Scared? Who? Me?

When I grew up I was not acquainted with carnivals or county fairs. Carnivals were sin and as to why I don’t know but it was a no-no. When I left home at 17 to go to Chicago to college it was among the many things I had never been allowed to do or see. North Park was a life changer for me in that I was able to do things I had never been able to do before and threw off the bondage that had held me all my life in many areas.

Chicago, of course, had many sights and places, museums and such that had to be seen and we freshmen were introduced to a world we had never envisioned before. One of the places was the Riverview Amusement Park which had been a popular spot for Chicagoans since 1904 and was billed as the “The World’s Largest Amusement Park." Therefore, one of the requirements when one came to college in Chicago in 1943 was to spend a wild time at the famous park. For some people a trip to Riverview was a rite of passage; for others it became a significant memory and I belong to the latter group.

When the group of students was planning this excursion, I immediately joined in the planning, as I had with all the other rules I had broken. I thought this might be one more notch in my belt of individualism and rebellion. The night finally arrived when we hopped the Foster Avenue bus to go to the corner of Western and Belmont avenues to the exciting brightly lit den of iniquity.

The rest of the group knew that I had never been on any rides before, not even a merry-go-round, so after we had bought our tickets, they all clustered around me and agreed that we all should go on the roller coaster first and then after that none of the rides would faze me at all. I thought that sounded logical and fun so we all went over to the “the Bobs” and were all seated two by two on the ride. I was still so innocently unaware of what I was in for and laughed and joked as we waited for the ride to begin.

It started out going up an incline first and was going rather slowly when it suddenly almost stopped and I took a look and I said, “Oh my God” and I wasn’t taking the Lord's name in vain. We suddenly swooped downward at 100 miles an hour I swear and my stomach was left up on the top of the hill and I was hanging on for dear life. The sound was deafening and I kept telling myself that thousands rode this thing every day and nothing happened but the other voice kept intruding, the one that yelled in my ear, “there is something wrong with this thing now and it must be broken and running out of control and we are all going to die.” The world as I knew it had disappeared and my head was spinning in a wide kaleidoscope of color and I knew I was dying.

Then we hit a low place and we slowed and it looked straight for a while ahead and I thought that I might just live. It must be ending. All of a sudden it started going faster again, almost straight perpendicularly up, and we were upside down and up again and down again and up again and I knew I was in hell.

The ride did finally end and my friends all got off the train and I sat there in my seat not moving. They all said, “Come on, Bernie. Get up.” And when I didn’t they came and helped me off the train and stood me up on the platform and I crumpled to the ground. I did not ride any other rides at the famed Riverview Amusement Park that night. Nor any other night.