Mar. 24, 2003 - 21:34 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Whirly Gig

In summer in the yard, on the grass it was such fun to twirl and spin 'til being so dizzy I would fall to the ground and watch the world go round. Then when the world came to rest, up I would go and do it all over again. Spin as long as I could, fall, watch the world move. Finally a grown up would make me stop, saying, "Quit that, you're going to make yourself sick !" Never happened though, even when no one had an eye on me. However I did have a modicum of sense, never trying that on a hard floor, gravel playground or on a hard cement sidewalk. Past that point though my common sense gave out, I did many of the weird, risky things that most of us boys did.

I hadn't had an amusement park experience except when I was with Dad and Mom on their company's picnic at the park. Dad did take me on a roller coaster ride or two then, but that was about it at that time. Later when I was old enough to go across town on the street car with kids my age, we would dig out our hoard of nickles and dimes and go to the amusement park. The first thing I did was make sure I had carfare home safe and money to buy a pop across the street from the park (It was too expensive in the park), then the world of tilt, whirl, thump, bump and swoop was my seventh heaven. The Ferris Wheel rising so high and stopping at the top for each car so that each person could look across the lake and down to watch the minature railroad which went around the lake. The railroad and Ferris Wheel were rides I took to catch my breath and rest a bit.

Oh shoot, by then I felt being that big boy, I was too old to go on that sissfied carrousel, none of that for me.

I would spend all of my money on rides except one little bit for the last thing I would do in the park. The roller coaster was a thrill ride for me, and the rides that threatened whiplash to various parts of my body. There was the Loop-O-Plane that swung me in giant circles. Closest I came to the carrousel was a ride whose name I can't remember. It had cars hung by cables from a rotating framework high up. Each car had a giant rudder in front (giant for that car), as the ride turned fast enough a person could make his car rise or descend by positioning the rudder in the appropriate attitude. The bumper cars were a boys "assault and battery" heaven and took several of my fares. Once, I had enough money to afford to take a ride on the lake in the Chris Craft motor boat.

Eventually my cash would get down to that last fare I had rat holed and I would go to my most favorite place, The Fun House where for the price of admission a boy could spend the whole day there if he wished.

In there was what they called the Roulette Wheel. It was a machine with a circular wooden platform that sloped up to the center which could be spun from slow to fast. The rest of the ride was a curved spin out space made of hardwood too and waxed. The aim was to last the whole ride without being flung off, but spinning out was fun too. My buddy and I used to get pretty close to back to back and when the wheel started to spin he and I would flop on our bellies and grab hands across the center. When we were able to do that we had the entire ride in our pockets.

There was The Barrel a giant cylindrical wooden thing rotating on its side and divided in three parts, each one rotating in the opposite direction to the one next to it. I spent a lot of time learning to traverse that hummer. At the start after a few steps in I would be rolling at the bottom helplessly. But in time I was able to do most anything I wanted to do in it.

There were hardwood slides that went from high in the building to the bottom level. For that day and age, those were big babies. My favorite one was an almost vertical drop with enough curve at the bottom to slow a body down. Burned a lot of calories there. Once in a while, no matter where one was there would be a screaming screech and the sound of flesh dragging the wood. Someone's skirt had flown up. Never saw how bad they got burnt as the girl would quick put her skirt up. But a floor burn was known to me and I could imagine the size of the those burns those girls would suffer.

The ride we called the Lemon Squeezer was a round cage, open to the air at the top but with criss cross small bars. The point for us was to wait until the cage spun as fast as they ran it and then using what strength one could muster, try to grab the center pole, hold on and make faces at the kids who couldn't do it. It was hard to get there, centrifugal force was a hard taskmaster.

There were quite a few other things that called for a bit of skill and coordination that were fun. A place of amusement for us boys, especially on the weekend days was to stand on the upper level and watch as couples would enter the Fun House between the shaking stacks of barrels, the girl usually would be startled by almost getting her dress blown over her head. There were several air jets in the floor around the Fun House, but that was the one that saw the most use.

Finally it would be time to leave the park and go home, sweaty and dirty and much sooner than we really wanted to -- but parents, you know, had to count their kids through the gate at days end.

To be truthful we were tuckered out and unbelievably parched, so the order of action was to go to the store across the street and each of us inhale in almost one gulp a bottle of pop and wait to catch the streetcar home.

We spread out and lolled on the trolley seats, too tired for our usual streetcar frolics and perhaps dozing momentarily as the car rocked along. Finally at our stop we would dismount and slowly trudge to our respective homes. Another day had been happily spent in our post-graduate course of Whirly Gig . . . . . . . .

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