Commentary
July 4th at Coney: An American Dreamland
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor


Jun 30, 2006, 01:22

When I was just a boy my parents would take me to Coney Island for July 4th. This was 1947, a few years after WW II, when the Cyclone roller coaster roared down from the sky, the Wonder Wheel rose in the hot sun and later the great parachute jump spilled its screaming couples 220 feet down to a jolting halt, a few feet from the sprawling boardwalk, the planked wood stretching from the proletarian Brighton Beach to the elegant gated community of Sea Gate. All this life punctuated by disastrous fires and marvelous restoration, shedding its stars, like Durante, Mae West, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, into America.

Between them, Nathan’s hot dog stand grew on Surf Avenue to the mother of all fast food joints, with the greatest hot dogs, French fries, fresh fried seafood, roast beef and hot buttered corn you could imagine on working people’s wages, plus a July 4th hot dog eating contest. Is this America or is it just Brooklyn? Or are they one?

Among the arcades and narrow lanes, there were still side shows, freak shows, bearded ladies, the fat lady, the strong man, Siamese twins, midgets, dwarfs, The Fun House, the House of Horror that rivaled even today’s White House. All the elements of entertainment that built an audience for 1955’s July 4th, the biggest crowd ever, 1.5 million people, when America was rolling again, ready to battle its own forces of reaction, the perennial undertow ready to subtly sweep us out over our heads, while the crowds watched from a distant shore and lifeguard whistles rose above the roar to save the drift towards going under, pushing an unseen hand from our heads.

And what was our fascination with freaks, the odd, the strange and the weird? Did we see ourselves in them, as in the fun house mirrors, twisted, wide, skinny, tall, the little people, the joined at the hip? Did the strong man at once amaze and frighten us like our politicians? Did we want to hammer the catapult that sent the weight zooming to the gong, measuring our strength against theirs? Was the vast crowd sprawled on the beach and boardwalk America compressed, delivered by the sky-screeching elevated subway cars just as they had been by sailboats and steamers from the four corners of the earth?

We had en masse recently defeated a world-hungry enemy, the Nazis the Imperial Japanese, the corporate fascists of Italy. But had we? Would they worm their way back in through NATO, take back Europe like P2 in Italy, attacking the left with their right-wing anti-commie violence? Had they wound their way back into power with the help of the American Elites like the Dulles brothers, Allan and John, the Prescott Bushes, the Fords, the Rockefellers, the Standard Oils, with their right-wing ideologies that created a National Security Council, the non-elected who shaped our foreign policy, its CIA soon to enforce it around the world, overturning one country after another in dark an dirty ops?

Would the working of government become as dark and shady as Coney Island during the war years of 43-44, when its lights faded to blue and gray at night, a subterranean underworld, protecting us from air raids and other unseen terrors, at what costs, the lives of presidents, truth-tellers, journalists, men and women who marched to different drummers?

Yet those dark nights of the soul passed and the lights came on again, crowds of July 4th celebrants, flaring their fireworks over the dark Atlantic, sighing crowds of returned warriors with their families, ooing and aahing, and even the freaks, the odd, the different, the poets, the queers, finding a place under a smiling moon and the sighs of the four winds, arms about each other.

And still among us was that enemy, like a fifth column, smuggled on shore as if from a giant submarine, from the deep of man’s inhumanity to man, where shark ate shark. Yet in a wave of human love came the immigrants still, the brothers and sisters, black, Latino, Asian, shades of all whom fought like so many gangs, right here in Coney Island, before they would embrace in peace and acceptance on the riotous streets. This was the real test of the fire swallower, the strong man, the little people, those opposites of color and creed who loved each other under the boardwalk of skin, stretching as if from one American coast to the other, who mixed their bloods, their strength, their genius.

And in their bosom were the Jews, the goats of history, harassed, chased, like the many Poles, Irish, Italian, Russian, German, berated, alienated, clinging to the faith, traditions, dreams of betterment, education, a Constitution of even treatment from pogroms, slums, serfdom, class-wars, the Royals of the world, the party dictators of the Soviet Union, the bought and sold dictators of South and Central America, the Mullahs and Sheiks of the Mid East. And all fled to this common shore, to popcorn, peanuts, cotton candy, the circus of Coney, to the shores of the great Atlantic and Pacific, the barrelhouse piano playing in the background.

So, let the amusements begin for those laborers of America. Let the merry-go-rounds turn, the horses climb with their children on their backs. Let the bumper car bang into each other, laughter explode. Let the whirling rides disc in jagged circles. Let the truth be told as it was and is and will be. Read all about it! Let the corrupted be trampled by the pure of heart. Let the park be opened to all. Let the children play in shared waters. After all, this was, this is, this will be the Fourth of July, the Day of Independence and its Declaration.

Let the believers that men were not beasts have their hour in the sun. Let the stars fall, shower them with light, brighter even than the dark corners of poverty. Lift the Jew, lift the goat, lift the Arab under a scimitar moon and star. Let us all be safe. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. There is no one to hate but the hater himself. Let young and old be one family, rich and poor, smart and not. Let one hand pull another from the deep to the shore. Let the strong lift the weak and hoist the wounded on their shoulders. Let us be a free people. Let us be people.

This is the Celebration of Coney. This is the Fourth of July, birthday of America from these muddied waters, baskets of fluted garbage, endless blanket of human bodies. This is the Coney Island of the Spirit, a child of the lost and found tribes of the world in the heat of time’s summer. Let it bloom like the rose of the world, The Rose of Tralee. Let it shed its iron and concrete shade like a beach umbrella, like a Flatbush oak, the perennial tree that grew in Brooklyn. Let a baseball team rise by these waters, a national pastime to test the metal of men, the loyalty of fans, the faith of mates.

Let the Cyclones roar onto the diamond field. Let the poor be housed. Let sand castles rise from the sea like public housing, like projects of Trump and Moses. Let lovers twine their bodies on blankets. Let the masses procreate. These are the Paths to Glory, the unending story of Coney, of Turtle Island, rising from the sea, prodigious as bunnies, a nation on the hardened back of shell, the rich earth of dreamland, a schemeland, a Tea for Two-land, a discovery of Hudson, a totally secular corrupt and holy land. Buy you a beer, friend? Here’s to you! And here’s to you, America, to your best and your worst, you know who you are. And we will find you, elevate one, and bury the other, as always.