WEST VIEW PARK

   My first "real" job was at West View Park where I sold cotton candy,popcorn,and ice balls. My uncle knew someone somewhere in the world of amusement parks and he secured summer jobs for me and for my cousin.  By now it has probably obvious that my cousin and I shared most of our childhood experiences together. We had no training for our new positions, but were simply directed to a concession "trailer" in Kiddeland where we were introduced to our co-workers...two middle aged women...Margaret and Helen who had been working at the amusement park every season for years and years. We eventually became familiar with a lot of our co-workers who worked at the park every summer...and then seemed to vanish for the rest of the year. They were an unusual group.
  Helen and Margaret always worked in Kiddeland, although neither one seemed very patient or particularly fond of children...a fact that immediately became obvious. We were ALWAYS very busy...with long lines all day long...very close quarters...and an odd mix of personalities to say the least. Margaret was what people refer to as "slow"...regularly storing her jar of stewed tomatoes in with the blocks of ice that we'd attack with ice picks all day...for the ice ball machine.  Helen had authentic coke bottle glasses that didn't seem to help her very much, and every few days she'd be chopping ice and suddenly scream when she'd hit Margaret's stewed tomatoes and we'd all have to pick the glass out and throw the red ice away.  Now this wasn't any kind of a learning experience for either one of them...my cousin and I just eventually learned the ropes.
  Helen and I were often on cotton candy duty together...each on our own side of the big silver bowl, and we'd each swirl our paper cones on our own sides of the machine....half for you...half for me..usually.  It didn't take me long to figure out that Helen was trying to distract me every once in awhile so that she could swipe my share of the cotton candy...and thus create a beautifully full mass of airy pink cotton while mine took forever to take shape. After about a week on the job I began to notice that our machine was often malfunctioning... sending out scary black smoke, and thus being shut down until it cooled off. My cousin actually solved the mystery one day when we were busier than ususal, and Helen was in an unusually foul mood about the stewed tomatoes.  He watched her change the sugar and some other additive for the cotton candy machine and moments later the black smoke emerged and Helen announced that the machine was broken...
   Cousin was usually on ice ball duty.....and that's a story unto itself...I'll get into that one on Monday.