Joyland

fun for three months in 1973 on their resumes?

    All the team leaders were long-time Joyland employees who worked the carny circuit as showies in the off-season. Most were also on the Park Services Committee, which meant they had to deal with state and federal regulations (both very loose in 1973), and field customer complaints. That summer most of the complaints were about the new no-smoking policy.
    Our team leader was a peppy little guy named Gary Allen, a seventy-something who ran the Annie Oakley Shootin’ Gallery. Only none of us called it that after the first day. In the Talk, a shooting gallery was a bang-shy and Gary was the bang-shy agent. The seven of us on Team Beagle met him at his joint, where he was setting out rifles on chains. My first official Joyland job—along with Erin, Tom, and the other four guys on the team—was putting the prizes on the shelves. The ones that got pride of place were the big fuzzy stuffed animals that hardly anyone ever won . . . although, Gary said, he was careful to give out at least one every evening when the tip was hot.
    “I like the marks,” he said. “Yes I do. And the marks I like the best are the points, by which I mean the purty girls, and the points I like the best are the ones who wear the low-cut tops and bend forrad to shoot like this.” He snatched up a .22 modified to shoot BBs (it had also been modified to make a loud and satisfying bang with each trigger-pull) and leaned forward to demonstrate.
    “When a guy does that, I notify ’em that they’re foulin the line. The points? Never.”
    Ronnie Houston, a bespectacled, anxious-looking young man wearing a Florida State University cap, said: “I don’t see any foul-line, Mr. Allen.”
    Gary looked at him, hands fisted on non-existent hips. His jeans seemed to be staying up in defiance of gravity. “Listen up, son, I got three things for you. Ready?”
    Ronnie nodded. He looked like he wanted to take notes. He also looked like he wanted to hide behind the rest of us.
    “First thing. You can call me Gary or Pops or come here you old sonofabitch, but I ain’t no schoolteacher, so can the mister. Second thing. I never want to see that fucking schoolboy hat on your head again. Third thing. The foul line is wherever I say the foul line is on any given night. I can do that because it’s in my myyyyynd.” He tapped one sunken, vein-gnarled temple to make this point perfectly clear, then waved at the prizes, the targets, and the counter where the conies—the rubes—laid down their mooch. “This is all in my myyyyynd. The shy is mental. Geddit?”
    Ronnie didn’t, but he nodded vigorously.
    “Now whip off that turdish-looking schoolboy hat. Get you a Joyland visor or a Howie the Happy Hound dogtop. Make it Job One.”
    Ronnie whipped off his FSU lid with alacrity, and stuck it in his back pocket. Later that day—I believe within the hour—he replaced it with a Howie cap, known in the Talk as a dogtop. After three days of ribbing and being called greenie, he took his new dogtop out to the parking lot, found a nice greasy spot, and trompled it for a while. When he put it back on, it had the right look. Or almost. Ronnie Houston never got the complete right look; some people were just destined to be greenies forever. I remember Tom sidling up to him one day and suggesting that he needed to piss on it a little to give it that final touch that means so much. When he saw Ronnie was on the verge of taking him seriously, Tom backpedaled and said just soaking it in the Atlantic would achieve the same effect.
    Meanwhile, Pops was surveying us.
    “Speaking of good-looking ladies, I perceive we have one among us.”
    Erin smiled modestly.
    “Hollywood Girl, darlin?”
    “That’s what Mr. Dean said I’d be doing, yes.”
    “Then you want to go see Brenda Rafferty. She’s second-in-command around here, and she’s also the park Girl Mom. She’ll get you fitted up with one of those cute green dresses. Tell her you want yours extra-short.”
    “The hell I will, you old lecher,” Erin said, and promptly joined him when he threw back his head and bellowed laughter.
    “Pert! Sassy! Do I like it? I do! When you’re not snappin pix of the conies, you come on back to your Pops and I’ll find you something to do . . . but change out of the dress first. You don’t get grease or sawdust on it. Kapish?”
    “Yes,” Erin said. She was all business again.
    Pops Allen looked at his watch. “Park opens in one