2005 Pitsburgh Convention

National Carousel Association 2008 Convention Pittsburgh

Margaret Franklin

Now I Know How it Feels to Be a Spaghetti Noodle August 24, 9:49 p.m Ahhhh...the hot tub is soooo relaxing! What a wonderful way to end my first day here! Unfortunately, my trip didn't begin so good. I had to reschedule my flight because customs wouldn't let me take my merchandise. They said I didn't have the right kind of permit. I'm glad I was able to phone my in-laws and ask for help. Dave was right nest tho the phone. He heard it ringing but chose to ignore it and let the machine pick it up because he figured there was no way it could have been me. Fortunately his dad was home and if I'd called 15 minutes later he would have been gone. He sacrificed his golf game to pick up Dave with my purple bag. Dave brought an extra suitcase just in case, but my purple bag was good enough. I was able to transfer my clothes, etc. to my purple bag and send the pink suitcase full of my merchandise back with them. I asked Dave and his dad if they wanted to go out for lunch but they had to head right back as the traffic was bad. As soon as they left, I tried to get a boarding pass from the machine but it wouldn't let me. Just as well, because when I asked at the desk, they were able to get me an earlier flight. I had rescheduled for 4:50 because I had no idea how long it would take Ted and Dave to get there. The earlier flight left almost immediately. I was able to just breeze on through and catch the 12:45 flight even though it was delayed to 1:15. I took a shuttle bus to the departure lounge and had to go outside to board the plane. I had the best seat on the plane, right up front with nobody else sitting next to me and plenty of leg room. And it was one of those nice little commuter planes with the propellers on the wings. Personally, I like those better than great big jet planes. There were not many people on the flight and best of all NO BABIES!!! And I had a wonderful view of the propeller outside my window. In fact I started to get the giggles a bit about “We like things that spin.” As the plane started taxiing down the runway, I started to feel very sleepy. Personally, I tend to find takeoffs and landings very, very relaxing. TO me they're like being rocked in a giant cradle. The journey was worth it for the airport alone! The Pittsburgh airport is absolutely amazing! I almost wished I could spend an entire day just exploring there! There were a lot of interesting shops, a “Mr. Rogers” display, a dinosaur skeleton, an antique airplane suspended from the ceiling and all kinds of other fascinating sights everywhere. It was like a theme park, only much quieter. Beautiful flute music played and I felt like a child full of awe and wonder. One of the coolest things in that airport was this glassed-in subway train-type thing that transported passengers from where they got off the plane to the baggage claim. All in all I found it to be a beautiful airport with a good, relaxing feeling. Ironically, the only time I encountered any screaming babies today was back in the Toronto airport, naturally, when I was trying to use the phone, of course. The Toronto airport is so noisy, ugly and so NOT Aspie-friendly, especially earlier in the morning when it was so busy and crowded. A shuttle bus took me from the airport to downtown. Pittsburgh is not really such a big city, just extremely convoluted. It would be easy to get lost there. The city is basically SCRIBBLED with long, winding, narrow streets that made traffic slow and everywhere take forever to get to.

And I've never seen so many jay-walkers in my life! People in Pittsburgh think nothing of walking out into the traffic or crossing against the lights! I swear, nearly half the pedestrians in town must have a death wish! And there are plenty of crazy drivers too. The layout of this town is conducive to road-rag! No wonder each of these carousels are at least an hour away each even if they are relatively close as the crow flies, but I could understand Moses getting lost for 40 years in the desert if it was as full of these narrow, winding streets going every which way as Pittsburgh. At least an hour to get downtown on the shuttle bus and at least another hour to take public transit to Monroeville. I noticed there were no babies on the bus either. No strollers allowed! I think their buses are narrower than ours anyway. However they did allow wheelchairs. When I finally got to the hotel, it was hard to make up my mind what I wanted to do first---Eat or swim??!! It was good to see familiar faces and people were genuinely sympathetic and felt bad for me when I told them about my situation with customs. I was pretty hot and sweaty from my journey so the desire for a refreshing swim won out over food, at least for a little while. I didn't stay long in the pool. I found the chlorine was pretty strong and my eyes were quite red when I was finished. This is a half-indoor, half-out-door pool with sort of a rubber curtain beneath the window separating the deep from the shallow end, the shallow end being indoors and the deep being outside, not very efficient for swimming laps. When I was done, I changed into fresh clothes and went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. It seems to be a tradition at these last couple conventions for my first meal to treat myself to a seafood dish with a glass of white wine. After dinner was our reception. It was great because everyone got to talk about their favorite carousels. There was a beautiful miniature carousel on display with little dolls riding many of the horses. I miss The Cat. I should have asked my hubby to bring him after all. My two stuffed ducks, Waddle and Wee Doo are in my backpack, but I have a feeling those two wanna be alone together. After the reception, one more relaxing soak in the hot tub before bed. August 25th, 12:22 a.m I miss my hubby! I miss The Cat and I miss my own bed!! 3:44 a.m GRRRRRRR!!! I'M HUNGRY! HUNGRY! HUNGRY!!! Yet I'm reluctant to open the mini bar because I know there's a charge for everything in there. One thing I miss about being home is going to the kitchen and pouring myself a bowl of cereal. It's funny. Yesterday all I ate during the day was a bowl of cereal at 4:30 in the morning and a dear nook packet of sesame pretzel nuggets on the plane at around 1:30 and finally supper at around 7:00; salad, garlic bread and my seafood pasta dish but I was too full to finish the whole thing. At least I ate all the seafood, but there must have been at least 1/3 of the pasta left. Dessert during the reception was an assortment of delectable little goodies. I had a brownie and two dear nook cheese cakes; one amaretto and one chocolate.

Waddle is pestering me for caramel corn! KVAAAACK-WAK-WAAK-WACK!!! 2:50 p.m I-the-Diddle-Do-It Sammiches After 3:30 this morning I had pretty much given up on trying to sleep anymore so I did some embroidery and watched the Disney channel for awhile. Then at around 5 I had my shower and got dressed. There was a music video by Bowling for Soup on the Disney channel, so naturally I was in the mood to listen to them during my walk. I popped their CD into my Walkman and off I went. I walked down the stairs and outside, around the parking lot. After I'd been walking for awhile, there was still time to kill before breakfast so I sat on the comfy couch and did some more embroidery until the rest of the group showed up and we could go in. We were soon seated and enjoying a salubrious feast of fruit, yogurt, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and pancakes and enjoying lively discussion around the table. Marcia is a veterinarian and she's writing a book about her adventures. Sounds like she could be the next James Herriot. She told us a hilarious story about a group of student who came to watch a horse being castrated. Anyone who was feeling squeamish could leave the room if they wanted to, but all the boys insisted on staying and EIGHT of them fainted, especially when they heard the “CRUNCH!” of the severed testicles. “I guess guys tend to take castration personally.” she said. Soon we were on the bus and soon we were at Del Grosso's. The place was great! I'd already taken a few pictures before we even got to the carousel. There was this really cute kiddie ride with elephants and a Mangel's kiddie carousel with Illions horses. I had taken only 2 or 3 pictures of the beautiful Allan Herschel carousel when my camera ran our of film already and automatically rewound. I had a scare when I opened my camera and thought there was a piece of broken film jammed in there. It turned out not to be a piece of broken film after all and I hope I didn't break my camera trying to fix it. After a few rides on the carousel, we went for lunch. Lunch was Del Grosso's famous Italian or turkey hoagies. It was an interesting surprise to get our hoagies unwrapped only to discover that the lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, etc. each came individually wrapped so you could put what you wanted on them. I didn't use all my lettuce. After lunch more rides. Besides the carousel, I had two rides on this wonderful spinning balloon ride with colourful striped hot air balloons. I even took a picture in mid-flight! I had names for some of my favorite horses. The black and white pinto is “Domino”, the pale gray one with purple and turquoise trappings is “Tehila” which is Hebrew for “Song of Praise” and the gold and white pinto with no upper teeth is Alex. I'll write more later. We're arriving at Idlewild. “A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing means you can use the plane again!” I know I had a caramel apple this afternoon, but Waddle is bugging me for caramel corn!

Above: Del Grosso's carousel horses, (left) Alex, (right) Tehila

6:35 p.m Just finished dinner. Idlewild Park is fabulous! It's got to be one of the most beautiful carousels I've ever seen! I've lost count of how many rides I've had on it. It's one thing to have seen so many pictures of the Idlewild carousel in books, magazines and on the Internet, but quite another to see the real thing in person and actually ride all these magnificent horses including the armoured horse and the spectacular gray steed with her flamboyant pink plume.

During our bus trips I actually won TWO prizes in the raffles. First I won an NCA T-shirt and later I won a VIDEO about P.T.C.#6 in Burlington Colorado! GUYEEERE!! Colour me happy! I bought a pin at Del Grosso's. I haven't had a chance to see the gift shop here yet. I am wearing two wrist bands at the moment. The one from Del Grosso's has red stars and the Idlewild band has yellow dots. And I actually rode the roller-coaster here as well as the Caterpillar! The roller-coaster had good old-fashioned plain flat seats that I actually FIT in! Same with the Caterpillar, but it doesn't have that closing canopy anymore. I don't like things that spin that fast anymore. It was making my neck hurt! On our way here we saw a huge water park with an ENORMOUS wave pool/man-made lake type thing. SO THAT was that brilliant turquoise body of water I could see from the plane

yesterday!! Marcia won several prizes on the bus too and the lady sitting next to her won a cute little carousel tin with an even cuter little stuffed duck inside. I would have enjoyed wining that, but Waddle and Wee Doo have enough kids. There's already Andre, Oreo, Shane, and Serina, and last week at the C.N.E we brought home Slartibardfast. This little duck in the carousel tin can wear its pointy lid like a DEVO hat!! 8:25 p.m I was going to go on the balloon ride but they had to fix a seat belt so I didn't know how long they'd take and found it hard to settle. This place has a balloon ride just like the one at the other place but it has purple striped balloons in addition to the blue, green and red ones. So I had two more rides on the carousel. At the end of my penultimate ride, I took a picture of the horse I'd just been riding wearing my Gene Simmons hat. After all, today's his birthday, don'cha know! (Gene Simmons, not the horse!)

Shortly after we got on the bus we were all given these pretty tree ornaments. I think I may wear mine as an earring. And now we're riding off into the sunset back to our hotel. Friday August 26th I Used to be a Werewolf but I'm Okay NOWWWWW! 3:45 a.m Ahhhh!! I KNEW I should've brought tweezers! Ever since I've been on the Pill I've regularly sprouted an annoying crop of facial hair that has to be plucked regularly, even though I've been off the Pill for at least two years now! I swear if I were left on some deserted island with no tweezers, I'd probably have a BEARD!!! I know that many married couples start to look alike, but this is ridiculous! To top it off, once again I am HUNGRY!!! I didn't really have much of a supper last night.

Mostly salad. True there was chicken and ribs available but I really did not feel like dealing with meats that were slathered in messy barbecue sauce, especially since I had my embroidery with me which I take out to work on at regular intervals. I know one of my LiveJournal friends suggested that I have the buffet breakfast only on the last day but TOUGH SHIT!! I am TOO HUNGRY!! I need extra fuel for all the buzzing around I do on these trips. In fact I'm already starving for breakfast! I'd even thought of having an ice cream or a candy bar last night before bed, but I was a good smurf and now here it is nearly 4 in the morning and I'm hungry enough to eat a MOOSEE!! Antlers and all!! RRRAAAARRR!!! At least I drifted off to sleep more quickly last night. Round-About Faire was open for awhile after we got back to the hotel, so I checked it out. The room it's in is so small this year. I didn't see much that I really wanted this time around. We certainly don't need anymore Christmas tree ornaments since we're not having a tree this year. Our last tree bought the farm on Boxing Day. It refused to stand any longer and the lights and tinsel were so hopelessly tangled we just had to throw the whole thing out. Besides I already have millions of tins and coffee mugs. No doubt, I definitely would have sold if I had been allowed to bring my T-shirts. At least I was able to hand out several business cards and I may get some orders. Lynn is definitely interested in the goats for her and her husband. It's a pity my website doesn't do justice to the ever-increasing infinite variety of carousel animals available. The assortment is one of those things one must see in person. Nevertheless, there were at lest four women yesterday who were wearing T-shirts they had bought from me at the Binghamton convention. Ruby wears her blue tiger all the time and gets a lot of compliments. Her daughter, Susan has one with a Dentzel stander in blue trappings. Betty Jacques was wearing her S&G lilac horse and Sandra was wearing the patriotic Parker she'd bought from me! They auctioned off the armoured horse T-shirt I'd brought on one of the other buses. Rumour has it that it went for $500 but I'm not sure. Bidding was fast and furious. The money goes to the NCA to help raise funds for the maintenance and preservation of antique carousels. I arranged for a wake-up call at 6:00 but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm out and about before them. I'm SOOOO FRIGGIN HUNGRY!! GRRRRR!! 10:26 a.m We've just toured the International Rooms in the University of Pittsburgh. Fascinating! I took quite a few pictures including one of an owl made entirely out o different shades of wood. The school is fascinating! I love the Gothic architecture! The main foyer was like King Arthur's Castle or something! I bet the Harry Potter fans that I know would find this place impressive. The place is so full of history and everything! It's like something out of a movie! I'm just totally blown away! I've seen so many amazing things here! At the moment we are sitting in the chapel listening to the organ recital! Awesome! 11:02 a.m Now I'm back on the bus as everyone gradually gets on. One thing that impressed me about this place was how wide and comfortable most of the classroom seats are. I overheard someone say that they were built with big, burly 200+lb men in mind. Now most things,

including the plane I flew in on, seem to be built for anorexic 14-year-olds! We're Off to See the Gizzard! 5:38 p.m Kennywood was great! I've lost count there too of the number of rides I took on this colourful Dentzel carousel. It's all horses, except for a lion and a tiger, and I'm happy to say I got to ride both! During the afternoon there I also had a ride on the Jackrabbit roller coaster! It was fantastic! It doesn't look very big from the ground, but it's built on a hill and around the corner it does a double-dip! Best of all, FLAT seats with NO partition! I wish ALL roller-coasters had these kind of seats. I was a bad smurf this afternoon. I had a huge ice cream cone. I thought I'd be swimming it off later this afternoon, but I'm just too tired! I had a bath and now I'm just quietly relaxing in my room watching TV before the banquet. This carousel at Kennywood was so colourful, I took mostly group pictures rather than individual horses. I did take pictures of the lion and the tiger, however. The lion had an amazing saddle with a bird and some kind of dead animal; a goat or gazelle or something like that. The outside row standers had no stirrups but they were reasonably low enough to jump onto easily enough.

Is it my imagination or are kids around here more content? I've been to places where I've seen lots and lots of babies and hardly ever heard a peep from any of them. On the other hand, no matter where we stop for meals, we are always being pestered by bees, bees and more bees!!! It's a wonder nobody's been stung yet!! My husband would hate this! He can't stand bees! Well, it's time to head downstairs for Happy Hour. 10:13 p.m I can't believe I've really got it! How I'm going to get it home is another story! The auction was amazing! You know those Hallmark carousels with the new figures you buy to keep adding to them every year? Every time I see them in the store I've been wanting one. Well they had one at the auction. It comes with two horses, but this one also came with last year's lion and this year's giraffe! Now who would like to start the bid at a hundred dollars? Before I knew it, I'd grabbed the paddle and my hand shot up.! Nobody outbid me and now it's mine! Go figure! So much for saying I wasn't going to spend much money. But the same thing happens at every convention---there's always some once-in-lifetime thing I can't pass up. At the Binghamton convention it was the missing back issues of Carousel News and Trader I'd missed out on when I had to let my subscription lapse for a couple years. So many people are heartbroken for me about what happened at customs. If those customs officials hadn't thrown such a nasty monkey wrench in my plans I definitely would have made several sales for sure. We've got a very busy day tomorrow with a lot of traveling. August 27th, 3:02 a.m It's a good thing I have my own room. I'd drive anyone else crazy if they had to share a room with me because I'm awake at all kinds of crazy hours. I'm ALMOST finished the tiger. I just have to do his right hind paw, the orange on his left hind leg and his saddle with the eagle. I think I will try and sleep for awhile. I wonder if I'll be having breakfast with the same people today.

10:56 p.m Kissed by Elvis!!! Even though I've had a wonderful time, I'm glad to be going home tomorrow. My backpack is falling apart and I miss my husband! At least the underwear situation isn't as bad as I thought it was. I thought I didn't have any clean pairs left. In fact I thought I'd wrecked my penultimate pair last night. When I was getting dressed for the banquet last night the thread unraveled causing the entire waistband to come off! I swear they don't make ANYTHING to last nowadays! I also forgot to mention that last night I had my FIRST MARTINI EVER! And I liked it. I liked it a lot. The first sip tasted terrible, like medicine, but it grew on me with each sip. I knew that after all these running gags about olives on the Internet, I just HAD to try a martini for the first time. I think last night I had my best night's sleep yet. However, I was awake from around 1:30 to about 3:30, but this time I was actually able to get to sleep and zonk right out until I got my wakeup call. Our first stop today was the Erie zoo. It was great. I've never ridden so many unusual carousel animals! I rode a jaguar, a gorilla, a turkey, a black leopard, a zebra, a panda and a polar bear.

One of the best things about our stop at the zoo was visiting the rainbow lorikeets!! There, too, you could purchase a cup of nectar to feed them but they don't flock all over you like the ones at the Niagara Aviary do. However, I did get one very special bird to sit on my shoulder. The zoo keeper told me this bird's name is Elvis I was able to get a couple pictures taken and he even gave me a few little birdie kisses! He didn't want to get off, neither did I want to let him go, but I knew I couldn't take him with me even though I wished I could. WAAAA! ME wanteee dat birdieeee!!! I wish I could have kept Elvis and taken him home with me! Our next stop was Albion, where we rode a positively quaint old-fashioned little two-row stationary machine built by the U.S.A Merry-Go-Round Company. It had horses, at least 3 or

4 zebras and at least 3 or 4 deer. I rode a zebra first and then after lunch I rode 2 deer and at least one or two horses and I must have ridden in the chariot at least 3 or 4 times while I worked on my embroidery.

I finished my embroidery just as we reached Conneaut Lake. This, too, was a wonderful carousel, a Muller with new figures from the Carousel Works, including a LLAMA. I had my first ride on a bunny rabbit! And my second ride on the PIRATE CAT! Yaarr, Matey! This one doesn't have a peg-leg like the one in Mansfield, but he does have the eye-patch, parrot and treasure chest. I then rode a bear. In fact I rode both bears! A brown bear and a panda! I was thrilled when I finally got to ride the llama!

I also visited the gift shop where I bought Dave and I matching colourful baseball caps with amusement rides and fireworks all over. There was another one with just the carousel that lights up. I wish I could have bought that one too. On my way out of the gift shop, Dan, the man who played the hand-cranked organ, remembered me from the 1991 convention and we chatted for awhile. He had driven me and Richard to Marilyn Slacks' house that first night of the 1991 Convention to see her impressive collection of band organs. On my way to supper, I found myself getting irritable because I was getting frustrated with the washrooms. The cubicles were ridiculously small and half the doors didn't even lock. The first one didn't even HAVE a door! I find it quite amusing that there's evidence that these puny little stalls actually used to be PAY TOILETS!! I can't imagine anyone actually paying to use such a pathetically puny washroom stall! Someone would have to PAY ME!! There wasn't even room for both me and my backpack, let alone room to change a tampon. I was so disgusted I snuck into the men's room to see if it was any better! Same puny pathetic stalls in their washroom too! So I asked one of the ride attendants and he directed me to the one by the water park. None of the doors locked in that jokey cracker-box either, but at least the amount of legroom was an improvement. Had a few more rides on the carousel and was glad to ride the goat,the giraffe, armoured lead horse and Indian pony. This carousel has a ring machine, however I was never able to catch more than three rings per ride. I would have ridden the dragon too, but by then it was already time to get back on the bus. Went to Round-About Faire when we arrived back at the hotel and they gave me a big shopping bag to take my carousel home in. I also bought a Port Dalhousie button, some Christmas cards and a bumper sticker. Not only was this the first day I slept until my wakeup call, but it was also the first day I wasn't tormented by feeling so hungry all the time! I swear during the first two days of our tour I felt like a bottomless pit! P.S. No NCA Convention is complete without the usual assortment of nasty bruises all over my legs. Sunday, August 28th, 3:40 a.m Random Thoughts and Musings Well, this is it. My last night here. I feel sad about it being over, yet I'll be glad to get home. These past few days have gone by in a blur. I want to get this last roll of film finished off, but there's still more than half of it left! I took a couple pictures of Waddle and Wee Doobeing silly in the hotel room here. In the last one, they're ordering room service. Wee Doo is holding the receiver and Waddle is dialing with his beak! I miss Elvis. I wish I could have taken him with me to ride on my shoulder for the rest of ths trip and taken him home with me. Yaarr, pirates have got it made that way! I want a birdie so badly, but first I must get a real job so I can afford to pay for one.

I can hardly wait to show Janette the pictures of the rounding board at Del Grosso's with Niagara Falls and the scenery panel on this last carousel that actually shows a picture of a GAS STATION!!

Speaking of gas stations,I wish I could have taken a picture for her of this one we passed called the Get-GO! I've never heard of that one before. I've been having one uninvited travel companion I could do without! 12:39 p.m Here I am at the airport at T.G.I.Friday's, waiting for my lunch. This morning after breakfast we had our annual meeting with a special presentation by Marvin Sylvor who was talking about the Coney Island carousel. :) We also discussed nest year's convention in Minnesota and North and South Carolina. I had a moment of panic on the shuttle bus when I realized I forgot my N.C.A jacket at the hotel! D'OH!! X-# Susan let me use her cell phone, but the hotel referred me to customer service who referred me back to the hotel again, yadayaydayayda.. GRRR!!! Susan ended up making the call for me, pretending she was me because she handled the situation more calmly than I ever could. I don't even like cell phones. Especially these bitty little ones. I always feel like I'm afraid the person on the other end won't hear me properly. At least we got the situation settled and they'll mail me my jacket. Things ran relatively smoothly at the airport. Those security guys who have to look at everything going through the x-ray machine must have the most fascinating job. They seemed quite enthralled with my little carousel in its box and were probably quite amused with all the other weird shit I travel with including my corny old ducks! I had to put Waddle and Wee Doo inside my backpack because Wee Doo escaped from my mesh compartment and fell out just before I got on the airport shuttle bus. She must like Pittsburgh! She tried to STAY here!

1:29 p.m What a beautiful day for flying! The sun is shining and the sky is blue. I've got a terrific view outside this window of planes taking off, vehicles buzzing around, the usual fascinating airport stuff. I can hardly wait to get hoe. Part of me feels like I want to sleep for days. The other part of me can't wait to transfer this to my 'blog and tell everybody about everything I've experienced! But most of all, I can hardly wait to throw my arms around my hubby and give him a great, big kiss! I bought several Christmas stocking stuffers for him at the gift shop and after much searching I found the perfect thing to put on our Fence Menagerie; a miniature Heinz Ketchup bottle. Actually it turns out that it's really a whistle! But nothing says “Pittsburgh” like Heinz Ketchup! LOL! I'll look forward to posting photos once I figure out how and using MS Paint to design an interesting graphic for this post.

Epilogue Obviously I've come a long way since I originally wrote this and uploading pictures to my computer so I can post them into documents is second nature to me now. And Than God for my Scribd Account!!!(November 28, 2008)