Zoltar, Who Isn’t Real

I don’t want to know the future, yet I stop at Zoltar’s machine every time I visit Coney Island.

It’s been a while.

I still have all my fortunes in a decorated matchbox, in case I need to consult them.

It’s part of my fascination with animatronics, robots intended for fun, and the whole Pygmalion or Frankenstein’s monster thing. Let’s make life! Let’s make it!

I also saw the film “Big” at an impressionable age. Was I going to go to a boardwalk and have a mysterious experience there? Fuck yeah.

I imagined “Big”‘s boardwalk was Coney Island. I didn’t know better. I wouldn’t make it to Coney Island until I was in my thirties. There was a lot to see in New York City. Once I got to Coney Island, though, boy I became a fan, particularly of Spook-a-Rama, the best shitty pretzel ride in the universe, and, just across the sidewalk, one had to check in with Zoltar, sitting in his box, right by the entrance to the Wonder Wheel.

Aside: honorable mention to Dance to the End of Love, Coney Island. She doesn’t tell your fortune, though. She’s dancing TO THE END OF LOVE, okay?

Years ago, I read an excellent book about automatons and their history, including some of those very early fakeouts like the chess player who is actually operated by a human hiding inside, called The Turk. There’s one that can write, and it was legit.

Zoltar is a step up from other fortune machines. They had one in the women’s bathroom of JC Penney at Ward Parkway mall. We might go there for school clothes. They also had a pretty darn big Big Bird surveying the kingdom of children’s attire. At least it seemed big to me. When we visited the women’s bathroom, there was a scale. Oddly, the thing would be to put in a quarter, get your weight, and then you would also receive a scroll with lots of fortune-related information.

I never had the pleasure of putting a quarter into this machine. My mom would never have gone for that. We only had the pleasure of standing upon the scale and feeling it wiggle. It felt like an iceberg of steel parked there.

Sorta like this, but ours as I recall was mint green:

Come to think of it, the scrolls with fortune info were also sold at grocery stores back then. They had tiny bins at the checkout where you could grab your Sagittarius update. Like many a frivolous thing, I regarded these with disdain. Some people believed in stupidity like that, and spent their money on it. Oy. My parents would never. We were smart people. (I was such a snob.)

Back to Zoltar: Zoltar is modern, and American. His predecessor, Zoltan, was built in the 1960s and ’70s. Zoltan was interested in your star sign, like a minority of boxed magical people. The creators of “Big” just changed a consonant, and made their Zoltar several steps cooler than an original Zoltan. A coin rolls into his mouth! I’ve never seen one in real life that was so cinematic.

Here’s the most fun fact about Zoltar: every Zoltar is built by hand, and the teeth in every Zoltar’s mouth are based on a mold of the company’s owner’s teeth. Every Zoltar has identical teeth to one Olaf Stanton. I think this must be true. It’s too weird to be fake.

The history of putting pretend people in boxes showing only their upper half, and pretending they were fortune tellers who could move a bit and dispense cards began in our country in the early 1900s. Madame Zita was an early entry.

Grandmother Predictions showed up in 1929. There are a lot of grandmas, though I don’t remember ever visiting a grandma-in-a-box fortune teller. Gypsy Grandma (sorry if offensive) asked your zodiac sign and then gave you the 411 in the 1940s and 50s. Other grandmas include Grandma’s Prophesies (1930s) and Ask Grandma.

Princess Doraldina, surprisingly, was not merely royal, but for some reason had access to the other side, and she began sharing her wisdom in 1928.

I only had contact with one of my grandmas, and it never occurred to me to ask her for any supernatural guidance. That isn’t part of the midwestern culture. Estrella is a fortune teller I definitely have consulted somewhere. She looks quite familiar.

The other fortune tellers I regularly visit are at Disneyland. On Main Street, Esmerelda (likely a revised Estrella) offers information. In Adventureland, Shrunken Ned does the same. In New Orleans Square, you can consult with Pirate Red.

In a world of plastic souvenirs that take up space and may lose their luster, a singular card from a fortune telling machine satisfies me. You are mostly paying for the experience, the dumb magic of a fake person moving at your request, for your quarter(s), and the right to be mesmerized by such a thing. And you get a very portable souvenir. Stick the card in your billfold. Done.

Do the words ever mean anything to me? Absolutely not. I like that the fake person is trying. Never in my life have I had a successful fortune told, future outlined. Maybe I’m just not made that way.

My favorite horoscopes are in The Onion.

Libra (September 23 to October 22): Everything will work out exactly the way the shareholders meant it to.

In fact, I used to write down my favorites on post-its and stick them around my desk at work. I should do that again.

Pisces (February 19 to March 20): Trust your gut—that was definitely Seth Green you saw at Target.

Gemini (May 21 to June 20): In a tragic twist of fate, you’ll be overwhelmed this week by both a sense of fear and a pack of wolves

In college, a friend had tarot cards, so I had tarot cards. They’re very pretty. I wanted to know my future. I don’t, anymore. Surprises are good. Or they’re not. When they’re not good, I don’t want to know.

What I want is to participate. Art you get to participate in is one of my favorite things. The same way I lived being reborn, uterus through vagina, at a Museum of Modern Art show years ago, I want to participate with Zoltar. The way I want to live through pirates marauding without any pesky fear of sexual assault on Pirates of the Caribbean, I want to share a moment with Zoltar, who isn’t real.

I don’t want to try and succeed at anything. I don’t want to make a particular request. I want Zoltar to look at me, move, and give me words on paper that were rolled up inside his little soul, and pushed out into my hot little hand.