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Children Will Soon Ride the WindOn Fiery Wooden ThoroughbredsCircling Prospect Park's CarouselThe once fiery mounts of the Prospect Park carousel forlornly await the refurbishing that will putthem back in action. The Prospect Park Carousel is one of about 250 still operating in the UnitedStates and Canada.BY ROSE MARYSCHARRENBROICHTo children of all ages who love to ride the fiery mounts of a whirling carousel: The Prospect Park carousel, which has been inoperable for the last three years, will be working again in June or July.Vicent Drago, a 67-year old native Brooklynite who has kept carousels spinning for the last 50 years, was hired this spring to repair the carousel.Men with the special expertise of Mr. Drago have become almost as rare as carousels themselves. While carousel manufacture was a competitive and booming business starting as early as the 1860's, there are, according to Mr. Drago, only about 250 carousels still operating in the United States and Canada and many of them were built by firms which no longer exist.The grand carousels with 75 hand-carved wooden horses, all in various postures and with real horsehair tails, are simply not made anymore. The Prospect Park Carousel was built in 1906, the year Vincent Drago was born.Mr. Drago, a burly man with tanned skin, white hair and a calm, confident manner, has acquired something of troubleshooter status in regard to the Prospect Park Carousel, which once stood on the corner of West 8th Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island. %u201c They couldn%u2019t find any blueprints for it,%u201d says Mr. Drago, who has worked on carousels of various manufacture. %u201c That%u2019s why they called me.%u201dMr. Drago, who initially had a trucking business, began his career by hauling rides in the 1920%u2019s for W.F. Mangels Co., Inc., a fourgeneration family-operated manufacturer of amusement rides in Coney Island. (William F. Mangels invented the \When customers began asking for installation the Mangels firm taught Mr. Drago how to install them.Although Mr. Drago considers himself retired-he loves to fish %u201c anything that%u2019s in season%u201d -hisspecial expertise has been employed recently by Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey and by the Marriott hotel chain on jobs that have taken him to Mississippi. Florida, Washington, D.C. and Ohio. Each Christmas Mr. Drago also installs the carousel for the Lever Brothers Co. in their headquarters on Park Avenue.Mr. Drago is working on the Prospect Park Carousel under the supervision of Frederick Fried, consultant to Restaurant Associates, which has the carousel concession. Mr. Fried is the author of %u201c A Pictorial History of the Carousel,%u201d described as a %u2018Bible%u2019 for curators, collectors and others with an interest in the subject. (Brownstone aficionados are already acquainted with another Fried book, %u201c How To Renovate A Brownstone.%u201d )The two men met when Mr. Drago was dismantling the rides at Steeplechase Park in Coney Island and Mr. Fried was removing the great Steeplechase smiling face for a museum. %u201c The face was painted on tongue-and-groove b oards,%u2019%u2019 Mr. Drago explains, %u201c I could see he was having some trouble and I showed him how to lift and pull the boards without breaking the tongues.\Mr. Drago is working on the Prospect Park carousel on a timeand-materials basis. %u201c It%u2019s impossible to give an estimate on a job like this,%u201d he says, %u201c You never know what you%u2019ll run into. We found the ball bearings are shot in the top and center shaft. The pole had to come down.%u201dRemoving the 4,000-pound, 21-foot center pole meant first disassembling the entire carousel, a procedure whicH^took about a week. On the eighth day, Mr. Drago and his three-man crew tackled the pole itself, a slow, deliberate operation that required unerring coordination on the part of the crew.Great care had to be taken so as not to damage the antique fittings and especially the huge gear that girdles the center of the pole. Mr. Drago judged that a new gear %u201c would cost a fortune and takemonths and months to make.%u201dWith all the precision of a watchmaker, Mr. Drago maneuvered the pole with his forklift, while his men, their hands slippery with black grease, moved quickly to support and cushion the giant shaft as it was lowered.On the morning of the ninth day when the two-ton pole finally lay cradled on the arms of the fork, the sense of relief was unmistakable. The smiles of the crew lit up their grease-coated faces and everyone began talking at once. \Everyone want coffee?\The three-man crew, Phil Sander, Sal Raffaele and Robert Vogler was specially hand-picked by Mr. Drago. Sal Raffaele used tooperate the kiddy ride concession in Prospect Park in the 1950%u2019s.%u201c 1 had to give it up,%u201d Mr. Raffaele says. %u201c Nobody would come down any more. People got scared. Too many rowdy types, beating up other kids and stealing their money.\As the men chat, Mr. Drago gestures toward the horses now leaning up against the wall like stage props in a dusty, dimly-lit warehouse. %u201c Look at those colors. They%u2019re terrible. I%u2019ve never seen horses painted like that-green, yellow, pink, blue.\Mr. Drago explains that \mustang colors%u201d --brown, beige, black and white-are authentic for carousel horses and that, if thebudget allows, the horses here will be painted properly as part of the restoration.\pointing to the center turret, which is boarded up, %u201c That used to be all stained glass. It was beautiful with the light coming through. Vandals smashed it up over the years.%u201d \puts in.The men nod agreement over their containers of cocoa--the Park cafeteria had no coffee--and reminisce about the days when Coney Island had twelve carousels along Surf Avenue.Area Dem Reformers Failto Endorse Any CandidateVincent Drago, a 50 year veteran of carousel repairing, standsOetore the Prospect park carousei on which he is currently working. Mr. Drago was born the year the carousel was built,1906.BY MICHAEL ALLENThe muddled political situation in the local 14th Congressional District is likely to remain that way for weeks more, as petitioning for the Democratic primary elections begins June 17.The attempt by reform and independent Democrats to unite behind a single candidate to seek the nomination for the seat, held for the past 30 years by Rep. John J. Rooney, failed, as no candidate in the reformers%u2019 %u201c mini-primary\'V* * * rmfoc \a clear winner. Individual reform clubs are now left free to endorse any candidate, under the terms of the advance agreement they made together.In the voting, Donald Elliott received the highest percentage in the weighted vote tally, registering 38.7 per cent compared to 36.05 per cent for Sam Beard. Cesai Pcialvs got 17.7 per cent, while Priscilla Rassin had 3.8 per cent on the firstballot. Beard, however, received the largest total vote. He got 570 votes, compared to 408 for Elliott, 212 for Perales and 38 for Rassin. Rassin has indicated she is no longer a candidate for Congress, but the other three all say they will be running.At the moment, the expected race for all these candidates is against City Councilman Fred Richmond, who is believed to be in the process of lining up united support of the regular Democratic organization in the district. Joseph Mann, senior vice president of the City's Health and Hospitals Corporation, is thehe was seriously considering the race at this time.The 14th Congressional District in which the candidates will be vying, is a newly-drawn area, changed in May by the State Legislature, following a Federal court ruling that ordered political districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn re-drawn to provide greater minority representation,CAROL BELLAMY, in anotherpolitical development, is expected to formally announce next Monday that she will be a candidate for re-election in what is now her \Senate District, which now joins Brooklyn Heights and most of South Brooklyn to the lower east side of Manhattan.The State Senator was the prime victim of the recent reapportionment, which chopped off half her present 23rd District (the piece south of Prospect Park), and put another quarter of it into a new %u201c minority\The switch also moved the 25th Senate District, which had previously connected the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Fort Greene and parts of Bedford-Stuvvesant, to include the Heights and South Brooklyn.The race will pit Bellamy against five-term veteran Senator Paul Book son.ASSEMBLYMAN MICHAEL PESCE, in yet another local development, has apparently left%u2666 }%u2019 >1 .>r\\r nont-1 * i -\\ %u201e nxi I- > L I ,, tl%u00bbV ViWM IU %u00bb%u00bbcandidacy in the 15th District, now represented by Rep. Hugh Carey.( I >M I V I |) (IN l%u2019\\<.%u00bb \June 13, 1974, PHOENIX, Page 3