Merry Go Round -- This Portland Family Treats These Frozen Horses Like An Endangered Species

CUTLINE: CAROL PERRON STANDS AMID A HERD OF WOODEN STEEDS IN HER PORTLAND WORKROOM. PERRON, WHO REFURBISHES THE ANTIQUE HORSES, SAYS THE FAMILY CAROUSEL BUSINESS IS ``A HOBBY THAT GOT OUT OF HAND.''

CUTLINE: CHERUBS ON THE PERRONS' TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY LOOFF-CARVED CHARIOT STILL WEAR THEIR ORIGINAL PAINT.

Carol Perron's workshop is a sur realistic corral of carousel horses, the stuff of which both murder- mystery scenarios and children's fantasies are made. In this eerie land, all the beasts are frozen: glassy eyes staring, tossing heads stopped in mid-swing, shiny hooves raised in an eternal canter.

Here, rows of multicolored horses hang from the ceilings. A few are stark and dull white - a coat of primer the first step to their resurrection - some have portions of legs or, even worse, entire heads broken off and propped up against a neighboring horse. Walls are hung with chariots of fire-breathing dragons or wide-winged falcons. A foursome of tall wooden geese, part of a merry-go-round called the Blue Goose, are locked in a permanent staring contest.

This Portland menagerie is home base for the holiday carousel that is whirling kids and adults around at Westlake Park. This year, as it has for the past two years, the Perron family - Carol, husband Duane and son Bradford - trucked the 54-horse portable carousel from Portland to Seattle and installed it as the centerpiece of the Downtown Seattle Association's holiday attractions. Last year, 75,000 people rode the carousel and $25,000 in donations was collected for Northwest Harvest. This year, cash donations will go to the local chapter of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Those are donations only; the rides are free. The primary sponsor of this year's carousel is Security Pacific Bank, backed by major department stores and the DSA.

The 1914 vintage Westlake carousel owes its glitzy existence to the Perrons, as do some 19 complete carousels (seven of which are operating) and 600 antique wooden animals. The Perrons run the Carousel Courtyard and International Museum of Carousel Art, and the Duane S. Perron Co. The museum, near Lloyd Center in Portland, is a nonprofit enterprise; the company is how the family makes its living, restoring antique carousels and renting them to cities and shopping malls. Rent for the Westlake carousel is $50,000 for the five-week stint, not including the support services the Downtown Seattle Association provides, says Michael Hamilton, DSA marketing director.

Carol Perron admits the carousel business is really a passion, ``a way of life,'' more than a moneymaker.

``It's a hobby gotten out of hand,'' she says while walking through her warehouse workshop and gesturing toward the silent steeds. Perron refers to the horses by name - or by the names of their carvers. Here's a Looff, there a Muller and over there an Illions. This horse, she says, came from a traveling carnival on the East Coast, this one was rescued from a collector who wanted to ``piece out'' an entire carousel - an idea that is anathema to this self-appointed savior of carousels.

It all began when Carol Perron had her heart set on owning a carousel horse. First she couldn't afford it, and then when she could she didn't have room. The horses kept escalating in price, and finally her husband decided they should buy a few, fix them up and sell them to collectors. They bought one of each color, then a menagerie of different kinds of animals, then finally a whole carousel. The Perrons put up their first carousel in 1978, and were hooked

on trying to preserve these pieces of American heritage. They bought four wooden ones, then one metal one, a children's Fiberglas, an antique English carousel (one of three in the country) and others. The carousel Carol Perron grew up with in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is now operating at the Lake Forest Park Towne Centre, at the corner of Ballinger Way and Bothell Way.

While Carol was the spark that set off this explosion of horses, her husband and son were both victims of jealousy. She was having so much fun that Duane Perron, vice president of marketing at US Bank, where he'd been for 27 years, quit his job when they were refurbishing a Philadelphia Toboggan Co. carousel, one of the few ``pure'' machines that still has its original horses, to take to Expo 86.

``Something had to give, so our security went out the window,'' Carol Perron says.

Bradford was ``making more money than anyone should at his age,'' his mother says. As a 28-year-old mortgage banker he got bored and threw his lot in with his parents'. He now does marketing for the company, but can wield a paintbrush, too.

Most of the Perrons' carousel animals were carved at the turn of the century, in the heyday of traveling shows. The carousels were built for adults, Carol Perron says. ``They wouldn't have made them so large if they were for children.'' When the Depression hit, the carousels stopped running and many were left to the weather or sold off in pieces. But it wasn't until the late 1970s that the horses became the darlings of interior designers and individual collectors. Seattle's two antique carousels - one that sat at the foot of the Space Needle and the other at Woodland Park Zoo - were pieced out and sold to collectors, the Seattle Center one just two years ago.

Three years ago auction houses began buying up the machines, foreign money entered the picture, and prices began to soar. Owners can make more by selling the animals than by selling an entire carousel, and old carousels are disappearing at an alarming rate.

``It's an endangered species,'' Carol Perron says with characteristic intensity. ``We are losing 10 a year. There are fewer than 170 left in the country, where there were 7,500 at the turn of the century. In the last 12 years we've lost over half of them.''

If a carousel is pieced out, owners can get more than $1 million for the horses; if left in one piece, the carousels cost 10 percent to 20 percent more, Perron says. ``It's the only time I know of that you're penalized for buying the whole thing. That makes it really tough.''

The Perrons retain ownership of all their carousels and manage their operation, which increasingly takes place in shopping malls. If they sold them to malls or cities, they'd end up being pieced out, Carol Perron says.

Carol Perron does most of the painting of the

animals. Jean Skinner, who volunteered to help and stayed on to become a full-time employee, does the preparation work, gluing, filling in the wood, and sanding. Perron says it takes about 150 hours to restore a horse, including stripping the old paint. She mixes her own colors to match the original colors and covers it with a glossy spar varnish for durability and to catch the lights.

T he old carousels had band or gans and gold-ring machines, but these days the band organs are too loud and the gold-ring machines (where a rider can reach and pull a gold ring attached to an arm and win a free ride) are a liability problem. ``It used to be that you'd fall off a horse (reaching for a ring), pick yourself up and get back on,'' she says. ``These days you fall off, pick yourself up and go to the nearest attorney.'' The Perrons have three gold-ring machines, but don't use them.

Carol Perron has done what she calls ``a 360'' from being a collector to an advocate for keeping carousels whole and operating, and she doesn't spare Seattle when she admonishes cities for letting their wooden carousels disappear.

``Seattle needs its own operating machine, an old wooden carousel,'' she says. ``These are art pieces now, but it is art in motion. Where else can you ride a piece of art?''

THERESA MORROW IS A SEATTLE FREELANCE WRITER. HER BOOK, ``SEATTLE SURVIVAL GUIDE,'' WILL BE PUBLISHED THIS FALL BY SASQUATCH BOOKS.

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Take a Ride

The carousel at Westlake Park, now in its third year, already has become a holiday tradition. The 1914 Mangel Carousel Works machine once traveled with the King Reid shows throughout the country and wintered in Pennsylvania. The horses on it were carved by Marcus Charles Illions and Charles Carmel, two master carvers whose work is well-known to carousel aficionados.

This year, it will begin spinning Friday, Nov. 23 and will run through Dec. 30. Hours are noon to 9 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and noon to 7 p.m. Sundays. Rides are free; donations are accepted.