Monkey Island
- Chuck Wilcox
- Oct 10, 2017
- 4 min read
A lot of times when I’m out and about, people see me wearing my Idora Park Experience Museum hat and sometimes my very fashionable Life of the Midway t-shirt. On occasion, I pair the two for a fashion statement that says, "I love Idora Park!"
This past summer, I took my family to the Italian Festival in downtown Youngstown.
We got some sandwiches – I should write a whole blog about those meatball subs. We wanted to sit down, but most of the tables were full.
I spotted an older couple sitting by themselves at a big table. They saw us and asked us to come over and join them.
As we sat down and exchanged greetings, they commented on the snazzy, jazzy hat my fiancée bought me at the Idora Park Experience Museum and my stylish Life on the Midway t-shirt.
They said how much they loved going to Idora Park. The man told me his name was John, and that he’d been lucky enough to work at Idora Park. He also said that he had a friend who worked there at the same time he did, and they tended to get it in a bit of mischief.
John said they used to hide behind trees and jump out and try to scare people when the Idora train would come around the tracks.
He said that one of the best things about working at Idora Park was when he and his friend were hungry and they went to get something to eat. There was a great hamburger place underneath the Silver Rockets and also Idora Park fries across from it.
Both John and his friend, whom I will henceforth refer to as “Buddy,” worked on the games.
John said, “Let's be honest – working at Idora Park was a great way to pick up girls. And I think most guys that worked at Idora Park, no matter when they worked there, would say the same thing.”
I just had a thought. I wonder what it was like for the girls who worked at Idora Park and how often guys who visited Idora Park would try to pick them up for a date – or vice versa. I'm going to have to find some girls who worked at Idora Park and ask him that question.
But anyway, so as I said, John and Buddy were always trying to cause some mischief when they worked there.
One of the things they liked to do was go to Monkey Island.
Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, a lot of the amusement parks – including Waldemeer, Kennywood, Meyers Lake and, of course, Idora Park – had a Monkey Island attraction. Occasionally, the monkeys would get loose and the local police and fire departments would round them all up and return them to the park. It was great publicity.
After NASA started using monkeys in the space program in the 1950’s, though, the Monkey Island attractions, which used the same kinds of monkeys that the space program used, closed up.
John and Buddy would keep a little bit of their leftover food and throw it at the monkeys. It sounds like a terrible idea, I know, but that was but they did.
One of those days when they went to visit Monkey Island, throwing bits of leftover french fries, they were looking at the monkeys and wondering what it'd be like to be inside the cage.
Monkeys can be a bit mischievous themselves, and sometimes a bit aggressive, but young men rarely take things like that into consideration. John and Buddy were no exception.
So, they figured out a way to get into the cages.
Buddy went in first, and the monkeys went up to him and stood there looking at him expectantly.
John went in second and stayed closer to the door just in case. Apparently, he was the smarter one. Or maybe he’s just the smarter one when he tells that story.
The monkeys started to get a little aggressive with Buddy – maybe they were hungry and they wanted more fries. They started climbing on Buddy, especially on his legs, and Buddy hopped around trying to shake them off. John said it looked like he was doing some kind of weird dance.
“The Monkey?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, clearly annoyed that I’d interrupted his story at the best part. He continued.
“At first, I thought it was funny, but then I realized we had to get the heck out of there.”
John remembered that before they'd gone up to Monkey Island, they’d stopped the Penny Arcade and John had won some candy out of one of the machines. He reached in his pocket, grabbed out a handful of candy and threw it on the ground.
The monkeys pounced on that candy like a bunch of toddlers on a plate of goldfish crackers.
Buddy ran to the door, John opened it, and they burst through it. They closed the door and ran out of the building, scared out of their wits.
Then, they started talking about what happened, and laughing about it.
Although they said they would never do it again, they did visit the Monkey Island again, and every time they did, the monkeys would go right up to them.
John said, “I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to play some more, maybe they liked that candy, but we stopped throwing food into the cages.”
He leaned back into his folding chair and winked and said, “I guess that was a good lesson in not monkeying around with monkeys.”
He had a smile on his face, and I grinned right along with him and said, “Those were the good old days.”
As I got up to leave, he said, “Maybe we'll see each other again next year.”
“Maybe we will and maybe you'll have another story for me,” I said.
And here, courtesy of Jim Amey's Idora Park Experience Museum, the only known picture of Idora Park's Monkey Island:
It's not very often that I get to talk to someone who worked at Idora Park in the 1950’s.
I would love to hear more stories from people who worked Idora Park, no matter when you worked there. Send me a Facebook message, and let’s get together and reminisce about Idora Park.
See you on the Midway!
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