Nonfiction - 3rd Place
Memoir: The Night the Mars Ride Burned (August, 1964)
Nancy Powichroski Sherman
Smoke billowed over the rooftops of the hotels and apartments of
My parents and I had just returned from dinner at The Tide’s Inn, our usual reservation and probably our usual order – hamburger steak covered in ketchup, veggie of the day, and mashed potatoes – and our usual waitress, a middle-aged, motherly kind of woman who made everyone feel as though she were going back into the kitchen to cook the food herself.
I was anxious to rush to the boardwalk with my cousins and run from ride to ride, but my mom insisted that I wait for a while, let the sun go down – after all, rides were always better when their bright colored lights lit the sky like strands on a Christmas tree. I knew that she was hoping I’d forget my pledge to my cousins to get on the Mars ride, a funhouse travel-through with metal cars that held two riders. My cousins had spent days badgering, cajoling, betting that I would never have the guts. My mom, of course, was against it, she who protected me from anything that might cause a bruise, she who would take any fall rather than letting her only child be hurt.
We were on the balcony porch of the top floor of the Harrison Apartments. Our extended family rented the whole floor for one week each August, two family groups in the ocean side apartment and two in the bay side. The front doors were usually kept open so the three uncles, four aunts, four cousins, and other family guests could move freely from one side to the other to sit and chat or play cards. Each three-bedroom apartment held more than three bedrooms of people, leaving some to sleep on the sofa or an Army cot in the hallway.
As usual, my cousins were restless; they had to wait for me. That was the rule: cousins travel together on the boardwalk. All for one, and one for all – like the motto of the Three Musketeers. But I was number four. I was the one who didn’t spend my pre-school years babysat by our Grandmother Powichroski, so I didn’t have the rough and tumble constitution of a child raised with other children. I was the one who hadn’t learned to survive. I was more an “only child” than they, and I was the one afraid of everything.
My cousin Michael was leaning over the railing, making my mom uncomfortable; after all, he could fall. I could never get near the railing except for a quick peak. When I look back on this, it seems that my mom was afraid of everything, too. She didn’t have a Michael to toughen her up and let her know that children live past their bruises, that children learn from their falls, that children are resilient.
The cousins had already planned the sequence of rides. Nightly, we had money enough in our pockets to buy a strip of tickets for one pier only, making the decision of Hunt’s Pier or Marine Pier, our two favorite piers, always a difficult one. Tonight would be Marine Pier, with a little extra change for the big event: getting me in that car of the Mars ride. But my mom’s rule was delaying our plans. So, I sat at the far end of the row of rockers, my arms crossed, pouting because my cousins were stuck waiting for me. I knew I’d hear about their displeasure when we finally got the approval for our boardwalk journey, that I’d hear how I needed to grow-up and how my mom needed to cut the apron strings. They made it sound so simple.
It was then that a thin line of grey smoke traveled up into the sky and started a “what’s that” game among the grownups. When the thin line turned into a wide puff, the sirens started – first the siren call to the local firemen, then the sirens of vehicles. My cousins and I were wild to follow the fire engines, to find out what was happening for real, but all our parents banded together, like families do in time of crisis, and commanded that we all “stay put” and not leave the apartment. The wide puff had now spread grey-black arms across the sky, blotting out the bright lights of the boardwalk south of
By now, my cousins were pouting as much as I. Yet, under my own pouting, I suppressed a secret smile because they were now as tied to their moms as I was to mine. They rocked with the force of frustrated children who longed for an adventure. But when one of the ambulances rode past our street, siren silenced, it seemed that maybe the fire was nothing at all and we were being held captive on the porch for no reason whatsoever except for the stupid rules of parents.
We didn’t need to wait long; Uncle Joe and my dad were back quickly, faces lined in worry or sadness or some other emotion that we as children couldn’t know. They didn’t address us directly; they spoke a grown-up story to the other grownups, not meant for the kids. The fire, they said, engulfed a ride-through at one of the smaller amusement areas, the one that edged
My mom or someone said, “Thank God, you children didn’t leave for the boardwalk when you wanted to.”
The conversation then turned to ruminating about the safety of these “dark rides,” wondering why the ambulance left without hurry, hoping that no one was injured. Uncle Joe or my dad dispelled that hope; he said that other firewatchers at the site had said there may have been riders but that no one could have escaped the sudden inferno. The conversation turned to silence as my cousins and I finally grasped what the adults had anticipated from that very first wisp of smoke: Could there have been riders in that burning ride? Or was this just another grown-up story meant to teach children that they must avoid rides that go inside dark buildings where escape would be difficult and danger could hide?
Death to a child is a mysterious thing. We had been through the loss of Grandmother Powichroski. That was another time that my mom kept me safe from the dangers of the world; while our large Polish family mourned at the casket, I was taken to stay with my other grandmother, my Mom’s mom. I didn’t even know that I was supposed to be sad and cry until one of my cousins explained it to me during the ride to the cemetery. But Grandmother was old, and so the idea of her going to Heaven seemed comfortable and fair, a gentle and happy rest. Still, I would miss the times when I sat listening to her and her best friend chat in Polish.
This night, we cousins didn’t get to the boardwalk at all. Our parents kept us near them, safe, under watchful eyes. My mom was more nervous than ever. What if she hadn’t held me back that afternoon? What if I’d gone with my cousins to ride what I’d pledged to ride? Would we have been in that funhouse when the flames erupted?
The next morning, photographs of the fire plastered the front pages of the newspapers being hawked by the young newsboys on the boardwalk, and The New York Times ran an article with the headline “3 Killed in Fire at Jersey Resort; Children Trapped in Ride at Wildwood Park.” It was true. We walked toward the charred portion of the boardwalk, now roped off, to see for ourselves, to know that it was real. We saw the hollow shell of the building, the spires of blackened wood standing like uneven soldiers. We didn’t speak. I never told my mom, but in my heart, I thanked her for saving my life.
Years later, as an adult, I still find myself standing in front of ride-through funhouses, longing to see what is inside, wanting to buy the ticket and finally pass that childhood test that had been taken from me. I take photographs of every one of these rides, write stories about them, but still I listen to the voice of my mother and never go beyond the turnstile.