History

In the spring of 1953  I opened my first amusement stand on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights. I leased the space from Stanley Tunney who at the time was the mayor. I bought some used lumber from a building that was being torn down in Toms River. the building was 80-100 years old. I had to build the 16′ by 40′ stand in February, March, April, and May of 1953. The biggest part of the job was nailing down the tar paper on the roof. Then my father and I poured 35 gallons a gooey, sticky, black tar. After those 3 extremely hot days on the roof we had to throw out our shoes.

I finally opened in June of 1953 with a wheel which you had to spin by hand. My first stand was filled with dolls and other stuffed animals. It only cost a nickel a space or 6 spaces for a quarter. 1953 was a very good year for me.  In September I closed up my stand and put my shirt and tie on so I could go off to Seaside Park elementary which is where I taught school. There were a total of 4 teachers and a principal at that time teaching school down in Seaside Park. I was the sixth grade teacher. On the weekends I would reopen my stand from noon until 10pm. It was long hours but I sure did love the excitement of it all and the people. The stands and all the rides would close down in the end of October and reopen again in the spring.

In 1956, I along with all the other stands in seaside, had a bad year. As the state of New Jersey declared all the games in seaside as gambling and on July 4th weekend all of seaside was shut down for 3 to 4 weeks. At that point one of the local stand operators suggested that we should let the customers spin the wheel as this would be considered as a game of skill, not gambling. This was the way business was done from this point until 1960 when the state declared a referendum that the people voted on and legalized the wheels that we used as legal.

In 1960 I met Earle Mackennon who had a shooting gallery on the next block. I asked Earle if he ever considered retiring and to my surprise he said that this was actually his last year. We sat in the back of the shooting gallery and came to an agreement were I would get to lease the stand as long as I kept it as a shooting gallery for the next three years. Well that was 45 years ago and we still have that location today. Earle passed away in 1966, now I deal with his daughter Charlene.

In 1975 I had the opportunity to lease the entire block where my first stand was started. The previous lease had retired so I signed a 20 year lease in the spring of 1975. I tore down the old building and scooped up the putt putt golf that was there. I built a beautiful brand new concrete building to house an air conditioned/ heated arcade. The front 120′ of this property I laced with 7 stands.