Gotcha!
As I said some days were kind of slow at Idora Park, so you'd have to find things to amuse yourself. And as a breaker, I could usually find something to do.
Besides filling the games with prizes and fixing or help fixing machines in the arcades, you were still pretty much left with some time to goof around. A lot of times in between taking care of the games and giving breaks for the games Pat Duffy the third who was the other breaker would go down to the office and talk to his dad.
And I did spend a lot of my time talking to the people who ran the games. But I also like to spend time in the arcades playing the games.
So one day while I was playing at the penny arcade, I saw two pretty young ladies walk in and start playing. I've seen them walking in the park while I was working on the games. And I noticed that one of them was watching me.
So I walked over and said, “Hi, how you doing?”
She said, “Fine.”
I told her, “My name is Chuck.”
She said her name was Tracy (name changed to protect her privacy
I forget which friend of hers she had brought.We played in the penny arcade for a while and then went for a walk around the park. She said she had nothing to do that day and that her father said he would take her and her friend to Idora Park and drop them off. And that they could call him for a ride home.
She asked me if I could ride the rides and I said, “Yes, as long as it’s a slow day we’re allowed to ride them. Where would you like to go?”
She left it up to me.
I was thinking that would take her on the Kooky Castle ride because as we all know it's nice and dark inside. But what was I going to do with her friend?
Her friend was really cute too. Like I said, my friend Bob was working at Idora Park then. And since he worked in that part of the park, I walked over to the Flying Cages where he was working.
I said, “Hey, Bob, you think you can get some time off?”
And he said, “Sure, let me see what I can do.”
Now, the ride operators were a special group. They all seem to get along and did things for each other always. Of course most of them were older, too. I know that sounds funny considering “older” means they were around 18, but they were older than most of the people who worked the games.
A couple minutes later Bob came back and said he got someone to take his place for a little bit.
So I said, “I want to go for a ride on the Kooky Castle.” He said that was fine, especially since he got to ride with Tracy’s cute friend.
I got on the ride first with Tracy and Bob went in the next car with Tracy’s friend. As we were on the ride, we were talking for a while and I came up with this idea.
I said to Tracy, “You know, this ride is going slow enough. How about if we jump off and then try to scare Bob and your friend?”
She said, “That sounds like fun.”
I thought it would also be funny when the ride came back around and the ride operator would see a car with no one in it.
So we jumped out of the car and hid around the corner, and as Bob's car came around we jumped out and yelled, “Boo!”
I took sort of a gamble, thinking that by the time Bob came around, the other car that we were in would already be through the ride and the ride operator would wonder what happened to us.
And I was right. He stopped the ride.
Which was perfect timing, because that gave Tracy and me time to jump into the car into one car, which was the one Bob was in with Tracy’s friend.
A few minutes later, we crashed through the door at the exit of the ride. The ride operator said, “Where were you guys? I didn't see you in your own car.”
And I told him, “I thought I would just pull little joke on you to see what would happen.”
He told us how he stopped the ride so he could go in and look and try to find what happened to us, and then he realized people were still in there so he had to wait till all the cars came out.
Well at least I thought it was funny. And all of us who were crammed into that little car thought it was funny. So, after that we went for a walk and got some fries and talked for a while.
Then Bob went back to work and I had to start giving breaks again. Tracy stayed most the day and I was with her when I had some free time. When it was getting close to closing time, I said that I would be really busy helping to close the games. She gave me her phone number and we end up dating for a while.
But it had been a nice day. I got to meet someone special and got to pull a prank on someone. Like I always say, anytime is a good time a good time for everyone – rediscover Idora Park and you always rediscover fun.