Merry-Go-Round

   It was the summer of '72 and I was nineteen. In an effort to procure enough money for my first year at Western University, I had landed a pretty well quintessential summer job. I spent that summer running the merry-go-round at Springbank Park!
   The year before, in the fall, I had been riding my bike past the amusement area in Springbank and discovered that a couple of my friends from Oakridge Secondary had jobs there. I was in the market for a few extra bucks and, at the time, they were in the market for someone to push their little ice cream truck around. Given that I needed the money and that I already knew some of the guys there, it seemed like a good match.

The merry-go-round in question...

   In those days, there was a thriving amusement area down by the river adjacent to Storybook Gardens. There were a couple of "riverboats" which went up and down the Thames River, there were canoes and paddleboats, and there was, of course, the merry-go-round. The area always seemed jam-packed, particularly on sunny, summer weekends.
   The fall of '71, though, had me simply pushing around the ice cream truck. The ice cream consisted of foil-wrapped ice cream bars and little else, so nothing fancy. I'd pick up the cart at one of the concession booths, push it down to the amusement area, sell ice cream, push it back to the concession stand at the end of the day and tally up the money. At various times throughout my shift, someone might bring me more ice cream.
   It was while I was doing the ice cream truck job that I had my first run-in with the boss, Ron.
   Ron was the guy who owned and ran the whole amusement area and the concession stands, both in the park and in Storybook Gardens. At some point during the day, he would show up, see how things were going and then leave again. This, generally, was fine with us.
   Ron is a little difficult to describe.
   Part of my difficulty in describing him is because, whenever possible, I prefer to say positive things about people. It could be that I just never got to know the man well enough but, this many years later, no positive words come.
   Ron was a bit of a bully. At least, that's the way he came across to me.
   My first run-in came when I was working the ice cream truck. He had dropped off two or three boxes of different flavoured ice cream bars and I set about putting them into the truck. I was attempting to take the individual flavours and stack them together so that if a customer asked for a particular flavour I could instantly reach down and procure it for them.
   Well, Ron didn't like the way I was doing that, was afraid the ice cream might melt, went up one side of me and down the other and took all the ice cream and just dumped everything into the truck, leaving me to sort through the jumbled pile, looking for the flavour my customers were requesting. That, and the fact that he did that in front of a bunch of customers and then just walked away, left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth to this day.
  

Where I wanted to be working....

Yet, in spite of this introduction to Ron, I showed up again the following spring, looking for employment.
   My dream there would have been to work on the paddleboats. There was kind of this sense of camaraderie down there, as there were always a couple of guys working together. Unfortunately, the position which needed filling at the time was on the merry-go-round. Not my first choice, but a job was a job!
   My introduction to the merry-go-round was in the summer of '72. I worked the whole day, from opening to close, about 12 hours. My first shift there involved rolling up the covers which hung down overnight, around the outside of the merry-go-round. Until I got the hang of this, I thought my wrists would fall off! The next big trick was learning how to hop onto the merry-go-round when it was at full speed. The first time doing this, I got my leg in front of one of the metal posts which supported the top of the merry-go-round. This almost took my leg off and I very quickly learned that you hopped on just after the post went by!
   I quickly got into the regular routine, though, and the job wasn't too bad. You kind of had to enjoy going around and around and around and you kind of had to enjoy listening to the same 8-track over and over and over. I didn't always enjoy this.
   It wasn't too long after I started working the merry-go-round that I had my second nasty encounter with Ron.
   One of the riders had gotten a small glob of grease on her clothes and Ron went up one side of me and down the other again for not checking all of the overhead bearings. Apparently I was supposed to have been climbing up there and not only greasing them but also keeping an eye out for excess grease. And I would have been happy to do this if anybody had told me anything about it! 
   Ron had a right-hand man named Waddy (not sure what his real name was) but he was the fix-it guy and he took great pains to not only show me the greasing routine that day but also to build up what was left of my almost non-existent self-esteem. Right after Ron walked away, Waddy almost literally took me under his wing and I clearly remember him saying, "Mother always said there'd be days like this. She just never said when." After that, I always loved it whenever Waddy showed up.

The merry-go-round, as it appears today.

   For the most part, working the merry-go-round was not a bad summer job. The weekends were tremendously busy back in those days but things levelled off a fair bit during the week. We were all young and knew each other pretty well so this was conducive to having a good time. Sometimes the comments travelling back and forth between the docks and the merry-go-round area were pretty ribald (for lack of a more accurate term) as long as there weren't too many customers around within hearing range. Occasionally, hand signals did the trick.
   Some of my favourite times were at night, right around closing time. As it darkened, the lights of the merry-go-round took over and it looked like a wholly different entity, much the same as a house with Christmas lights. I remember getting ready to shut it down the odd time and a parent with a kid would come straggling along and, at that point, I would simply let them ride for free. This just seemed to add to the magic.
   The summer of '72 was a long one. We all worked twelve hour days, six days a week, for not a lot of money. I did, however, earn enough money for my first and last (but that's another story) year at Western.
   A postscript, about my boss, Ron. As I mentioned before, Ron was not my favourite person and I always carried a bit of a sense of loathing about him, long after I ever was an employee of his. Many (probably about thirty-five) years after my summer stint working for him, I found myself in the emergency department of a local hospital. I had taken both my parents there because my stepmom was quite ill. As I was standing at the triage window, explaining her plight, suddenly Ron appeared at my side. It was a double window and he was there attempting to get some pain relief for his wife, who had been struggling with cancer.
   This was a much older and much more tired and distressed version of Ron than I remembered. My experience with him had only been brief all those many years ago but I couldn't help but think that maybe karma, if there was such a thing, was at work here. Could it be that all the negativity he put into his dealings with people had come back to haunt him? That was the first thought which ran through my head. The fact of the matter was that I had changed, as well, and I no longer viewed him in the same way as I had way back then. Now it was possible to regard him as much more of an everyman, someone who was likely sharing many of the same trials and tribulations of life we all do. He wouldn't have remembered me so I didn't bother to re-introduce myself to him as we stood there beside each other. We went our separate ways and, as we did, I realized that my feelings for this man had clearly softened and I kind of wished him well, in my head.
   A second postscript, this one about my wife, Doralyn.
   Doralyn grew up on a street literally a stone's throw away from Springbank Park, where I had worked that summer. During that summer, she would have been four and a half years old and told me that her mum used to take her to the park and have her ride the merry-go-round all the time. And I would have been the one who took her ticket and maybe even the one who helped her up on the horse. Once again, was karma maybe at work?