Your descriptive ability is wonderful. Your English is fabulous. Your desire to learn more vocabulary is not a reflection of your incompetence in English; it's a reflection of your desire to learn.
I don't know what's changed since the 50's, but I worked from my 3rd year through my 10th in an amusement park every summer. My parents were not wealthy, and my job supplemented the family income.
I worked as shil - my job was to encourage folks to spend $$ - and lots of it-- at a concession stand. There were two 'em, the Devil's Alley and the Fish Pond. They were side-by-side, and I worked whichever one was low on rubes (that is, low on customers). We never used the words "stall" or "booth". We used the word, "stand". But, it's been 50 years since, for me, and terminology may have changed.
There's a lot of regionalism and social status differentiation in amusement park work, vs. carny work. Carny means a traveling carnival, and is considered inferior to amusement park work (by amusement park workers; carnies are a whole different breed from parkies, I think.) Circus folks, carnies, and parkies are different; they have different terminologies (sometimes), different values (sometimes), and their missions are different, too.
The late Marcello Truzzi, another sociologist, was descended from circus folks. I think, IIRC, he said his parents were trapeze artists. He wrote about them and about circus life, and his work has been widely published. I've never written about my parkie life, just in bits and pieces, like this, and strictly anecdotally.
Anyway, if you'd like dated, regionalized, intel about permanent amusement parks, I can probably fill you in.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-08-14 07:45 pm (UTC)I don't know what's changed since the 50's, but I worked from my 3rd year through my 10th in an amusement park every summer. My parents were not wealthy, and my job supplemented the family income.
I worked as shil - my job was to encourage folks to spend $$ - and lots of it-- at a concession stand. There were two 'em, the Devil's Alley and the Fish Pond. They were side-by-side, and I worked whichever one was low on rubes (that is, low on customers). We never used the words "stall" or "booth". We used the word, "stand". But, it's been 50 years since, for me, and terminology may have changed.
There's a lot of regionalism and social status differentiation in amusement park work, vs. carny work. Carny means a traveling carnival, and is considered inferior to amusement park work (by amusement park workers; carnies are a whole different breed from parkies, I think.) Circus folks, carnies, and parkies are different; they have different terminologies (sometimes), different values (sometimes), and their missions are different, too.
The late Marcello Truzzi, another sociologist, was descended from circus folks. I think, IIRC, he said his parents were trapeze artists. He wrote about them and about circus life, and his work has been widely published. I've never written about my parkie life, just in bits and pieces, like this, and strictly anecdotally.
Anyway, if you'd like dated, regionalized, intel about permanent amusement parks, I can probably fill you in.