Asbury Park

Despite best efforts, the New Jersey Zombie Walk on the Asbury Park Boardwalk has been eclipsed by a similar event in Minneapolis where, on October 11, 2014, thanks to the organizational energies of Zombie Pub Crawl (USA), the undead numbered 15,248. As far as I’m aware, the best that was ever achieved in Asbury Park was a total of 9,592 walking dead in 2013. But enough about zombies, here’s a father and son I’d rather listen to.  

“When I was your age, I heard they were going to tear down the carousel and it was a sad day when they went ahead and did just that,” says the father. It’s nice to see them together like this on the boardwalk. The father is a burly man, a little intimidating the way he strides ahead with a certain gruff blue-collar locomotion, but he is very gentle with the child. In turn, the child seems nurtured at his father’s side.

“Why did they tear it down?” asks the son.

“They could not afford to maintain it. In those days, Asbury Park was a very poor place,” says the father.

“Were you happy when they brought it back?” asks the son. I’m debating whether or not I should make the father a few inches shorter.

“I guess, but the horses are different now. They were really something special a long time ago. They’re still nice, but they’re different,” says the father. The father is trying to do a balancing act of sorts. He wants the child to appreciate how great the horses used to be but he also wants the child to enjoy the horses they’ve got now, which are fiberglass. So, he begins to explain how the old Loof carousel had 78 horses all made of wood with real horsehair tails.   

“What happened to them?” asks the child.

Gays have been here since the 1950s but toward the end of the 20th century moneyed gays from New York City snapped up a lot of the old Victorian houses, which they restored. Leave it to the gays, they sure know how to gentrify. Danny DeVito and Bruce Spingsteen have also added to the luster. I’m not sure why, but I’ve been seeing an unusual number of people from Asbury Park on alternate lifestyle websites. These include people of all races and sexual orientations. I had a brief exchange with a woman in Asbury Park who likes to humiliate her husband. There was another woman from Asbury Park who says that scat is her one absolute strict limit. You can find such people everywhere, of course, but it does strike me as strange that on some of these weird sites there are almost as many people listed from Asbury Park as from Jersey City and noticeably more people from Asbury Park than from Camden even though Camden’s population is five times bigger. 

“They were all sold to different people in different places but there are just as many horses here now as there were then. Seventy-eight horses when I was a child like you, 78 horses today. They’re just made different,” says the father. On second thought, I’ll keep the father the same height.

 “Can we buy them back?” asks the son.

“I don’t see how we can do that,” says the father.

“Did you like the old horses better?” asks the son.  

“In some ways, I guess I did. When I was your age, I thought they were real. Their eyes used to glare like they were full of fire. They were wonderful to look at but they were very fierce. I thought sometimes I could actually hear them snort,” says the father.

“What does ‘snort’ mean?” asks the son.

“It means to let out big noises through your nose,” says the father.

“Why would they do that?” asks the son.

“Horses like to snort. It’s in their nature,” says the father.

“Are they angry?” asks the son.

“I used to think so sometimes. Sometimes I would imagine them tearing off the carousel and snorting all the way down the Parkway. A man from Germany made them a long time ago, well over a hundred years ago. He made a number of carousels in the United States,” says the father.

One of the 78 originals was bought by a man named Harry White who kept it in his basement until he died. His widow let it sit there until she moved to an apartment in Tallahassee, closer to her family, at which time she sold it to a dealer in Atlanta. In turn, the dealer sold it to a wealthy man who owned a string of pizza parlors before retiring to Boca Raton. I don’t know where the horse is now. Another one of the 78 originals wound up in Spain, in Madrid, where a Dutchman named Henri Nouwen who lived in Madrid bought it but sometime later he jumped to his death from the Segovia Viaduct, which is still famous in the city as a place to commit suicide. He is not the well-known priest Henri Nouwen who died of a heart attack while on his way to Russia. I actually knew that Henri Nouwen and I remember talking to him at length once about Lysis and I made the point somewhere in the conversation about just what a sophistical arguer Socrates was, how that’s really one of civilization’s strange secrets because we’re not supposed to think of Socrates as himself a kind of sophist, and that the entire dialogue almost resolutely avoids reaching a coherent conclusion, that the most we can get out of it are inklings as to what true friendship consists of, how it’s just a string of ironies really, and true friendship is as elusive finally as any other Platonic real. The black steeds never fail to settle our hash, that’s for sure, and I, for one, have lost many more friends than I’ve kept. I don’t know where the other Henri Nouwen’s horse is, I mean the Henri Nouwen who was not a priest and who killed himself. It seems very odd to me that a man would buy a carousel horse with a real horsehair tail and then kill himself afterward. Another one of the original 78 was bought by a wealthy older woman, a real eccentric named Dorothy Hight in Ventura, who keeps it in her garage where I believe it remains to this day, but I can’t be sure. But enough about horses, I’m tired of the subject at this point, but the little boy persists in his curiosity.

“Do the horses miss each other?” asks the son. 

“Maybe they do,” says the father. I admire him for answering like that. Most parents would say, “Of course not, they’re just made of wood,” but this father won’t offer that pedestrian reassurance. He doesn’t seem to mind challenging his son a little bit, even disturbing him a little bit.

“Will the horses ever see each other again?” asks the son.

“I don’t see how that can happen,” says the father. 

 “Did Mommy love the horses?” asks the son.

“I’ve never asked her,” says the father.

“Mommy doesn’t love anything,” says the son.

“She loves you,” says the father.

Palace Amusements was the indoor park where the original carousel was housed. Over the years, hundreds, maybe thousands of children had nightmares. One child named Gloria Sherman who grew up to be a registered nurse dreamed that the horses burst through the walls of the enclosure carrying her and her friend Helen Shea off to a vast dark tundra. I don’t know what became of Helen Shea. Another child named Henry Sneath who died young of leukemia dreamed that the mural called “Tillie,” outsized and grotesque, a so-called “fun face,” was rolling its eyes and chomping right at him with its big straight white teeth. Another child named Dan Carman who grew up to be a general contractor dreamed that someone with an axe was going to chop up all the horses and when he cried out in terror one of his parents hurried into his bedroom to see what was wrong. Things were terrible in the 1980s, although best efforts were made to save the structure, the carousel, the murals and decorations. Tillie was rescued and stored in a warehouse. By 2004, however, the edifice was being condemned as unsafe. Palace Amusements was put on the National Register of Historic Places and demolished forthwith. But enough about dreams.

Larry Smith’s story collections, A Shield of Paris and Floodlands were published in 2019 by Adelaide Books. His novella, Patrick Fitzmike and Mike Fitzpatrick, was published in 2016 by Outpost 19. Smith's stories have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Serving House Journal, Sequestrum, Exquisite Corpse, The Collagist, and [PANK], among numerous others. His poetry has appeared in Descant (Canada) and Elimae, among others. Smith lives in New Jersey. Visit Larrysmithfiction.com