroof, and lots of other gadgets. Oh yes, it can be towed. It’s a silver blue color that matches the motorhome.  It isn’t very sexy but then again, neither are toads.

The unnamed coach and the unnamed something-or-other, i.e., the toad.

The Tumble Bug

When I was a boy, amusement parks were smaller and simpler than they are today. The rides may not have subjected you to as many G forces but they were thrilling none the less. They were bumpier, louder, and more raw. You could smell the grease in the gears and the ozone created by electrical arcs in the big unshielded motors.

One of my favorites, aside from the wooden coasters, was the Tumble Bug. It was manufactured by Traver Engineering and its successor, R. E. Chambers of Beaver Falls, PA, from 1925 until the mid-1950’s and could be found in amusements parks across the nation, indeed, around the world.

The name varied from park to park – Tumble Bug, Turtle Ride, or just the Bug. It consisted of five or six cars shaped like turtles, some versions even had metallic heads and tails. The shell was hollowed out to allow riders to sit inside on a circular bench and there was a chrome wheel mounted like a horizontal steering wheel in the center to hang on to. These cars rode around an undulating circular monorail. They were held to the track by spokes radiating from a post at the center of the ride.

One of the unique aspects of the Tumble Bug was that it needed a little coaxing to get rolling out of the station. The operator, usually a teenager not much older than the riders, would start the train moving slowly forward until it stalled on the first hill. Then he would throw the motors into reverse to back the train through the station until it stalled on the hill behind it. Again he would throw the motors into forward and this time the train would almost make it over the hill, at least the first turtle would. One more back up and we were ready to rock and roll.

The train of turtles then went around the track, three hills in all, raced through the station and around again. That’s it. Even so, you got tossed around pretty good and if you didn’t hang on, you could find yourself halfway out the opening where you get in and out of the car. They didn’t have safety restraints or legal departments in those days. We kids used to stand in line for 20 minutes to go around a circle for 3 minutes and we loved every second of it. As soon as the ride ended, we would rush down the exit ramp, turn, and get right back on line to ride again.

There are only two operating Tumble Bugs left in the world and they are both in western Pennsylvania – one in Kennywood Park and one in a little park on Conneaut Lake. I made a pilgrimage to the latter to ride the Tumble Bug.

I had been to Conneaut Lake Park once before, in my twenties. I was working at a state psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh at the time and several of the social workers arranged a weekend trip for some of our more “presentable” patients. The park was a magical place reminding me of West View Park, north of Pittsburgh, where my school district held its annual picnic. It was a busy, happy place with lots of excited kids and adults rushing from ride to ride, spilling cotton candy along the way, punctuated with the shrieks from riders on the Blue Streak coaster as it thundered overhead. There were long lines for many of the popular rides, including the Tumble Bug.

When I began planning the itinerary for my three-month RV road trip, there were two places that I absolutely had to go: Key West to see Dominique Lefort and his performing house cats and Conneaut Lake Park to ride the Tumble Bug. I arrived on a Saturday afternoon in June and while I set up the motor home in Camperland (which was once Fantasy Forest) I was thrilled to hear the unmistakable rattle of the anti-rollback safety ratchets on the wooden roller coaster across the street. I thought it was odd that I didn’t hear it again for almost 15 minutes, but at least it was running and I would soon be inside the park.

Time has been unkind to Conneaut. The park has limped along for the past decade, always on the verge of closing, torn apart by warring factions on its board, and generally ignored by today’s thrill seekers who prefer super parks like Cedar Point which is only three hours away. The parking lot was nearly empty, the paint is peeling from the signs which proudly proclaim “Since 1892”. There were no staff at the entrance, but the gates were open. There is no admittance charge.

As you enter the sweeping curve of the walkway, the first ride you pass isn’t even a ride. It’s just a few crumbling concrete footers, and a circular picket fence. Next to it is an abandoned Tilt-a-Whirl with trees growing up through the track. The park appeared nearly empty.

Further along were several working rides which were sitting idle due to lack of customers. I rounded another curve and there it was – the Tumble Bug! And it was open for business. I almost ran over to it, except my knees don’t allow me to run anymore. I watched as it started forward and stalled on the first hill. It rocked back and forth, as it always has, until it had worked up enough momentum to get out of the station and on its way – all two passengers shrieking in delight. It sounded more metallic, more strained, than I remembered but, after all, I was witnessing an eighty-year old mechanical device that had somehow been kept patched and cobbled together enough to still operate.

After buying tickets at the kiosk, I returned to ride the beast myself. As it turned out, I was the only rider and the young man at the controls gave me an extra-long ride, too long actually. It got boring in a hurry. But who cares? I was on the Tumble Bug. I was the only one on the Tumble Bug on a perfect summer day, one of the only two such rides in the world. Where were the people?

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the park, or what was left of it. The Pavilion had burned to the ground several years ago; the midway was a sad glimpse of a forgotten past. The carousel, which was a classical beauty, had one dad and his daughter riding. About the only place that had a crowd was a loud beach bar on the lake that was overrun with bikers.

So I decided to brave the Blue Streak. It’s an out and back wooden coaster built in 1937 and designed by Ed Vettel, who also designed the Big Dips at West View Park. I had the naïve idea that I would shoot video with my cell phone as I hurdled along the track. Instead I hung onto my phone desperately with one hand, while I kept my other hand over my eyes, not because I didn’t want to see the ride, but because I had lost my hat on the first hill and I didn’t want to lose my sunglasses as well. That left me with no hands to hold on. It was the ride from hell. Strange wailing moans came from somewhere, and since I was the only person on the coaster, they must have been coming from me.

As I left the park, I walked past the Tumble Bug one last time. It was closed. A maintenance truck was parked in front and several workers were huddled over the train. I asked the operator what happened. He told me that the hydraulic brakes had sprung a leak and that the ride would be out of commission for the rest of the day, maybe all weekend. (Maybe forever, I thought.)

West View Park closed decades ago and was bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall. I have a feeling Conneaut may not be around much longer either. Why does that make me sad? Is it true that you can never really go back?

Cat Man

I don’t have an official bucket list. That’s mostly because my contrarian nature would never allow me to have anything that recently exploded into popular cultural as a result of a movie designed to appeal to mass audiences. We are refined, don’t you know? But let’s face it – we all have a few things we would like to do before we die.

One of my greatest wishes for many years has been to see Dominique Lefort and his famous cats perform at sunset on Mallory Square in Key West. Every day at sunset, crowds assemble at Mallory Square to watch various performers such as one man bands, jugglers, unicyclists, and tight rope walkers but mostly they come for the spectacular sunsets. If it’s a good one, it is rewarded with a round of applause from the onlookers.

Dominique has trained domestic cats, household kitty cats, to perform circus acts just like the big cats. He has cats that walk tight ropes, jump through hoops of fire, leap across great distances between platforms far above the ground and generally do things that cats aren’t supposed to do, or at least not on command and not with apparent enthusiasm.

I have something of a history with Dominique. I first saw his act in Key West some thirty years ago. I was amazed and delighted. About ten years later, I was watching a National Geographic special about cats and there was Dominique and his cats in a featured segment. I still remember his response to the interviewer’s question on how he managed to train his cats to do such daunting tricks. “With love,” he said.

When a friend of mine returned from a vacation in Key West last winter, the first thing I asked him was whether the Cat Man still performed at sunset. I didn’t expect he did. I wasn’t even  sure he was still alive. “Yes!” my friend told me. “He and the cats are still there.” (It isn’t actually the same cats; they’ve been replaced over the years with new recruits.)

I knew I had to get down to Key West as soon as I could. Who knew how much longer the show would go on?

I arrived today with forecasts of dire weather threatening to make the trip a disappointment. But in the late afternoon the skies cleared and the sun came out. And so did Dominique and his amazing cats.

Scratch one item from my bucket list,  I mean, the things I want to do before I go.

http://www.catmankeywest.com/