The Fabulous Table Lady of Atlantic City Part 3

The Fabulous Table Lady Of Atlantic City Part 3

Rocco and The Little Wonder Cruise Pacific Avenue

“Not too fast,” The Little Wonder protested as Rocco yanked him feet first from under the hood of my 1976 Chevy Impala. He was the smallest of all three of us and was able to reach down into the engine and adjust the fan belt so we used him as our human fix-it tool for minor auto repairs. We didn’t want to attract any more attention from the police as they were always on the lookout for our car, “the rattle trap,” as they called it.

Rocco lived in the basement of his family house just south of Albany Avenue in the Chelsea section of Atlantic City where we would meet every Saturday night, jump into the car, cruise Pacific Avenue and “look for kicks” as The Little Wonder put it.

The Little Wonder was truly small, about 4 feet from foot to head, and grew up on the north side of Atlantic City. He had a twin brother whom he hadn’t seen in a long time as they had been split up after their parents divorced, each parent taking one brother. “It’s like having half a person,” his mother would say. By her reasoning, to split up the tiny twins was not so much to separate them but, “inch for inch,” to share one full size person between herself and their father. In any case, rumor had it that the other twin worked the side shows and was often sighted on the Atlantic City Boardwalk working for tips.

Rocco, on the other hand, considered himself quite tall at 5 feet and was proud of the fact that he could stand up fully in the passenger seat “to get a better look” as we did our weekly cruising.

We started the car, jumped in, me in the driver’s seat, Rocco standing in the passenger’s and The Little Wonder riding the dashboard as he loved to do. It was about 5:30PM, Friday night, late July.

We were off to a rough start as the fan belt was still wobbling under the hood which created a great vibration throughout and shook us all up and down. We took a left off Raleigh Avenue and were on our way, due north on Pacific.

Rocco was giving his usual play by play of the Avenue, some of which we had heard for years. I could barely understand him due to the shaking of the car and didn’t quite hear him say, “Isn’t that Mis-tique?”

Mis-tique was legendary in the Atlantic City nightlife of a lifetime ago and was rarely seen in public. It appears that the 70’s had taken a bit of a toll on her and she had retired to the West Side of town with her partner Joneee. We all leaned left for a better look and the car leaned with us causing The Little Wonder to skitter across the dashboard perilously close to the steering wheel. I was about to slide him back with my free hand when Rocco shouted, “Holy shit, a lady on a table just passed us on the right,” and sure enough this woman laying face down on a motorized operating table passed us on the right which caused me to swerve in that direction.

The Little Wonder also slid to the right across the dashboard and fell into Rocco’s lap, resulting in his head jutting out of the passenger’s side window in the direction of the flying table. When I swerved even further to the right to avoid oncoming traffic I hit a pothole the size of which is still debated amongst the three of us to this day.

The thing is, the whole car did a fast dive into the ground and bounced back all in one solid motion and on the upward swing The Little Wonder was propelled through the window and into in the direction of the table the air like a small rocket. Either he picked up speed on the ascent or the table slowed down, but the next thing we all knew is that he had landed face down on top of this enormous limbless woman riding a motorized operating table down Pacific Avenue.

Both were shouting as she tried to shake him off. The table was now moving at a good clip and I caught up on the left as The Little Wonder shrieked:

“HELP ME YOU MORONS!”

The Table Lady turned her head to bite him, and, as she was steering the whole contraption with a mouth controlled joystick, she let go of the stick and the table hit our car. That didn't throw him off so she grabbed the joystick with her lips and shook her head back and forth which caused the table to rock wildly on its two left wheels and again hit our car. These motions caused The Little Wonder to slide very close to the back of the table where he was now hanging on by his tiny fingers.

We were neck in neck on the Avenue when Rocco shouted, “Give me your hand” and reached out to grab him. But as the Tiny Wonder gave up one half of his grip to grab Rocco’s hand she lurched leftward into us for a third time and Rocco lost the grip. “Damn tiny hands,” he groaned.

By this time, The Tiny Wonder had lost almost all hope of holding on and when the Table Lady made a sharp left onto North Carolina Avenue he slid cleanly off the back of the table and was again airborne. This time he took more of a horizontal flight pattern and flew straight towards this metal fence. We skidded to a stop and jumped out of the car as he flew headfirst into the fence and disappeared.

As we got closer we realized that he had, in fact, flown through a hole in the middle of the fence that just big enough to accommodate his small frame. We raced over and discovered him in a bit of a distraught state from both the flight and from landing in a pile of dirt, dirt which was just soft enough to catch him and hard enough to bang him up pretty badly.

We all looked westward as the table continued racing down North Carolina Avenue, destination unknown.

The Little Wonder later told us that, in that moment, his childhood faith in God was restored and he went back to Church.

But only for a little while.

End Part 3