“Eeek, this is scary,” the girl across from us on the carnival ride said to her boyfriend. “We're up so high and it's going to break and … and … and ...”
“Just like 'Final Destination',” I couldn't help saying. I'll admit that it may have been an inappropriate thing to say. After all, in one of the many sequels to that movie, a ride at a county fair goes horribly awry and people end up being crushed, decapitated, impaled, and otherwise made to have areally bad day.
“Eeeeeeeeeek!” the girl said.
Their friend, sitting with them on their side of the seating area, reached out and shook the door. There was screaming and a weepy, “Stop that!”
We stopped giving the poor lass a hard time for a few minutes. This was probably for the best, at least as regarded possible future litigation. When the ride stopped high in the air, I felt that, although I had been, perhaps, cruel in my statements, I'd offer up some reassuring words.
“Look, if that bolt there -- the rattling one? -- falls out, we can always replace it with this loose one here.”
“Eeeeeeeeeek!” the girl said.
I turned to my companion and shrugged. She glared at me. Just no pleasing some people. “That was mean,” she said when we finally exited the ride and the weepy girl and her companions had fled the scene.
“It's a Ferris Wheel.”
“Mean.”
“Ferris Wheel. Safest ride on theface of the planet.”
“Still mean. What if she was afraid of heights?”
“Well, then she shouldn't have been on the Ferris Wheel.”
My companion bowed to my superior logic. Okay, okay, she glared at me and we moved on to the next ride. We had bought armbands that gave us unlimited access to the rides on the midway at the Greene County Fair, and we were determined to get as much use out of them as we could. We'd already spun around and up and around some more (my ribs getting mostly crushed by centrifugal force in the process) on the Himalayan. Then we rode a beast of a ride that looked like a giant hammer. Riders sat in the“head” of the hammer while the whole thing swung up and back, upand back, and then up, up, up and OVER! Very pleasant.
It had been years since I'd ridden the rides at a fair. The last time had been at the Coahuila State Fairin Torreon, Mexico. There, the bolts really were flying out of the rides, and most of them (the rides, not the bolts) were unpadded. In comparison, seeing workmen swarming over one of the rides at theGreene County Fair, trying to get it back up and running, wasdownright reassuring.
We rode the Water Splash ride. Therewas water … and splashing.
The Tilt-a-Whirl, with its tilting and its whirling.
The roller coaster, with its rolling and, er, coasting.
Then, next on our list was a whirling disk that spun and dipped at great speed before turning on its edge and spinning and dipping at even greater speed.
That was a bad idea. Or maybe the badidea had been to stop for a Giant Tenderloin Sandwich and a Giant Jugof Root Beer before riding it. We stepped off of the ride, dizzy,reeling, and more than a bit queasy.
“Ugh, why did I have the GiantTenderloin sandwich,” I groaned.
“Ugh, why did I have the Giant Jug of Root Beer,” I groaned some more, sloshing a bit.
By focusing my attention on a creepy clown nearby who was throwing insults at passersby (the idea was to make them angry enough to want to spend five bucks trying to dunk him in the dunk tank), I was able to keep said tenderloin and said root beer in my stomach, where it belonged.
“Nothing more that spins fast,” my friend said.
“Right,” I said.
So we went and rode the Ferris Wheel again.
“Eek, this is scary,” the girl across from us said. I sighed.
* * *
The author has never been on a ride that fell apart while he was on it (though an airplane he was on once dropped pieces of its engine out onto the tarmac). If you have, feel free to tell him about it in the comments, below.
[Photo Caption: "The midway at the Ozark Empire Fair in Spingfield, MO"]
[Photo Caption: "Is it EVER a good idea to eat at one of these places?"]
