In 1924, the B.R.P. pool was used for the Olympic tryouts - Johnny Weissmuller won the one-hundred-meter freestyle and then went on to win the gold medal at the Olympics. A giant roller coaster "The Ski" was added to the park, the owners of this ride were from the state of Pennsylvania.

A Pennsylvania U. football scholarship student from Broad Ripple, Paul Blake, worked summers running the "Ski". Since the roller coaster was separately owned from the rest of the rides, whenever the management of the park had a 2 cents day promoted by a company such as Polk's Milk Company, the Coca Cola Bottler (Yonkers) or the Sugar Creek Creamery Co. (butter), the milk bottle cap, or the Coke cap, or the end of the butter box along with 2 cents did not secure a ride on the "Ski" - it was 15 cents as it was every day. The public was always confused about the reason for the regular-priced ride.

In 1927, Oscar Baur purchased the Broad Ripple Park - Mr. Baur was from Terre Haute - he owned the Baur Tack Co., Liquid Carbonic Company - and later after repeal of the Volstead Act, he owned the "Champagne Velvet" brand of Beer which was brewed over in Terre Haute. Mr. Baur made many improvements in the park: the pool was remodeled with a new filtering plant, he enlarged and paved the midway - added new rides - dug a well so that water from White River would not have to be used to fill the pool. And more than anything else, he set up a program of beautification with flowers planted along the walkways.

My friend, Gerald Applegate, from grade school had an uncle and aunt who resided on the Broad Ripple Park grounds, and his uncle, Everett DuBois was the general superintendent of the park. In the spring of our freshman year at Broad Ripple High School (1929) - Gerry asked me if I would like to get a job at the park. We both went to see Mr. DuBois (from now on we'll call him "Dooby") and we were hired on the spot. We started the next day after school mowing grass. We worked all day on Saturdays and Sundays - mowing grass - planting petunias in the 2-foot beds bordering the paved walks - and any thing else required to get the park ready for the memorial day opening, May 30th.

In this "readiness" program, one of the workers simply amazed me. He was built like Hercules and had done some professional boxing - but this one feat I watched him perform was super. The "Sea Plane" ride consisted of 6 planes and each was suspended by four 1-inch wire cables attached to a revolving ring way up at the top of the support pole. Each of the four cables had a string of 25 watt clear exterior light bulbs spaced about 2 feet apart. Here's what I watched this individual, Chester Ballard, do: He filled his shirt with the 25 watt bulbs and went hand over hand up each cable. Held on with one hand, he screwed in a bulb, let himself down to the next socket and so repeating the exercise and then went right back up the next cable, continuing the same operation until he had filled all of the sockets on all of the 24 cables. Chet did all at a rapid pace with no breaks or sitting down to rest.

end of part two