Damon Runyon
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/August 10, 1942
WHILE many amusement parks along the Eastern Seaboard are suffering from the gas rationing and other war restrictions, good old Coney Island seems to be booming. It happens to be the terminus of the greatest five-cent train ride in the world and is therefore troubled very little by the automobile rubber problem.
I used to be a terrific Coney Island fan, usually winding up there at Steeplechase Park to ride the roller coaster, which I formerly considered a great relaxation in time of mental stress. I would worry so much about escaping safely from the dipsy-doos that I would forget all my other troubles.
I have’ not been to Steeplechase Park in quite a spell but I judge from the reports that my friends the Tilyous are doing very nicely these days. The Tilyous own Steeplechase. The current Tilyous are Ed, Frank, and George Jr., sons of George C. Tilyou, who founded the amusement park over 50 years ago. He died some 28 years back and the boys have been carrying on the enterprise with considerable success since.
The mother of the Tilyou toys never had to ask her husband about how business was going in the old days. She could tell by the state of her home. The elder Tilyou used to strip his residence of chairs to supply emergency seating on big nights at Steeplechase. Now I am told George Jr gauges business on the number of children lost in the park.
Naturally, the more people la Steeplechase, the more children. And of course the more children, the more strays from parental observation. When George Jr is informed of many lost kids he knows business is great without consulting the ledgers. It is a simpler method than any Doc Gallup ever devised.
The eldest of the Tilyou boys is Ed, who is 45. He directs the activities of Steeplechase. He has red hair and a red mustache and suggests Howard Lindsay in the character role of “Life With Father.” Ed, who is known around Steeplechase as “The Boss,” is prominent in Brooklyn politics He has an office but never uses it, usually conducting his affairs from a deck chair beside the swimming pool.
His hobby is collecting paintings. He used to make yearly trips abroad and come back with his trunks loaded with art treasures. Oliver St. John Gogarty, the Irish poet, is one of his best friends. George Tilyou, Jr., is the second oldest Tilyou and he too is important in the municipal life of Brooklyn. He is gas rationing commissioner of that borough.
Frank Tilyou, the youngest of the 3 boys, is 34 and his official position at the amusement park is treasurer. He is an aviation enthusiast and used to fly his own plane. He is also a camera bug and is always helping his publicity photographers get material. He originated the idea of photographing the little kids in what you might call their birthday suits cooling off beside the Steeplechase pool, which gets plenty of exploitation in the newspaper every season.
For 40 years, Levey’s Fife and Drum Corps has played “Yankee Doodle” at the park three times a day, and Frank Tilyou never tires of listening to that particular tune. His proudest boast is that Steeplechase and the rest of Coney Island outdrew the Worlds Fair by several million admissions, and the way things are going down there just now he can also probably brag that the island is playing to more people daily than any other enterprise of any kind in the United States.
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