'The old stuff tells a story:' Amusement Preservation Museum hosts open house

GRAFTON TOWNSHIP — Behind an unassuming house off Island Road sits an unexpected piece of history. A small sign beside a long gravel driveway and myriad parked cars was the only thing denoting Troy Parsh's Amusement Preservation Museum from the roadway on Saturday. But behind the family's home and sprawled around the garage were pieces of bygone amusement parks: bumper boats from Erie, Pennsylvania's Waldameer Water World; rollercoaster cars from Conneaut Lake Park's Blue Streak and Chippewa Lake Park's Little Dipper and other memorabilia filled the property, which opened its grounds to visitors this weekend. The largest — and currently only fully functional ride — was a pair of Swingin' Gyms from Schererville, Indiana's Sauezer's Kiddieland. Sauezer's Kiddieland operated from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. Set toward the back of the property, Troy and his father, Rob, saved the red, white and blue attraction from a scrap heap several years ago. Also known as "The Flying Cages," the circa-1960s ride relies on its passengers' physical strength to swing the counter-weighted cage back and forth until it swings over the top. The historic ride was not known for its safety features, Parsh said. The metal cages have no padding, and riders who were not paying attention or misusing the cage could come away with broken bones or cracked skulls, or worse, from hitting the handlebars inside or crashing into the cage itself if the operator suddenly stopped it. Inattentive operators or passersby were also struck or dragged by the swinging cages. Parsh built a fence around the ride to keep visitors a safe distance away and he and his father limited the amount of time attendees were on it, and only allowed one rider at a time. As far as Parsh knew, his pair of Swingin' Gyms were one of two operational in the U.S., with the other in Wisconsin. Its restoration took about four years. "We didn't ever see it going together," he said. "It's one of those projects that you're kind of looking at the light at the end of the tunnel and there's this little speck down there." Prosper Russeau, 16, of Toledo, worked the blue metal cage back and forth until it swung over the top. The centripetal force kept the cage moving around and around the top of the ride, giving the teen a birds-eye view of Parsh's property. "I do it every year, but this is the most I've gone around," Russeau said. "And it's the first year I've done it the first try — it's always taken a couple tries (to go around the top)." Parsh has opened his collection up to the public once a year since about 2018. It all started with a set of Raging Wolf Bobs roller coaster cars from the now-defunct Geauga Lake amusement park. The Aurora amusement and water park operated in some form from 1887 to 2007. Parsh remembered the wooden rollercoaster from his childhood and saw a set of the cars for sale in Chicago. A man there had purchased them via an auction site and quickly found himself overwhelmed with the restoration project, Parsh said, so the cars sat, rotting away in the back of a midwestern shed for about a decade. "That's about when we came in and fully restored them," Parsh, a mechanical engineer by trade, said. That project took about 18 months, and soon the family's garage was full of other coaster cars and restoration pieces. Hope Abbott, of Green, also remembered trips to Geauga Lake as a kid in the 70s and 80s. She wandered between the pieces taking up Parsh's driveway, happy to see them preserved. "This brings back a lot of good memories," she said. Parsh used to find pieces on auction sites — now they find their way to him, he said. Recently, a man pulled into their driveway with a boat from Chippewa Lake, he said, and offered it free as long as they got it off his trailer. Chippewa Lake beach and amusement park opened in 1878 and closed in 1978, and sat abandoned for decades afterward. The boat joined the Little Dipper rollercoaster car, Wild Mouse sign and car, pedal boat and other items already in Parsh's collection from the Medina County attraction. Restoration takes place on a case-by-case basis, he said. "When it comes down to it, the old stuff tells a story," he said. "The new stuff I'm redoing it, making it look new — yeah, it's nice to take pictures and people remember it too in that form but typically I like leaving stuff original so you can peel back the layers of it." One of his favorite pieces of peeling-paint-riddled history that probably will not be brought back to its original glory is the Laff-in-the-Dark car from Euclid Beach Park — as underneath some of that peeling paint is the original pinstriping from the 1920s, he said. Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood operated from 1895 to 1969. Rob Parsh remembers some of his son's collection from his own childhood. He now helps his son breath new life into those oft-forgotten pieces of fiberglass and steel. "What's really cool about this is everybody's got a story to tell," Rob Parsh said of the open house. "Every person who shows up, you get something different." He never expected his backyard to be home to a budding amusement park museum, he said, but was happy to see the items saved from scrap heaps. The younger Parsh's goal is to eventually have an event center and museum open year-round. It is not in the immediate future, Troy Parsh said, but in the meantime he will continue to collect and restore the items that come his family's way. "It's important," Rob Parsh said. "A lot of stuff would have been lost to history (and) never seen again." For more information about the Amusement Preservation Museum, visit amusementpreservationmuseum.com. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.