The ticket booth was also the park office, where they would book company picnics, school outings etc. Jay Parker and his wife handled that function for years. Jay was also the one who MC'd the acts that were featured at the park.....animal acts, highwire acts etc.

The Roller Coaster was built around 1937-38 and was owned by Oscar Bittler. Bittler also owned the Whip, Flying Scooters, Crazy Cups and Kiddy Land.........he also owned the train that circled the park (it ran under the coaster).

The Merry Go Round , Spook House, Bumper Cars and Shooting Gallery were owned by Robert Long and his wife Sis. The animals for the Merry Go Round were all carved and made by Bob Long. "Jasper" was the name of the "Dragon Boat" that toured the lake . It's skipper was Ralph Randall (brother of Sis Long) he also owned the cotton candy stand and the soft ice cream stand. The popcorn stand and Refreshment stand were owned by John and Aggie Valego (I worked there summers while in high school) The Penny Arcade was owned by the Totas (who's grandchildren now own the electric cars and putt putt golf course up near Watkins). The french fry stand and mid-way games were owned by Al Wisenflue (not sure of spelling on that). There was a large fire in the late '50 or early '60 that destroyed the restaurant, french fry stand and refreshment stand. All of course were rebuilt.

My father ran and maintained the Coaster for 20 years. He had to walk it everyday to check for any problems (New York state safety required). By the way....the trick to walking the coaster was to walk it starting from the end of the ride and walk it to the beginning. During the winter Don Bittler (Oscar's son) and my father repaired, painted and built new rides for the coming season. If my father were alive today it would break his heart to see what the park looks like now.

By the way........The mystery of the Lake.....does it have a bottom or not?.......the story goes that it is bottomless and flows into Seneca Lake..........I hate to be the one to break the news but it does have a bottom. For many years it was highly polluted, thanks to G.E. foundry dumping into it. Of course the gas from the "Jasper" boat didn't help either. Almost every spring the park would flood.

A ring boy kept his ring as safe as a police officer keeps his badge.

A ring boy -- that's what the operators of the carousel at Eldridge Park were called when Kowalski started there as a 16-year-old in the late 1960s -- put his brass ring in the holder and then watched.

If a customer managed to reach out and grab the ring, the operator had to be quick to jump up to the platform, give the lucky person a ticket for a free ride and recover their brass ring.

That's the way Robert A. Long, who owned the merry-go-round and half of the other rides at the Elmira amusement park, wanted it. For Kowalski, if Long wanted a thing done a certain way, he was happy to comply.

"I did my job because he was the type of man he was," Kowalski said. "He was the kind of person you wanted to make happy. I didn't want to do anything that wouldn't satisfy him."

To Kowalski, Long was the heart and spirit of the old Eldridge Park, a person whose hard work and love made a turn on the carousel a must-do on any visit to the park.

Kowalski first met Long when he took a job as a high school student working at the park. It was the perfect job, Kowalski said.

Eldridge Park was the place to be Friday and Saturday nights, and his job on the carousel put him at the heart of the action. He loved the fun and energy of the park. Every fall, when the park shut down for the winter, Kowalski and other workers would be happy for the rest. But by January, they were itching for the park to re-open.

"You say you've got spring fever?" he laughed. "Nobody had it worse than us."

Kowalski skipped his senior prom and other school activities to man his post on the carousel. That didn't matter, he said, because his classmates all turned up at the park after the event anyway. "I wouldn't have traded those days for anything," he said. "Not for anything."

Just as memorable, though, was the example set by Long. Long spent so much time working at the park that, every spring, he would move into a room above the Spook House.

Long wasn't the original owner of the Eldridge Park carousel and, despite the legend to the contrary, Long didn't hand-carve all the animals himself. Still, in many ways, the carousel was Long's creation, Kowalski said.

The ride was put together by the pieces of other carousels, Kowalski said. Long worked tirelessly to keep the mechanism operating. He recorded the music, and it had to meet his rigid specifications.

"No singing," Kowalski said, as he played me a recording of the carousel's music. "Never any singing. This is what drew people; people would just sit and listen to the music, even if they weren't going to ride."

Long supervised the painting and upkeep of the animals. Never satisfied with just splashing more paint over a bad spot, Long would have each animal stripped to the wood and painted with layer after layer of paint and varnish.

He'd do the detail work himself with an airbrush. He frequently hand-carved replacement parts in his workshop.

Little got between Long and his work. Kowalski felt honored to be invited to the party when Long and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Long, however, didn't show up at the affair until after the park had closed for the night.

Kowalski worked for Long into the late 1970s. He met his wife, Terry Kowalski, at Eldridge Park in 1976. Sports fans will recall their daughter, Christina Kowalski, who starred on Horseheads High School softball, volleyball and basketball teams and set records pitching for St. Joseph's University.

After Long's death in the 1980s, Kowalski would occasionally fill in to run the carousel for Long's family. Kowalski filmed the carousel's last run in 1989 and helped dismantle it the next day.

On Monday, Elmira's City Council voted to work with the Eldridge Park Carousel Preservation Society to install and operate a carousel at the park.

Kowalski applauds those efforts and hopes future generations will get to enjoy a merry-go-round as he did.

It won't be the same, though. A refurbished carousel will, no doubt, have fancy animals, catchy music and brass rings to grab for.