Daily News from New York, New York • 292

SURVIVAL ON THE DOARDUALEi od ride oney iven sis operators a go Jerome Albert, is vice president. Dewey Albert tried to explain his reasons for switching from real estate to amusements. "Every day there's something diffe rent, ne saia. -mere an excitement in mis dusi-ness. It's like the circus.

People follow it and love it." Kahn graduated this month from the University of jNew York at Binghamton with a major in business 'and political science. He is interested in jbut his most intense ambitions focus on making Astroland a success. "When grandfather started building Astroland in '1962, 1 was 3 years old. I can remember coming down Some 16 mtlZion people pack Coney Island on a good summer season. But in its heyday the record was 24 million and the cops used to close off the island.

The amusement area has shrunk, but Coney, depite rising costs matched by escalating ticket costs, hangs in. In this second of two stories, a look at the men and women who make the park what it is today. By KEN MCKENNA Norman Kaufman was watching the lines of people waiting to board his Jumbo Jet ride the other day, enjoying the sun and pondering the upcoming season. He pointed down the midway to a plaster dragon's head that juts out of one of the low buildings. "I was born there," he said.

"My father and mother ran that ride. The Dragon's Cave. A spook ride." At 15, he was operating his first amusement ride and, except for a fling as a traveling salesman, has been around Coney ever since. "It's hard to say what I like about this business," he said. "In some ways, it's like fishing.

You never know from day to day what's going to happen. You wonder how you're going to do." Question a Coney Island businessman about the economics of amusement rides and he talks about the weather. Or he doesn't talk at all. "The weather has a lot to do with ticket receipts," Astroland's advertis-. ing director, Howard Kahn, answered when asked for a financial breakdown on a typical amusement ride.

He would go ho further. "Those guys are all individuals," Matt Kennedy of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce remarked. "They're not going to give you any figures," But the chamber estimates that the 16 million annual visitors spend between $15 and $20 for food, drink, rides, et al. That works out to $320 million on 4.1- M. 9 1 A.

Fred Garms with the Wonder Wheel his father built waicning uie construction, i saw Asiruiauu 'growing up so it's akin to me." I ALFRED (FRED) GARMS, a youngish 67-year-old 'with a quick smile, is exhuberantly proud of the IWonder Wheel that was built by his father 61 years jago. He sits in an office cluttered with the tools and parts that make the wheel whirl effortlessly and ticks off odd facts about the structure. It is not a Ferris Wheel, he explains, that is, it does not swing on an axle but on a series of rollers. All angle irons and steel, its heavy parts were cut on the' spot and riveted or welded into place. Its 200 tons on two concrete slabs floating on 15 feet of 'water.

It has not sunk an inch in 50 years. Garms is as preoccuppied with his wheel as any person can be with a piece of machinery. Always in work clothes, he is constantly busy repairing and maintaining the 150-foot wheel. The structure dominates the Coney Island landscape, even more than the decades and several, like Kaufman, trace their connection through a generation or more. Touch anything there and it has a past, like the newly painted buildings with 80 or 90 annual coats underneath.

John Tilyou, whose grandfather founded the magnificent Steeplechase Park in the 1890s, still is a regular at Coney. DEWEY ALBERT'S TIES with Coney Island might not stretch back to the last century, but his Astro land Park was built on the site of the historic-Feltmann's Restaurant renown as the place where the hot dog was introduced. Albert, a real estate had bought the property as an investment and in 1962, decided to turn the 3.5 acres into an amusement park. A dignified man with a quiet manner, he looks more like a businessman than a carney veteran. And he is, for instance, heavy on promoting Coney Island.

me top ena, wmcn is wny some nae operators can -you've got to be progressive. You can't let up on spend the summer at Coney and the winter in the advertising. Some of the other people here say, 'Let i Caribbean. luie sun come out and we don't have to KAUFMAN. AT 50." is one of a handful of Coney Since its opening, the park has become a family Island entrepreneurs who run the rides a bunch of His grandson, Howard Kahn, is the park's advertising director.

His son and Kahn's uncle. iWBWWfwW; iiiiiiiii iiiuuuuijiiu fiercely independent capitalists with a life style all their own. Like his cohorts, he is preoccupied now. with the prospects for this month and -August, the two months the whole year hang on. "With the Jumbo Jet, I'll need to sell 150,000 tickets and then I'm off the nut Rent Labor," he said.

"That's part of the excitement You; just don't know." Kaufman is a burly man, tanned, with a black moustache and longish hair. He has the buccaneer air of a seasoned carny operator and looks at home in the honky-tonk atmosphere of Coney Island. This spring, Kaufman's Jumbo Jet ride was moved from the Steeplechase Park where for years he ran several rides while fighting the city in courts over eviction proceedings. The Parks Department did not think he paid enough rent And last week the Board of Estimate voted to turn Steeplechase into a parking lot Tradition is one of the elements that keeps Coney Island alive and makes it unique among amusement parks. Most of the ride operators have been there for picturesque Parachute Jump a little to the west He cocks his head and listens to the wheel's movement "I can hear if the wheel is working right I put my money into maintenance.

That's what keeps ride going. Breakdowns are so costly. My father kised to say, The dollar you don't put in today will Icost you $2 i But Garms gets cagey when asked how much he "makes from the Wheel and other rides. He smiles and agrees it was "a comfortable living." He has raised jtwo kids there and has no complaints. I MICHAEL J.

CURRAN has been at Coney for 35 (years and shows no sign of regretting it "I've made 'money ever year," he said. "How well you live during the winter depends how much you make during the summer." I The life suits him. He raised a family there, two daughters now married. At one time, he ran seven. Irides; now he is down to two.

"During the season, you like hell. Ninety-five hours a week. Seven days. In the three months you're open, we work the equivalent of a 40-hour week for a year." And apparently he has done well. Until a few years ago, he spent winters in a house he built on an island in Jamacia.

Every year, after his rides were tucked away, he and his wife traveled to the Caribbean after Christmas and returned in mid-March. "Did you ever hear of a job where you only work half the year?" he said. Sanford Fitlin, who with his brother-in-law keeps the El Dorado arcade and the disco bumper cars in action, came to the amusement business via marriage and has been around Coney Island for 20 years, on and off. He was selling trading stamps and would come out to help his brother-in-law with the games. He liked jthe routine and now is general manager and co-owner, "I'm free to do whatever I want to do.

I don't even like vacations. It's a creative business. During the winter, you can think about ways to change the games. What new rules might make them better. If you're creative, you can be successful." Through the wall of his office, the disco beat of the bumper car ride sounded loudly "It's a family oriented business.

Not like regular work. I enjoy watching people working out their frustrations in the, bumper cars." Ronald Guerrero operates several rides and this season took over the renown Thunderbolt from Fred Moran, the last of an old-time Coney Island family Moran's father, a house painter, built the Thunderbolt in 1925. A frugal man, the elder Moran had the roller coaster constructed around an old beach hotel, a 19th-century wood-frame building. A number of the ride's steel beams poke through the house. His son once explained, "In -Coney, you don't tear down buildings if you can help it" Moran, a bachelor, lived under the Thunderbolt for 50 years until his recent toward Kahn, 3, at his grandfather's Astroland tj 2 5 i I mil i' "4 HA Kahrr, -today uncle.

Jerome Albert (c. and fathrJJef.