The Beginning Read online

  Frankie and I looked at each other. We were both considering what to do. I spoke up first. “I still want to check it out. It could be interesting.”

  “You got it, Mom.” He looked at the lady and said, “Can you, please book hotel rooms for my mother and I for tonight somewhere near Adventure Planet?”

  “Sure, let me just pull up that information,” the lady said smiling at Frankie.

  I let Frankie and the lady behind the counter work it out while I got a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice from a spot further on down the counter. Wow, that juice was so much better than the stuff I’m used to. I got a glass for Frankie and brought it to him when I saw that he was done.

  “Thanks,” he said taking a sip. “That’s good. Ok, she couldn’t find a hotel any closer than twenty miles, and neither could I.”

  “So, maybe there are no luxury hotels out there.”

  “Mom, we looked at the cheap hotels and they were the twenty miles. The nearest luxury hotel, as you put it, is fifty miles away. In fact the hotels out there are independently owned. No chains.” He said this like it was a bad thing. Well, maybe it was, he knew more about hotels than I did.

  “So, maybe it isn’t open anymore,” I said. “I mean, if you owned a theme park wouldn’t you want hotels nearby?”

  “I would. Do you want to skip it? Maybe it’s a bad idea.”

  I stopped for a moment to think. We were already planning on spending at least one day at each of the theme parks in Orlando. I mean, at least four at Disney, two at Universal, two at SeaWorld, one at Discovery Cove, and at least one at each water park. And the more Frankie and I went to tourist attractions, the longer I put off getting in to my new apartment and getting a job. My life was on hold until we were done playing tourist.

  Did we really need to spend, or maybe waste, a day visiting this Adventure Planet? We didn’t even know if it still existed. Did we really want to spend a day on a wild goose chase? No, I thought, let’s continue on. It’s time to get on with the reason I came to Florida in the first place.

  I may have thought no, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was, “Yes, what the hell. Maybe something good will come out of it.”

  Frankie looked at me and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath waiting for my answer. “I’m glad you said that.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You are? Because that’s not the decision I had come to in my head. I’m not even sure why I said that. Why are you glad?”

  “Mom, you know me, I am not a big believer in fate. Hell, I tell people where to invest their money. If I even mentioned the word fate or feeling, I’d get laughed right out of business and into the poor house. But I can’t help it. Something is telling me we need to go. I mean, what are the odds that I would have found that brochure?”

  Frankie’s hunches had made a lot of money for Frank and I over the years. I trusted in him when he felt this way.

  “Point taken, I trust your instincts, but I want to eat dinner and then sit in my hotel room and think. I’m not sure I like this following my intuition thing. I haven’t done it for a long time. Let’s both mull it over and come to a decision in the morning,” I said.

  We got one more glass of orange juice and visited the bathrooms and vending machines one more time before we left. When we got in the truck Frankie placed the Adventure Planet Brochure on the seat between us. We drove on in silence. We didn’t even play music. We just, thought.

  When we arrived at the hotel, I was a little in shock. It was not that far off of I75, but it was not a great hotel compared to the ones we’d been staying in. The rooms were much smaller and the building smelled old. However, it was clean and the lady behind the desk was very friendly. In fact, she was so friendly I wondered how many guests she’d had recently. There were only a few cars in the lot, so I knew her rooms weren’t exactly filled.

  The area surrounding it the hotel looked as if you’d be ok driving to your destination and then driving back when you are done, but it did not look safe for walking anywhere. Everything seemed old and run down. Luckily for us there was a buffet restaurant in the same parking lot.

  We ate our dinner there and did not talk. I’m not sure if Frankie was thinking or daydreaming, but I was listening to the conversations of the few people who were around us. I heard some happy conversations, but mostly I heard people wondering what was going to happen to their city. The staff was talking about getting their hours cut and what that would mean to their families.

  One poor man mentioned that this was his second job and if they close Adventure Planet like the rumor says, he had no idea how he was going to feed his family. I looked at his name tag, it read “Jerome”. He had a face I liked, it was want you could call an honest face. He was a tall, well built and dark skinned African-American man. I was going to look for him tomorrow and give him a big tip. I couldn’t tip him tonight, because he was not our server. Besides, our server was well taken care of by Frankie. He always tipped according to service and the girl serving us was very attentive. I almost wondered if she found Frankie attractive.

  Back at the hotel I was in my room trying to read a Dorothy Gilman novel when Frankie practically burst in carrying his laptop. Why did I give him a key?

  “Holy crap, Frankie, you scared me!” I yelled at him, my heart pounding.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, but I had some things I wanted to tell you. I’ve been looking up information on this area, and I wanted to share it with you.”

  “Ok, I’ll put Mrs. Pollifax down for now.” I set my book on the night stand and gave my son my full attention. “Ok, what did you learn?”

  He sat at the edge of my bed. “First, we are in Early County. It was named after Jubal Early, a rather reckless civil war general. Adventure Planet is in a city called Neuspech. The town was named after the family who opened, and still own Adventure Planet. Apparently when it opened, Adventure Planet did quite well. I found a lot of older articles about them. Then, a year or so ago something happened and the bottom dropped out. By the way the word neuspech is a Czech word and translates to failure.”

  “Interesting,” was all I could say.

  Well, it was interesting. First, the county was named after a reckless general. Next the city was named after a family whose last name meant failure.

  “The park is currently owned by Adolf Neuspech,” Frankie continued.

  “Oh my god, that’s even worse. Why would you give our son that name?”

  “He’s named after his grandfather, the man who opened the park in the first place. In all of his photos they guy looks scared to death. I mean even when he’s smiling.”

  “Let me see.”

  Frankie handed me his laptop and I looked at the photos. In almost every picture he looked almost as if he were going to cry or wanted to run away. In most of the pictures he was with this bleached blonde, large busted woman who towered over him. Possibly because she wore six inch heels and he was always sort of hunched over.

  “Poor guy,” I said. “Who’s the blonde?”

  “That’s his wife, Barbara. According to the social column she left him about a year ago…which is not too long after the park started falling apart. I mean, according to the articles I’ve read.”

  “Yeah, marriage starts to fall apart, life starts to fall apart. I could see it.”

  “So, Mom do you still want to go tomorrow? We don’t have to. It could be a big disappointment.”

  “Could be but, I want to go. I promised myself I’d give Jerome a big tip.”

  “Who?”

  “Guy from the restaurant who was saying he works at Adventure Planet.”

  Frankie smiled at me. “Ok. We’ll go and we’ll give Jerome a big tip.”

  “He was also saying he was afraid it was going to close.”

  “The restaurant?”

  “No, Honey, Adventure Planet.”

  “Oh, wow. Good thing we’re going before it does.”

  “If it closes how will the people here
make a living? I mean he said he was working two jobs and still struggling.”

  “Something else will come along.”

  “Like what, Frankie? Another big box store? A mall?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Why are you getting so worked up about this?”

  “I don’t know. I think Jerome and the people at the restaurant are weighing on my mind. I feel for them. You’re father and I were lucky enough to never have that sort of trouble but we knew plenty of people who did and we always helped them.”

  “I get it, but it’s out of our control. We can’t keep it from closing.”

  “You’re right.” I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. When I opened them I looked at Frankie. He was sitting on the other bed in the room using his lap top. I didn’t even feel him take it from me. I reached over and picked up my book from my night stand. Maybe reading would help me forget about the park.

  I read a page or two, but just couldn’t concentrate. Instead I opened my laptop and did a search for books about theme parks. There were plenty on the major parks, but that’s not what I was looking for. I continued and found quite a few on subjects like theme park planning and careers and added them to my wish list. Then I saw one on abandoned theme parks. I bought the electronic version right away and started reading it.

  It had some of the eeriest photos I’ve ever seen. It creeped me out and made me sad all at the same time. Those photos represented lost dreams, lost opportunities, and lost jobs. I was saddened just looking at them.

  The photos had more of an impact on me than I realized. The images haunted my dreams. In those dreams I walked in to Adventure Planet and the entire park was nothing but images from the book. In one of my dreams, I was being chased by an abandoned carousal horse who wanted revenge for his death. Next I dreamed about Jerome and his family. In my dream Jerome, his wife and about 10 children sitting on the street corner begging in Dickens style. It was even snowing.

  “Mom. Mom! Wake up! Mom!”

  I heard Frankie calling my name. I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. I looked around the room. I was in the hotel. In my bed. That was good. There were no carousel horses in there. That was even better.

  “Mom, are you ok? You were yelling.”

  I hadn’t seen Frankie look like that since the last time he had a nightmare when he was a little boy. I took his hand.

  “It’s ok, Honey, I just had a nightmare. Dreamed about Adventure Planet and it wasn’t good. What time is it?”

  “About six.”

  “Did you stay in my room all night?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I kind fell asleep while using my computer.”

  “It’s ok,” I smiled at him. “Let’s get ready to go, I have to find Jerome and make sure he’s ok.”

  “Um, Ok.”

  I kicked him out of my room so I could shower and get dressed. I put on a pretty off white short sleeved top, purple shorts, and my favorite comfortable sneakers. I met Frankie in the lobby. He was wearing new looking jeans, a button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and some sort of suede shoes. Nothing of his was ever faded or worn looking. I wondered if he bought all new clothes just for the trip.

  We sat at a table and ate the hotel’s free breakfast. I ate stale muffins and some just ok fruit. At least the coffee and juice seemed good, if not watered down. Frankie seemed to love everything. I questioned his taste.

  After breakfast Frankie told the lady at the desk (the same one from last night) that we were going to Adventure Planet today. She looked at him kind of funny, but didn’t say anything. She gave us permission to leave the truck and the car hitch in her parking lot while we were gone. In fact, she let us keep the keys to our rooms in case we decided to spend the night again. In my mind I questioned this, but I suppose she didn’t do much business and it was wishful thinking on her part.

  We unhitched my car from the moving truck and we were on our way. What was going to happen next I didn’t know. Looking back, I never could have guessed.

  Chapter 4: Adventure Planet: Let the Adventure Begin

  We pulled up to the entrance of Adventure Planet and we stopped. It was like one of the pictures in that book I read last night. It was a sad, sad looking place. The paint was peeling. The foliage was growing over on to the road. There was nothing inviting about it. It would have made a fantastic heavy metal album cover.

  We were trying to figure out where to park when we finally saw a worn out sign that said “Parking”. We assumed it was once in the shape of an arrow, but now you really couldn’t tell what shape it was. We turned the way we thought the arrow was pointing, to the left. We followed the gravel path to the gravel parking lot. There were maybe twenty other cars in the lot.

  “Well, I don’t feel so bad now. Someone must be here,” Frankie said.

  “Yeah, at any rate we’re not the only ones.”

  “Unless, of course the cars belong to the employees,” Frankie joked. At least I think it was a joke.

  We parked the car and walked the gravel pathway toward the park entrance. At least we were hoping that’s what the sign said. When we came out of the foliage we saw one small, carnival like ticket booth. The girl sitting in it was reading a magazine and chewing gum. We had to knock on the window to get her attention.

  She looked up at us and simply said, “What do ya want?”

  I let Frankie take this one. If I had to speak I probably would have yelled at her.

  “Good morning. Two adults, please.”

  She looked at him. “Ya never been here before, huh?”

  “No, ma’am, we have not.”

  “Well, go in. If you like it you can pay when you leave. Saves me from having to give you your money back.”

  With that she turned back to her magazine and ignored us. Frankie and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and went in.

  Again we walked along a gravel path that was overgrown with trees. We were walking for what seemed like several minutes. I was starting to wonder if we were ever going to get there when the pathway opened up to a very wide area. You could tell the ground was once painted yellow. We were in the area called the sun. We knew that because we saw a large, much worn sign that said “The Sun”.

  Going down that same pole there were other signs directing you to the other “planets” in the park. They were: Planet Kids, Planet Super, Planet Future, Planet Dinosaur, Planet West, Planet Movie, Planet Magic, and Planet Fairy Tale. Simple names, but you knew how each planet was themed

  “Well, where do you want to start?” Frankie asked me.

  “Wish I had a map,” I said.

  “Yeah, I haven’t seen one and that oh so polite lady in the box didn’t offer one. Maybe there aren’t any.”

  “Ok, let’s start from top down. The second arrow from the top says Planet Kids. Let’s go there first.”

  “Ok. Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve seen here today.”

  We walked along another gravel path way to Planet Kids. The very first thing we came to was a carousel. The horses weren’t as creepy as the ones in my dream or even in the book, but they weren’t that far off either. The carousel wasn’t running but it was playing music. The music coming from it was once cheerful, I guessed, but whatever was being used to play the music was pretty worn out and the sound was more like a record album left in the sun.

  I hadn’t noticed, but there was a man painting one of the horses by hand. He looked up at us and smiled. “Hi, folks, would you like to take a ride on her?”

  I looked toward the voice. It was Jerome from the restaurant last night. He was dressed in jean shorts, a white t-shirt, and white tennis shoes. At least I assumed his shoes were once white, right now they were kind of grey and had paint splattered on them. He was also wearing his name tag from the restaurant.

  “Hello, again,” he said smiling. “I remember you from the restaurant last night. What are you doing here?”

  “We came for a visit, wanted to check the place out. I’m sorry did you say you remem
bered us?” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am, you and the gentleman here stood out because you weren’t from around here.”

  “You’re just off the highway; don’t you get a lot of people from out of town in the restaurant?” Frankie asked.

  “Sometimes. But usually when they see the condition of our town, they just stay in their room till morning.”

  Frankie and I just looked at each other. That was the impression we got too. In fact, we almost did that.

  “Jerome, you asked if we wanted to ride. Is this thing safe, ‘cause it sure doesn’t look it?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. I take personal care of all the rides in the park. I started working here when I was in high school, and through college, and then after college. I guess you could kind of say that we grew up together her and me. Only she’s aging a lot faster than I am, poor girl.”

  As he said that he patted the head of the horse he had been painting. I looked closely at it.

  “Jerome, just how old are these horses?” I asked.

  “Well, ma’am, it’s hard to say. The original Mr. Neuspech bought everything used, including all the rides. He opened this place in 1973. I’m going to guess that the horses are maybe from the 1950’s. Maybe older.”

  “Oh, my God, you’re sure they are safe to sit on?” Frankie asked.

  “I tell, you what I’ll start her up and I’ll ride with you. When you’re ready to get off, I’ll jump down and turn her off. How’s that?”

  I looked at him and smiled. I liked his confidence. “You have a deal.”

  Frankie and I chose our horses and mounted them. Mine was one that had once been decorated with pinks and purples. Frankie chose one that looked like it had once been all greens. Jerome set his paint brush down and started up the ride and hopped on a horse near us.