Book Review: Blood In the Soil by Carol Townsend

Blood In the Soil:

A True Tale of Racism, Sex, and Murder In the South

by Carol Townsend

Who could possibly be a bigger creep than Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine? The guy who tried to assassinate him, that’s who. Carol Townsend’s Blood In the Soil tells the tale of the man who attempted to murder the world’s most famous pornographer. It’s not a happy story.

Not surprisingly, Joseph Franklin had a miserable childhood. He grew up iimpoverished in Alabama. His parents were cruel and he had no friends. He dropped out of high school and turned to religion to find meaning and connection to a community. Up to a point, our basic capacity for sympathy kicks in and we can feel pity for him considering how terrible his upbringing was. But then we learn that he felt deeply hostile to the rise of integration, especially when it came to interracial dating. His search for community led him to join the Ku Klux Klan. You still might have an ounce of sympathy for him, thinking that because of his circumstances he was misguided and took a wrong turn in life. But it only gets worse from there. He regarded the Klan as little more than a fraternal drinking club and what he wanted was something on a more revolutionary scale. He decided to go on a terrorism and killing spree in order to spark a race war.

Franklin had a habit of frequenting newsstands and poring over their racks of pornographic magazines without paying for them, of course. He had a particular interest in Hustler but what he saw one day enraged him. Larry Flynt had published a pictorial of a naked African American man with a naked white woman, something that infuriated Franklin to the point of stealing a Ruger .44 semiautomatic rifle he would later use in an attempt on Larry Flynt’s life. Franklin claimed the pictorial layout was degrading to white women, but that is an odd opinion to have since he was highly abusive to the women in his life.

Flynt was in the town of Lawrenceville, Georgia on trial for obscenity. While he and his lawyer were walking from a restaurant to the courthouse, Franklin opened fire on them, nearly killing both. Flynt’s body was nearly ripped in half from the bullets and his spinal chord was almost severed. He managed to survive though and a good portion of this book gives details on the pain and suffering he went through after the attack. Larry Flynt’s biography is weird enough to merit its own book.

Franklin, meanwhile, went on a crime spree that included bombing synagogues, armed robberies, and shootings that mostly involved interracial couples. Overall, he is known to have killed 22 people. While his attempt on Flynt’s life takes up most of the oxygen in the room, it is important to remember the humanity of Franklin’s other victims, none of which were pornographers whose only crimes were having the wrong skin color and socializing with white people. They may be forgotten now, but remember they were the types of people who we have as friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family members.

The story shifts between Carol Townsend’s narrative and testimony from the detective Michael Cowart who solved the case of Larry Flynt’s attempted assassination. Cowart spent time meeting with Joseph Franklin in to get an official confession from him. A lot of what we know about Franklin’s personality comes from Cowart’s interactions with him. Their meetings took place in a maximum security prison after Franklin had been incarcerated for other crimes. He was never charged or brought to trial for the assassination attempt because he was already on death row for a synagogue bombing.

Townsend never takes a deep dive into the mind of Joseph Franklin. Her explanations are predictable. His rotten childhood made him the monster he became. He was a psychopath. He never got the opportunities he needed, so on and so forth. These are generic explanations you get from any true crime book. There are lots of people who are born into similar circumstances who don’t become terrorists and serial killers so it would be useful to know what set Franklin apart from those others. Even worse, she tries to blame his pathological hatred on the racist history of the South by saying the soil is saturated with racism because of slavery and the Native American genocide. It’s as if the racism just radiated upwards into the Southern white community by osmosis and animated them to commit hate crimes against ethnic minorities. The problem with this is that racism exists wherever humans exist. All nations have been built on a foundation of conquest, bloodshed, and genocide so there isn’t any excuse for the American Southeast to stand out in regard to every other piece of land on planet Earth. Besides, saying that Joseph Franklin is a conduit for racist violence that preceded his existence is just a kind of way to provide an easy explanation where there isn’t one.

There is an interesting pattern to notice though. Many of the people Franklin shot were in pairs. Most of them were either interracial couples or pairs of friends. One involved a pair of African American men who were jogging together. Franklin was a loner who failed to make social connections with others, so there may be an element of jealousy in his murders. Since synagogues are also places of community, it is possible that the bombings of the Jewish temples grew out of resentment since he failed to find the type of religious congregation that suited his needs. Loneliness, isolation, and living without love and affection are fundamentally existential problems for individual humans.

Townsend starts this book by waxing poetic as if she wants to reiterate Truman Capote’s finely crafted true crime novel In Cold Blood. But her language is cliché and more purple prose than poetry so thankfully she drops the literary pretentions a short ways into the story and finishes with straightforward writing. For the most part, this is written like standard true crime fare.

Blood In the Soil is a gritty and depressing read about a man who possibly was little more than pure evil. Even before being executed, Joseph Franklin was given a chance to redeem himself, but his apologies were little more than an act. And Larry Flynt spent the rest of his life living as a millionaire pornographer in a gold-plated wheelchair paralyzed from the waist down. We’re left with the impression that our planet is a Hell that we often make worse through our own actions. 

 

Book Review - Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask by Nick Henck

Subcommander Marcos:

The Man and the Mask

by Nick Henck

It was the night of New Year’s Eve, 1994 in San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. An army of guerilla warriors blocked off all roads to the city and seized the town square. Their spokesman emerged, wearing a green army uniform and a black ski mask. He smoked a pipe. He called himself Subcomandante Marcos and his image would soon spread around the world. Marcos’s army was called the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional or the EZLN, though they commonly came to known as the Zapatistas. Since it was the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, Subcomandante Marcos declared this to be an uprising against the establishment, one that would put the rights of Mexico’s Indios in the spotlight in a bid for higher living standards and greater political autonomy. Nick Henck’s Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask gives a comprehensive history of the EZLN movement and the most in depth biography of its leader to this day.

After the uprising in 1994, and a few years into the 2000s, Subcomandante Marcos’s identity remained a mystery even though his image and message spread rapidly around the world due to media coverage. Nick Henck did a bit of digging around to find out who he was and where he came from. The first third of the book gives as much biographical information as he could find. Marcos’s true identity was that of Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente. He came from a middle class background, got a college education at a liberal arts university, worked as a philosophy professor at another university, and got drawn into left wing politics. Initially he was a Marxist and joined a radical activist organization called the FLN. Their plan was to overthrow the Mexican government and establish a new socialist state. This section on the early life and radicalization of Marcos wears a little thin at times. The author gets sidetracked into some long discussions about the political climate of Mexico and its history that don’t help to clarify or add much to the overall story of Marcos and the EZLN. The narrative picks up again in the second section.

By the mid-1980s, Marcos had had enough of revolutionary theory and decided he wanted action. The FLN assigned him to the jungle highlands of Chiapas to prepare for guerilla warfare. He attracted a loyal army of Mayan Indios and landless agricultural workers. Marcos learned to speak their language, lived according to their lifestyle, and ate only the food that they ate. Critics of Marcos have accused him of exploiting the Indios and luring them into a political conflict they otherwise would not have engaged in. His supporters have countered this accusation by pointing out that he completely integrated into their society and became one of them. He still lives a humble existence with the Mayan people to this day. In any case, he spent ten years preparing the EZLN army for the uprising of 1994.

One interesting problem Marcos encountered along the way was related to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of communism. Marcos had been teaching Marxist and Maoist political theory to his followers for some time when the Iron Curtain came down and suddenly the politics of the Left looked irrelevant. The FLN realized they had to change their message or else they would never be taken seriously so Marcos eventually phased out the Marxist jargon and began emphasizing the need for stronger representation of Indigenous people in the Mexican government. He came to advocate for the Mayan people to have their own semi-autonomous government, acting as a sub-nation within the nation of Mexico.

The third section of the book explains what happened after the initial uprising of 1994. After some minor skirmishes that resulted in a small number of Zapatista deaths, Marcos realized his guerilla army was outgunned. The uprising caught the media’s attention and he seized on the opportunity to bring the cause to the public. The Mexican middle classes came out in strong support for the Zapatistas and as long as they stayed in the eye of the press, the EZLN maintained their support. Subcomandante Marcos also pioneered the use of the internet as a tool of revolution. He reached a worldwide audience by writing communiques that were witty, imaginative, and a bit fantastical. Some of his supporters even claim they had valid literary merit though only time will tell if that is true. Pro-Zapatista activist groups sprung up on every continent and suddenly the subject of post-colonialism and the rights of Indigenous people around the world filtered into a new Leftist reorientation, carrying over into the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 2000 and Occupy Wall Street a few years later.

Subcomandante Marcos was winning a war of wits with the Mexican government. This probably was aided by the widespread opposition to Mexico’s PRI party that had been ruling the country since the 1930s. With minimal violence, a high profile media campaign, massive street demonstrations and conferences of varying success, the Zapatistas managed to establish their own alternative government based on traditional Mayan principles in Chiapas and also got their cause brought up in a Mexican congressional hearing. Finally they succeeded in striking a deal with the government that was beneficial to the Indios of Mexico. In the end, Marcos hed led a semi-successful political movement with minimal bloodshed. Subcomandante Marcos has since remained reclusive, living with his people in the highlands of Chiapas. He remains a mysterious figure and actually sounds like a pretty decent guy. One thing you can say after reading this biography is that he was authentic and sincere.

There isn’t much to critisize in this book. There are some slow parts in the beginning that border on irrelevancy, but everything else is clearly written and sufficiently explained. There are some missing pieces that could have been included though. A brief description of Mayan culture would have enhanced the context and a little more description of the jungles and mountains would give it an added depth. It would also be helpful to hear more from the Mayan people themselves about the EZLN; it would be interesting to hear what they thought of the outsider Marcos considering he was a middle class mestizo who came to them from Mexico City. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, it would also be interesting to learn about the long term effects of the EZLN uprising and whether or not it continues to make a difference in the lives of Mexico’s Indigenous people.

This is the best book about Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatistas, and the January 1, 1994 uprising I know of so far. It’s also inspirational. Marcos spent a decade preparing for a guerilla war. Once it started he realized that bloodshed would lead to nothing but mass suicide for his followers. He was quick-witted and pragmatic enough to see how he could influence public opinion without having to resort to further violence. More than ten years after the initial siege of San Cristobal de las Casas, the EZLN were able to get something they wanted. Patience, adaptability, and communication were their greatest allies. They proved that change doesn’t have to be immediate or even grandiose. There is a lot for future activists to learn here. The fact that this political movement happened fairly recently in Mexico makes it all that much more interesting.

 

Book Review: Silent Killers: Radon and Other Hazards by Kathlyn Gay

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Silent Killers: 

Radon and Other Hazards

by Kathlyn Gay

Anxiety is a normal part of life in the modern world. Politics, economics, global warming, internet brainwashing, psychotics with easy access to guns, narcissistic world leaders, a failed educational system, diseases...the legacy media just keeps feeding us high doses of potentially traumatic information in quantities too big to properly digest in short amounts of time. If you’re a germaphobe it’s even worse. Paranoia is an understandable response to it all. But for most of us, a lot of that stuff is happening far away and doesn’t directly threaten our safety on a daily basis. Now consider that your home is full of toxic chemicals that can either kill you in the short term, sometimes immediately, or can cause deadly diseases that slowly murder you over a long period of time like cancer. There’s just no escaping from all the hazards wherever you go. Kathlyn Gay’s Silent Killers: Radon and Other Hazards gives you the rundown on some of the things around you that can do you in. What better way to spend a sunny afternoon is there than reading about them?

The book opens with discussions on dioxins and asbestos. Cleaning products, industrial lubricants, herbicides, and plastics all have some of the most deadly chemicals known to humanity. Dioxins are largely a product, and sometimes a byproduct, of industrial manufacturing. The most well-known chemical in the class of dioxins is agent orange or napalm, the chemical used during the Vietnam War to kill vegetation, making the so-called enemies easier to see. It did a sufficient job of killing people too, especially children, and got into the DNA of returning soldiers who passed it on to their offspring. Vietnamese and Cambodian children born after the war often fared no better. If you’ve been to those countries you can recognize its effects when you see young people with malformed or missing limbs. And yet dioxins are used in factories and household products because corporate businessmen care more about profits than people.

Asbestos, on the other hand, has been banned. Due to its flame resistant qualities, it has been used in architecture, especially in low-cost housing and public buildings, going all the way back to the Roman Empire. Studies done by the American Environmental Protection Agency in the 1950s determined that asbestos causes diseases affecting the respiratory system. A decades long effort to remove asbestos and ban it has largely been successful.

The subject of radon doesn’t get taken up until the middle of the book. This nice little colorless and odorless radioactive gas gets stirred up while mining or digging into the ground. When left alone in its hidden underground chambers, it is completely harmless. But when humans go into terrestrial territories without proper safety precautions, this killer escapes into the atmosphere undetected and poisons people who breathe it in.

Other chapters address dangerous metals, lead paint, toxins in drinking water (and no, fluoride is not dangerous), pesticides and weed killers used on farms, and a couple others. One chapter is about my personal favorite poison which is nuclear waste. Nuclear power is cheap and doesn’t contribute to global warming, but the waste it produces can contaminate the land where they bury it over a long period of time. Storage containers and facilities degrade, leak, and poison the atmosphere around them. The Three Mile Island radioactivity leak outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania gets a brief mention along with the Love Canal toxic waste dump disaster in Niagara Falls, New York. I bet the Amish people living near Three Mile Island said, “See, we’re better off with our horse buggies and oil lamps. You people laugh at us, but you’re the ones suffering from radioactivity poisoning now.”

This book is written from a scientific standpoint so there are lots of studies cited along with small amounts of dry technical writing and some occasional counterpoints provided by critics of the studies. The counterpoints come entirely from researchers working for corporations that capitalize from spreading toxic chemicals and other poisons throughout the human genome so you have to keep things in perspective. When it’s cheaper to publish propaganda and bogus scientific studies than it is to follow OSHA, FDA, and EPA government regulations, then it’s obvious what greedy businessmen will do to please their shareholders.

Aside from being dull at times, the biggest problem with this book is that, being written in the 1980s, it is a bit outdated. Some of these problems have been taken care of, like the banning of some aerosol sprays containing chlorofluorocarbons and the near elimination of acid rain for example, while others, like nuclear waste and ozone emissions from cars that cause greenhouse gas buildup, continue to be a problem. The book’s age also shows because of its repetitive warnings about cigarette smoke, another problem that has thankfully been reduced because of government regulation. Now we have newer silent killers like microplastics in everything we eat and chemical additives in hyperprocessed foods that the average person can’t even identify. Even worse, our current president is paying for tax cuts for billionaires by gutting agencies like the EPA, the FDA, and our educational system that should be teaching people how to minimize risks by thinking about what kinds of products they buy. Our government is also deregulating industries to help corporate businesses make more money since safety regulations cut into profits.

Silent Killers isn’t going to make it onto anybody’s bucket list of books they have to read before they die. There are better, and more updated, sources on this subject matter. Still, these are things everybody should be aware of and aren’t. On the brighter side, Kathlyn Gay makes it clear that personal choice plays a role in how much exposure we get to these silent killers. Simple things like keeping windows and doors open while limiting your use of air conditioning makes you a lot safer. Just as well, spending more time outdoors in nature reduces exposure to toxicity. But really, anything can kill you and eventually something will. You can sedate yourself with television, the internet, or drugs. You can deny any of these dangers out of your perceptual existence. You can become a fanatic and take on the impossible task of eliminating all risks from your life. Or you can do what I do: embrace your fears, look at the things that scare you most, evaluate how much of a danger they really are, and do what is within your power to survive while maintaining your sanity. And make jokes about it all along the way. Anxiety and paranoia can make life more stimulating.. Just because existence is grim and hopeless, that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to make it tolerable. 

 

 

Book Review: Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico by Bill Weinberg

Homage to Chiapas:

The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico

by Bill Weinberg

On New Year’s Eve 1994, a ragged army of soldiers seized San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city in Mexico’s poorest state Chiapas. Wearing ski masks and homemade army uniforms, the rebels carried rifles and pistols, though many of them were actually carrying wooden sticks made to look like guns. The rebel army was the EZLN, also known as the Zapatistas, and they were primarily made up of Mayan Indians. Some people took them to be a low-level threat and some tourists weren’t happy about the uprising disrupting their travel plans. Some might have even said the EZLN were quaint. But the Zapatista uprising shook Mexican society to its core, sparked a few other insurrections, and brought attention to the problems faced by the poorest people in the country. Although incomplete in ts scope, Bill Weinberg’s Homage to Chiapas puts the rebellion into context and looks at its short term consequences.

The book starts off with a whirlwind tour through Mexican history going back to pre-colonial times, detailing the relations between the indigenous Mayans and the Uto-Aztecan empire that conquered and assimilated them. By Weinberg’s account, rebellion has been a part of Mayan heritage from the beginning. After the Spanish Conquistadors and the Catholic church arrived to do the dirty deeds of the Castilian empire, the tradition of Mayan uprisings continued. Some elements in the church had humanitarian sympathies and defended the Mayans against the excessive cruelties of the colonialists and this alliance between Catholic activists and the indigenous people of Mexico continues to this day. Weinberg’s history of Mexico is brief and serves the purpose of setting a historical context for Mayan and Indian political resistance in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. He strongly emphasizes the history of the Mayan people. If you’re familiar with Mexican history, this part of the book might feel incomplete. If you’re not, it might feel a little muddled and confusing. But this book isn’t about the grand scope of Mexican history and the opening chapters do serve their purpose of drawing a connecting line from the Mayan past to the present.

The same can be said for the chapters on modern Mexico. The Mexican Revolution gets explained, especially the cause of land reform heralded by Emiliano Zapata, the guerilla fighter that inspired the EZLN in the 1990s. A lot of attention is also drawn to the domination of Mexico by the American government and multinational corporations during the industrialization and modernization process. Weinberg goes into great detail about how outside interference in Mexico’s culture and economy led to the widespread environmental damage, economic displacement, and loss of ancestral lands for Indians and campesinos. He brings us up into the 1990s when the corruption of Mexico’s dominant PRI political party and American free trade agreements under Reagan and Bush, like GATT and NAFTA, were ratified and exacerbated the unresolved problems the Mexican Revolution was meant to correct. These chapters are heavily detailed and the reader may feel lost in the weeds, especially in sections detailing environmental sciences and economics. Weinberg overdoes his explanations in a way that could alienate his audience.

Then we come up to New Year’s Day of 1994, the day that the NAFTA treaty went into effect, giving oil companies and other multinational corporations sweeping rights over Mexican natural resources, manufacturing in the maquiladoras along the border, and industrialized agriculture that killed off varieties of traditionally grown produce and further disinherited Mexicans from privately and publicly held land all for the sake of making money for American businessmen.

A decade previous, in the mountains of Chiapas and the Lacandon jungle along the border of Guatemala, a mysterious figure arose and began preparing armies of Mayan people to fight the Mexican government. His name was Subcomandante Marcos and no one knew who he was at first since he hid his identity behind a black ski mask. The New Year’s uprising of 1994 led to some small skirmishes with a small amount of casualties, mostly EZLN fighters. The Zapatistas realized they could not fight Mexico with arms so instead they captured the media’s attention and Marcos reached a global audience by posting dispatches on the internet that gained worldwide sympathy. The Mexican middle classes took sides with Marcos and the Zapatistas and their message caught on in all continents and regions of the world. Their message was simple: they wanted land, they wanted self-governance, and they wanted all the material benefits of modernity. They wanted political participation in the Mexican government and desired to be like a semi-autonomous nation within the nation. They eventually built a parallel government in rural Chiapas and refused to recognize the official governments run in the urban municipalities of the state. The conflict between the EZLN and the government was unresolved at the time this book was published. Weinberg is successful in defining the goals of the EZLN, but falls short on writing about their history. A lot of his account is bogged down with descriptions of his travels into Zapatista territories, hidden in the mountains and jungles, and his attempt at getting an interview with Subcomandante Marcos himself, which eventually happens but doesn’t lead to any great insights.

The next section of the book looks at other indigenous uprisings that happened parallel to or after the EZLN uprising of Subcomandante Marcos. The most interesting chapter gives an account of indigenous people rebelling against oil companies in the state of Tabasco who wrecked the environment and contaminated their drinking water making farming almost impossible and causing a wave of health problems. The author again bogs the reader down with excessive details. You might need to be an expert in chemistry or biology to fully understand everything he writes. He could easily make the point abut environmental destruction and its impact on the agricultural economy without going into such fine, technical details. But it is a good section because it documents some attempts at revolutionary activism that probably will otherwise be forgotten due to lack of attention from other writers.

The rest of the book moves sideways into accounts of the intersection between the Mexican government, landowners, the military, law enforcement, and the drug cartels in the North, especially in Sonora. The Tarahumara or Raramuri Indians get caught up in this mess due to poverty and lack of political power. These chapters get to be frustrating because the author introduces a lot of government officials, law enforcement officers, military generals, and hacendados who made the mistake of involving themselves in drug trafficking. Most of these people get assassinated soon after they enter the narrative and a lot of this just reads like lists of people you know close to nothing about getting murdered. It barely has any connection to the EZLN, indigenous people, or the state of Chiapas. It should probably have been left out of the book altogether.

Bill Weinberg gives us an interesting glimpse into the world of indigenous political activism in Mexico. As mentioned before, the main issues of the narratives get somewhat obscured by too much extraneous information. A lot of the information gathered by Weinberg is incomplete which isn’t entirely his fault. The historical roots of these indigenous uprisings, especially those of the Zapatistas, was not well known at the time of writing. Furthermore, he also wrote this too close to the time of the events themselves. There isn’t enough historical distance on his part to give these uprisings the clarity they deserve. But still it’s good to read about how indigenous people can organize and challenge the injustices of the Mexican political and economic system.

Despite all its many flaws, including sloppy writing and a thick jungle of arcane details that is hard to see through, Homage to Chiapas is worth reading once just because it draws attention to struggles that are not well-documented elsewhere. On a final note, the title should probably be changed as very little of what takes place in these pages happens in Chiapas. Besides, it is more of an homage to Mayan people and the EZLN than it is to Mexico’s poorest, but also one of the most fascinating, states. The dense jungle, the highlands, its ancient temples, its history, and the culture of its peoples make it a place worth visiting and learning about all on its own. 

 

Book Review: Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rossen

Action Park:

Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of 

America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park

by Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rossner

      They say a personal library is like an amusement park for your mind. If that’s the case then my personal library is like Action Park in New Jersey. It’s a place that’s exciting, maybe even liberating, because all caution gets thrown to the wind. It’s a place that’s entertaining because it’s full of unsavory characters and being out of control is the whole point. But the real Action Park existed outside of New York City, not in the pages of my book collection, and Andy Mulvihill’s Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park tells the whole story of this notorious business dedicated to rowdy leisure time and the total suspension of self-preservation or common sense.

Andy Mulvihill is the son of Gene Mulvihill, the visionary and evil genius who put together Action Park in a bid to be the Disneyworld of the Northeast. While renting and operating a ski slope on a hill in New Jersey, he schemed up ways to use the hill and its empty surrounding areas during the summer season. Initially he started with the Alpine Slide, a concrete track that could be navigated by fearless but not-too-wise people in sleds using a foot pedal and brake to control the speed. Injuries like bruises and abrasions were common, but as long as people knew the risks before going down, Gene Mulvihill had no worries. Throughout the 1980s he expanded Action Park to include race cars, go karts, water slides, a wave pool and all kinds of other attractions that were enticing because they were dangerous. They even boasted of having one of the first bungee jumps in America. Mulvihill’s whole philosophy was that he put the individual in the center of the action. Other amusement parks would strap people into rides like roller coasters or tilt-a-whirls that were controlled by ride operators. Mulvihill, on the other hand, believed in giving control of the vehicles over to the participants while letting each individual decide on their level of comfort and safety.

As you can guess, things didn’t always work out for the best. Action Park gained a reputation for being treacherous and people jokingly referred to it by names like “Traction Park” and “Class Action Park”. Injuries of all kinds were frequent. Food and beer from vendor stands were poor quality, restroom sanitation didn’t meet minimum standards, and sometimes gang fights broke out. Safety regulations were posted, but Spanish speakers couldn’t read them. The park’s most notorious ride, the Cannonball Loop, barely made it past the experimental stage. It was a waterslide in an enclosed loop and people often got stuck somewhere inside due to lack of momentum. Those who did make it to the end came out with broken bones, head wounds, or missing teeth. Every now and then, people even died on various rides, though ironically most of those cases were found to be the fault of the deceased for not following safety guidelines. Most injury cases were settled out of court and the ones that did get adjudicated were often won by Gene Mulvihill because he had an ultra-slick lawyer. The one case that almost did Action Park in involved Mulvihill taking out a fake insurance policy with a company that didn’t exist.

The patrons and employees could be a sociological case study unto itself. Due to a successful advertising campaign that was innovative for its time, Action Park attracted huge weekend crowds of working class families and teenagers from inner city Manhattan and the outer boroughs of Queens and the Bronx. New York City in the pre-Giuliani 1980s was nothing like it is now. It possibly was one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the time. So it was a pretty tough crew that came out to New Jersey for fun in the summer. Employees trying to limit overcrowding in the wave pool were often greeted with a middle finger in their faces when they tried to prevent too many people from going in. Fights were common and many children were conceived at various places away from the park. It was a popular hangout for knuckleheads.

The employees could be interesting too. Lifeguards at the wave pool were overworked since so many of the people there did not know how to swim and were often on the verge of drowning. Injuries happened when clueless people with dove into the shallow end and the wave maker was cranked up to the maximum so that people, especially young kids, kept going under after being whacked in the face by a high-intensity wall of water. Due to overcrowding, they often struggled to get back up to the surface. Meanwhile, one of the lifeguards had decked out the wave control shack with a cot, a mini bar, and a stereo system so he could use it as a shag pad. Gene Mulvihill came up with the great idea of hiring underprivileged kids from the hood as employees, but they refused to do any work and spent all their time smoking weed and going on the rides.

Action Park reads like a memoir put together by Andy Mulvihill. Although he does include some anecdotes about his life and the family business, its central theme is not him but the park itself. Gene Mulvihill gets plenty of biographical attention too as he should. Outsiders to this story may think he sounds like little more than a sleazy creep of a businessman, and they might be right, but this is also a portrait of an artist and a visionary. The way son Andy portrays his father Gene is as a man who thought of this pet project as so much more than a way to make money. He went about building Action Park the way some hobbyists build model railroads. Ultimately he loved seeing people having fun and, believe it or not, the park’s patrons did just that. Kids in the 1980s were a lot tougher than they are now and bruises, fractured bones, and bloody cuts were worn as badges of honor. Veterans and survivors of Action Park used to show off their wounds the way soldiers show off their battle scars after a war. I can relate to this mentality myself considering the time I fell off a motorcycle in Phuket and slid down a rain-slicked hill; afterwards I photographed my bloody arm and posted it on Facebook to the delight of some of my friends. Some might criticize Andy Mulvihill for being too sentimental and painting an overly rosy picture of his father, but the guy does come off as quite a character and a fun, charming guy with warm personality. Really though, it is Andy Mulvihill’s gallows humor that makes this book so much fun to read. It’s packed from cover to cover with the grim ironies of growing up and working in such a place. Any attempts at describing his hilarious dark comments would fail. You just have to read it to see what I mean.

Action Park is an easy, engaging, and fun book. Maybe it will even make you think about what it means to be human. If you need a break from reading heavy or serious books, or if you are in the mood for some kind of nostalgia trip, taking you back to a time before Americans became safety obsessed and the bland culture of corporate sterility set in during the 1990s, then it is a great diversion. It definitely reminded me of what it felt like to be young, reckless, carefree, and a little bit stupid. Life is more fun and rewarding when you take risks. Damn the consequences.