It’s that time of year again, when amusement parks open their doors and the crowds pour in. I will be among them, as I have been since I was a child. What better way to spend a day than among the breathy organ music, the smell of funnel cake and roasting peanuts, the ethereal laughter and desultory screams, the impresarios entreating you to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar or to strike the stage with an oversized mallet, the click-click-click of the roller coaster’s lift and the industrial clank of the Zipper, and the crowds — the endless crowds, with their cotton candy and strollers in tow?
It’s a peculiarly American thing, the boardwalk and its offshoots. And, like so many of our free society’s most compelling features, it evolved pretty much by accident. Constructed along the East Coast to afford casual visitors an opportunity to enjoy the sea air, what were intended to be little more than wooden walkways soon began to attract basic amenities, then restaurants, entertainers, and freaks, and — finally — full-scale diversions. Before anybody knew what happened, they had created a scene.
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