'The Rocket' roller-coaster rides again in Ocean View

NORFOLK

The Bage boys had their hands in their pockets as they stood by the roller-coaster car in the salvage yard, waiting for the trash hauler to arrive.

"I painted the name on the front," said Larry Bage, who is really a sculptor. "I used to paint signs."

White letters rimmed with black, surrounded by a flourish, read, "The Rocket."

"I got one of the last rides," said Larry's nephew, Michael. "I was in the front, standing up. Daredevil!"

That was a little before the Ocean View Amusement Park roller coaster was scheduled to blow up on cue for the ABC Movie of the Week, "The Death of Ocean View Park," but it had actually died several months earlier, in September 1978, when the park closed. Four of the auctioned cars ended up at Imperial Construction Co., beside the railroad tracks off 21st Street, rusting and rotting and ruined.

The Bage boys stood, hunched up against the cold wind, and looked at the car.

"The sun shining off it, it's radiant," Larry said.

"It's beautiful," Michael said.

The K & N Hauling & Son truck pulled up outside the chain-link fence. "Trash Removal" was painted on the cab. A roll-on container was winched to the ground. Carefully, Michael maneuvered a fork-lift under the coaster and carried it to the street.

"How heavy is it?" Ken Strother asked.

"About 1,500 pounds," Michael said.

"I like moving a little piece of history," Strother said. "I was thinking it would be cool to whip over to the side of the road where the park was and put it back where it used to be, for just a second."

The wood ramp into the container bowed as the coaster was pushed aboard.

"Better chock it," Michael advised.

Strother and his crew nailed boards before and behind the coaster's wheels, then tied it down. They closed the tailgate and winched the container back on the truck. Michael pushed against the coaster's back end as though he could keep it from stubbing against the tailgate as the container tipped up.

Strother eased the truck around the corner of 21st onto Colley Avenue and gained a little speed down the incline of the railroad underpass. The truck rolled up the other side, pushed by inertia, the way the coaster cars used to run when the ride was called Sky Rocket and stood 90 feet tall, back when it was new, in 1928.

Strother cornered right onto 26th, then left onto Monticello, gaining speed but never reaching the 50 mph the coaster once achieved. He passed DePaul Medical Center, where injuries are healed. He passed rows of blue recycling bins in Northside, where garbage gets a second chance. He pulled into the parking lot in front of the Pretlow Branch Library in Ocean View and parked the truck.

A small crowd was waiting, snapping pictures and reminiscing about riding The Rocket. The coaster rolled easily down the ramp, through the double doors and into the new Ocean View Station Museum.

"Looks good, don't it?" Larry said, modestly proud of the restoration work that he and his brother and his nephew had done, sandblasting decades of rust off the metal carriage, replacing the wooden sides and the padded seats and the nuts and bolts and paint.

People climbed in to have their pictures taken, museum supporters and city councilmen and Rose Brothers Williams and her husband, Don, who paid for the restoration.

The roller coaster once had a sign that warned "Do Not Stand Up!" That will go in the museum, too. The car posed for pictures as the exhibit centerpiece, surrounded by memorabilia from the park.

Larry took his hands out of his pockets. With the rescued car at last safe and sound, he raised both hands above his head - Do not stand up! Daredevil! - and laughed.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com