The Bad Day
I guess there's a saying that into everybody's life, a little rain must fall.
I loved working at Idora Park and I think I've said that quite a few times in this blog. Maybe every day wasn't good but I would say the good days far exceeded the bad days.
But this day was unlike the others.
I got up to get ready for work as usual but decided to skip breakfast this morning. I guess when you're young breakfast doesn't mean much and you always have the energy to work. Plus I knew I could always pick something up at the park.
So I got into my car started and got ready to go.
But I couldn't go because the car wouldn't start – apparently, my battery gone dead.
We tried jumping it and the battery was just too dead. I looked inside the cylinders of the battery and a couple of them were dry so I had to find another way to work.
Now if you were one of our neighbors and you looked at our driveway you would almost think it was a used car lot. At that time my dad had a car, my mom had two cars, my , oldest brother had three cars, and my other brother had two cars.
My dad had a Mercury Monterey, which was really nice and my mom had a Volkswagen bug and a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia that my brother had just blow in the motor In.
My oldest brother had a beat-up Chevy he drove around I-69 and a 60 Pontiac GTO built for racing.
Oh I forgot, my sister had a Volkswagen Bug also. Actually she had what they call the Super Beetle.
So you would think that one car down wouldn’t be that bad.
I asked my mom if I could borrow her car and she said sure. She had a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle semi-automatic.
So I was running late for work needless to say. And I didn't want to drive my mom's car hard because my other brother had just blown the motor in her other car so I took my time getting to work.
Luckily, I usually left early when I went to work because it gave me time to walk around and talk to people that were there.
Well that day, I got there around quarter after 12, which means I was 15 minutes late.
But Pat Duffy wasn't happy that I was late but he understood.
So I grabbed the money out of the office and ran down to Putt-Putt to open it up.
And isn't it funny sometimes in life that the faster you try to do things the worst they come out.
I was trying to open up real quick so that I could get to the customers that were already lined up.
So what I did was I left the Putt-Putt door closed, set up a cash register, got everything ready to put out, opened up the doors, and start to wait on customers.
After everything was done, I was standing there thinking, “Boy, I wish I would have had breakfast now.”
But it would be two and a half hours till I got my break and I just had to sit it out. That was the bad thing about working at Putt-Putt – no one worked with you, so if you got sick or there was something you needed, there was no way to get a hold of someone in the office.
Finally it was break time. I was really hungry so I stopped at the concession stand crossing the office to get a hamburger and a Coke.
The next stop would probably have been some of those great Idora fries.
But the lady at the concession stand called out to me and said, “Hey, I made some crepes. Would you like some crepes?”
Now I had no clue what a crepe was.
But I was usually nice. I talked to everyone whether they ran the rides or the games; we all got along really well.
And she was trying to be nice.
So I went ahead and tried one of her crepes, which were kind of big.
No I don't know what crepes are made out of and I still don't know today – probably never will know – because I took a bite out of that thing, and it just didn't taste good to me.
Now you know sometimes if you eat something and there's nothing wrong with it. It just disagrees with you, and that’s what happen to me.
So I ate about half of it and lied and said, “Oh, it was good.”
And then I walked up the Midway and threw the rest in the garbage.
After my break, I went in the office to talk to Pat Junior. I said, “I don't know what was in that crepe but I really don't feel that good. I'm going to try to stay the rest of the day. We'll see how it goes.”
So he said all right and I went back down to Putt-Putt.
I was pretty nauseous.
He must have told Ann what happened because she came down to the Putt-Putt with some Alka-Seltzer.
Now this was another first for me because I'd never had Alka-Seltzer before.
With my mom, if you had an upset stomach she would give you Coke syrup. I guess people my age would probably know about that but younger people may not.
So I drink the Alka-Seltzer, which made my stomach even worse than, and I went back to work and then finally, after about 10 minutes, I puked all over the place.
My friend Tony was running the Turtle. He came over and said, “I'll run to the office and tell them to send somebody down for you.”
Luckily it was a Saturday and my dad was off of work by noon.
I went up the office and called my dad and ask him if he could pick me up and maybe have one of my brothers come to get my mom's car and drive it home.
I sat in the office for about 15 minutes and then I went down to the parking lot to wait for my dad.
It was only a few minutes after I got to the parking lot that my dad got there with a basin to make sure I wouldn't puke in his car or on his car.
And my brother was there to drive my mom's car home. I was sick all the way home and most of the night. And my mom gave me Coke syrup to settle my stomach.
I really didn't want to miss work the next day and by the next morning I was feeling pretty good.
My mother made me some eggs and toast and I went to work.
While I was at work the day before my father had gone out and gotten a new battery for my car.
I was feeling better, and I had my car back, so I went to work and just tried to forget about the day before.
As I came up to the office to get my stuff for the Putt-Putt course, Ann saw me and called me over and said she was sorry that I got sick. She said no one else got sick.
I said it must have just been something that was in it to disagree with me, and not to worry about it.
And so another day started much better than the one before.
See you on the Midway!