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Survival of the Fittest


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Survival of the Fittest
Sideshow Epiphanies

Kenneth DiMaggio

    The magazine I edited in New York, folded. I had to find another job. Dressed in a suit I always hated, I took the F-train to Manhattan. Because I was now unemployed, I took the train later than I usually did. Before the train left the borough of Queens where I lived, a man with no body below his waist, got on the train. He propelled himself along with two pieces of wood. To “walk” he would prop himself up and then set himself down. He “walked” like this to the end of the car.
    I realized that the F-train I was on went all the way to Coney Island in Brooklyn. I had never been to Coney Island. I heard about its magic and eccentricities. I decided to ride the end of the train to Coney Island.
     Along the way, the train was filled with passengers who could have worked in a side show on Coney Island. At the Times Square stop, a man wearing a T-shirt entered with a stethoscope around his neck. He would constantly place the scope next to his heart and continue to listen for beats. At the Union Square 14th stop, a tall lithe blonde got on. Blondes are about as rare in Manhattan as brunettes are in Iceland. This blonde was even more rare in being a broad-shouldered drag queen. When the train got to Jay Street-Borough Hall in Brooklyn, an old man with long curly sideburns, a long black overcoat, and a black felt hat entered my car. For a moment I thought the train made a surreal stop in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I soon realized that the passenger was a Hassidic Jew.
    Finally the train arrived at the Coney Island stop at the end of Brooklyn. For this early, summer-like September day, there were not many people about. I started walking along the boardwalk. As I did, I passed the ivy-covered ruins of an old roller coaster. It looked like a large skeleton of a brontosaurus with its rump up while its long neck was lost grazing in some field of pre-historic grass. I also passed a few arcades that were still open. In one of them, a Frank Sinatra song was playing: I recognized the song as “A Summer Wind.” Giant inflatable pencils, beach balls, and cutely smiling sharks hung from the awnings of these cheap souvenir stands. I soon discovered a “museum” just off of the boardwalk. Inside were old glass framed exhibits of stuffed animals with two heads. There was a fake “skeleton” of a “Fiji Island Mermaid” which looked like the skeleton of a bat with the skull of a cat glued on top. And there were pictures of old side show performers with names like Dolly, the 500-pound honey, and Elaine, the Elastic Lady, who was pictured with her legs knotted behind her beck while hanging from a trapeze that she clamped on to through her mouth. (And it looked like she even managed to smile while doing it.)
    After the museum, I went back to the boardwalk. I soon came to a pier. As I walked to the end of it, I thought about all the jobs I was supposed to look for today. I thought about how my day suddenly turned out differently, when that waist-less man entered my subway car back in Astoria, Queens. I thought about all the unusual people who got on the various stops on my way to Coney Island. Finally, I thought about the suit, tie, and white shirt I would have to wear tomorrow.
    First I took off my tie. I let it dangle over the railing of the pier for a moment. Then I let it drift down to the anti-freeze colored sea below. I then took off my suit jacket; no, I would still need that. I would still need to get a job. But not today, and neither tomorrow, and probably not the next day.
    Not until I found a few more places like Coney Island; a few more places in the city that I did not truly begin to know about, until today.



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