Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Wanted: True stories about Coney Island
Experience has taught Charles Jacques Jr. to ask: Anybody wanna talk about Coney Island in its original incarnation? Before Paramount's Kings Island?
He's writing a book on everything Coney — history, people, rides, great moments, little moments, people who ran it, people who went, the works.
Reason he's asking: He has written four books on historic parks and whenever one comes out, everyone says they wish they knew, 'cause they have a story.
Not that he doesn't have plenty: As the former publisher of Amusement Park Journal, he knows the industry. In addition, he has visited 30 times, touring Coney today, digging in archives and recording stories.
Like how, during the 1937 flood, employees rowed out and drank bourbon and river water. Or the letter from the CEO of Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, Pa., admitting that, “Any good idea we ever had, we stole from Coney Island.”
Jacques is 75 percent finished researching the 224-page coffee-table book with 500 photos. It's tentatively titled Coney Island and due in late 2001.
Got something? E-mail him at apjacqu@suite224.net. Or write 968 Doyle Road, P.O. Box 478, Jefferson, Ohio 44047.
Early Christmas: There's no award for first on the holiday bandwagon, but if there were, Jerry Malsh would get it, thanks to his billboards.
Those would be the ones that have been up in 10 locations since mid-August with the message: “Season's Greetings from the ad agency that thinks ahead.”
Malsh, owner of J. Malsh & Co. has been putting up the billboard for the past 10 years. “Some years we skip and have a January billboard showing a luscious ear of corn and a summery message.
“But Christmas is the one people talk about. I hear so much, I'm starting to think of it as my civic responsibility.”
Billboards will be up another week or so.
Our turn: Here's a chilling thought for breakfast: What if aliens, bent on colonization, landed here and did to us what the technologically superior white Europeans did to Americans Indians?
Ugly, eh?
That's the idea of What Happened to the Indians (Shannon Books, $15.95) by Anderson Township writer Terry Shannon, who says he doesn't like science fiction and refuses to use the term to describe Indians.
“Aside from aliens blowing up a few things, I don't consider it sci-fi. I think it's much more of a political thriller.
“Aliens were to be a side issue. But as I started researching them, especially the Roswell thing, this new idea sort of took over.”
In the book, aliens take over a canyon in New Mexico, shoot down a few fighter jets, hijack a commercial airliner and blow away a satellite.
The issue then is do we try to make peace, behave like American Indians did, or fight?
Shannon is a house painter who wrote in his spare time — “it was only possible because Kathy (his wife) took care of everything else in the house, including our daughter, so I'd have time.”
It's at Joseph-Beth, on the Internet at www.whathappenedtotheindians.com, and by phone: 888-386-3974.
Contact Jim Knippenberg at (513) 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
