Pleasure Island, Wakefield, Massachusetts

There used to be an amusement park on the north shore called Pleasure Island, the Disneyland of the Northeast. It closed in 1969, but for a short time when I was young my stepfather was the Sherriff at Pleasure Island. I know, I know, this sounds kinda ‘Exit to Eden’ skeevy. But Pleasure Island was good, clean, above the waist fun, and he really was the Sherriff with a cowboy outfit and a horse named Wildfire. During his gig at the amusement park he developed the innocent but disturbing habit of saying to timid children, ‘Don’t be afraid, your Sheriff loves you.'