This drawing dates from those distant days of my life in the mid-80s when I was doing sketches of my Cambridge neighborhood and the shabby but evocative amusement parks of the Massachusetts coast. This one is from Nantasket Beach on the shore south of Boston. There used to be an amusement park named "Paragon Park" there, and it had a famous wooden roller coaster. The park is no more, but the coaster lives on as "The Wild One" at Six Flags in Mitchellville, Maryland. (Blogger's note about amusement park art: The "Himalaya" ride I depicted and posted in the December 3rd entry here was at Paragon Park, not Salisbury Beach as I mistakenly stated.)
Paragon Park was a traditional amusement park, a conglomeration of private entertainments, motels, rides, attractions, and eateries rather than an "integrated" theme park. One of the attractions was a nightclub, bar, and eatery called "Mr. Nick's Eudemon Lounge." Mr. Nick was Greek, and "Eudemon" means "Happy" in modern Greek. The word comes from the ancient Greek eudaimon, where "eu" means "good, or happy" and "daimon" means "god" or "spirit," hence "good spirit." The club had a sign out front that depicted a cute red devil with a pitchfork and a motto that said something like "Oh, You Demon, you!" It was one of the few places at Paragon Park that stayed open all year round.
It's gone forever, and has been for more than twenty years. This drawing depicts the back of the Eudemon Lounge as well as the other buildings near it. These are all gone, razed to make way for condominiums.
I did this drawing in grey ink, something I used back then to give a pencil-like quality to an ink drawing. I don't use grey ink any more because it's hard to scan and reproduce. The original drawing is faded, just like the places it depicts. In my memory I can still smell the greasy breaded fish frying in the beachside restaurants, though it is now perpetually off season at Paragon Park.
1 comment:
Actually you were right the first time about the Himalaya. The dead giveaway that it is Shaheen's Fun-O-Rama in Salisbury beach is the side view of the haunted house. I stood just where you did on many a summer night and observed just that scene. You really brought me back! thank you. I can still hear Bob Salter saying, "And now we're going to go real, REAL fast!"
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