I don’t know much about my Dad’s childhood. I’ve mostly just pieced together a handful of stories I faintly remember him telling. He wasn’t the type to reminisce about a childhood that I have gathered had its ups and downs. Some of his stories were about living in New York City when he was a boy.
I am not sure how many years Dad lived in New York. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky where I think he lived the majority of his life, although the family may have lived in Atlanta at some point. One of the last stories Dad told me about New York was an explanation of his father’s job in that city. Jack Riley Sr., my grandfather, was a missionary. No, he didn’t work for the church but instead for one of the Kentucky distilleries. The job of a missionary was to go from bar to bar and convince the owner to stock your company’s bourbon as its house brand.
Dad best buddy, during his years in Queens, was his younger cousin, Bob Pitz. They must have lived near each other because he was included in Dad’s stories about roaming the wetlands of Queens and also sneaking into the 1939 World’s Fair. Their mothers were sisters, my grandmother, Avery, the oldest, and Bob’s mother, Lillian her younger sister. Lillian was married to Robert Pitz who ran his father’s iron foundry in Brooklyn.
In late April of 1939, about 200,000 people attended the grand opening of the World’s Fair and President Roosevelt gave the opening address. The fair was open for two seasons (April to October) and closed in October of 1940. A large park had been created for the fair out of a former dump known as the Corona Ash Dumps. The park, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, is located east of Manhattan and just south of LaGuardia Airport. These days the park is filled with various museums, Shea Stadium, the USTA National Tennis Center and much more. This park was also the site of the 1964 World’s Fair.
Imagine the fun and excitement of this fair after the country had suffered through the worst years of the depression! Jack, my Dad, would have been 15 years old during that first summer of the fair’s opening and his cousin Bob was 12. Back then, parents didn’t keep such close track of their children throughout the day and most were basically free to roam, as long as they showed up for dinner. Jack and Bob were more like brothers than cousins. Both were only children. They probably lived very near to the park and I imagine that they were drawn like magnets to its wonder and excitement. But, the economy was still depressed and the 75-cent admission ($11 in today’s money) prohibited them from wandering the fair anytime they pleased. So, a plan was devised to get them into the park for free anytime they wanted. Because the boys knew the area so well, their neighborhood stomping grounds, they were able to locate the service entrances where the fair workers and suppliers entered the grounds. The plan was to act as if they were delivery boys, delivering sandwiches, ordered by some fair personnel. It must have been fairly easy to pull that off and the paper bag props, perhaps with a few grease spots, would have been easy and cheap to obtain. Apparently the plan was successful and used on a number of occasions by the two boys. Imagine their secret delight!
What could they see once inside the fair? Well, a true wonderment for two young boys. The theme of the fair was “The World of Tomorrow” so all the buildings and structures were “modern” and unique. At the center of the grounds, the spike of the Trylon (610 ft. tall) and the huge round ball of the Perisphere (185 ft. in diameter) became symbols of the fair. On display were futuristic cars, the first televisions, and a speech synthesizer. The British Pavilion displayed a copy of the Magna Carta. There was the Futurama ride where you could sit in a chair that moved you across a model of an idealized United States, showing cities of the future with cars on wide roads and pedestrians on elevated walkways. In the Perisphere, the “Democracity” displayed a model of a future “perfect” world with a vibrant inner city surrounded by a network of beautiful suburbs. Town of Tomorrow displayed full sized demonstration homes like the “Pittsburg House of Glass”, and the “Triple Insulate Home.” The Hall of Nations had displays from faraway places like Siam, Norway, Italy, Japan and more. There was a section that showed New York City as it was in the 1890’s, an authentic reproduction of a Cuban Village, and a recreation of Victoria Falls. Many of the exhibits cost an additional 25-cent admission, so I suspect that the boys mostly roamed the free exhibits. There were rides like the Ferris wheel and various odd sideshow attractions. The list if sights at the fair is extensive and I encourage you to visit the website I have linked below which show a clickable map of the different fair zones and photos of almost all of the attractions.
At some point Dad’s family moved back to the Louisville area because I know he attended Anchorage High School before he enlisted in the Army Air Corp in 1942 at the age of 18. His cousin Bob Pitz continued to live in New York and served in the Navy. Bob died in a car accident in April of 1957; He was 30 years old and had never married. My father must have treasured those carefree childhood days with his cousin/brother, playing stick ball, roaming the marshlands, and the thrill of sneaking into the glorious World’s Fair.
-Mary
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