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USA Today

KEANSBURG, N.J. — One milestone birthday to celebrate as Keansburg Amusement Park opens in full this weekend: Its kiddie “pedal” cars turn 80.

The seven vintage cars, painted yellow and green, have been carrying children around and around since the 1930s.

“It’s one of a kind, really,” marketing director Katie Johnson said. “They used to have pedals inside and you would ride them on the street. Someone created a ride out of it.”

The ride is the oldest in the park, which was founded in 1904.

“It’s essentially been the same for 80 years,” Johnson said. “Their bodies are steel, which these days is unheard of. At one point they had little whistles and horns.”

The cars took a beating at the hands of superstorm Sandy in 2012. Seven of the eight survived.

The eighth was “flat as a pancake,” Johnson said.

“We actually still have it,” she said. “The rest we sent to a shop in Middletown. They hand-hammered out each car and painted them.”

Keansburg Amusement Park is known for its historic features, in a place built up from marshland in a time when no one gave a second thought to draining the swamps.

The kids’ airplane ride also dates back to the 1930s. But the pedal cars stand out because of their unmistakably classic design.

“One of the wonderful things about that particular ride and other historical rides — we get a lot of grandparents and great aunts and uncles, generations of people who have been on that ride,” Johnson said. “They’ll say, ‘I rode that ride in the '40s.’ It’s wonderful when we get people who marvel at that fact and it brings back memories of them riding it.”