More Coney Island Memories

I seem to be packing in a summer of Coney Island memories just in case Coney Island as we know it now really disappears under the control of condo developers. I hope not, I hope they preserve some of the original flavor, but right now that's very much up in the air. So whenever there is a special event this summer we are heading over there.

Yesterday we went to the Sand Sculpture contest. We arrived very late in the day, around 4:20 PM when the contest ended at 5. That's because we spent the early part of the day shopping and doing other errands. Some of the entries were already eroding away and not recognizable but there were a few excellent sculptures still visible. I especially liked the Coney Island castle, the sleeping mermaid, and the "Davy Jones" creature as he appeared in "Dead Man's Chest."

I've discovered a new hero, Dr. Couney. Dr. Couney believed in incubators to save premature babies and he set up clinics at various places including a sideshow at Coney Island. That's because before the late 30's incubators weren't accepted by the medical profession, and it was expensive so a lot of hospitals didn't even bother with them. They just let the preemies die!

Dr. Couney had 8,000 preemies at Coney Island and saved 6,500 of them. For those days that's a pretty impressive record considering the mainstream medical profession wrote those babies off. Ironically, Dr. Cooney died in 1954, the year I was born, and since I was six weeks premature and weighed 2.5 pounds at birth, I was in an incubator until I gained weight up to 5 pounds. Maybe his work -- even if it was a sideshow and people came to gawk at the tiny babies -- helped to save my life. Thanks, Dr. Couney!

At the Coney Island History Project I did some major arm twisting and got Bruce to record his story about his mother chasing the little clown who swatted her with a slapstick at Steeplechase Park. He was so reluctant until he realized he would be talking to a computer and not interviewed by a live person. Now it's on record and maybe it will show up in a book and on the Brooklyn College website. If it does, I'll put the link on here.