Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
June 26, 2007

Giving up the Ghost Town Roller Coaster

Journal Entry:  July 5, 1975 (age 6)

Today, I got to go to an amusement park for the first time.  Our parents drove us several hours south, to get to a park in Avoca, Pa.  Just the name of the place, “Ghost Town in the Glen,” was enough to get me excited.

It was hot as blazes, so all the windows were rolled down as our green Ford station wagon barreled down I-81.  In the backseat, sat my brothers John, 16, and Bob, 13.  I sat in the far back seat, facing backwards with my brother Dan, 7.  We scanned the road behind us for Volkswagen Beetles.  Being the first to spot one gave the spotter the inalienable right to punch the other on the arm and yell, “punch buggy!”

Once we arrived at the park, John insisted we head straight for the old-fashioned, wooden roller coaster.  John loves any kind of adrenaline rush, so a roller coaster is his natural habitat.  He and Bob got in line, while I tried to talk Dan into going on the coaster with me.  Dan flatly refused.  But I was determined to join the older boys, and, finally, my dad agreed to accompany me.  “Are you sure you want to do this, Timmy?  It’s pretty scary.”  I frowned up at him and nodded.

As the line moved up and up and up the stairs, I began to regret my decision.  As I watched the people ahead of us being hurled, screaming, into the endless sky, the butterflies in my stomach tried to join them prematurely.  Then Dad and I were strapped into our tiny car for the agonizingly slow ascent to the first big peak.  The creaking sounds of the wood and the gears didn’t help.  Something didn’t sound sound.   Finally, we plunged into the void, and my digestive organs threatened to have an out-of-body experience.

Everyone screams on a roller coaster.  But not everyone screams with such ear-splitting hysteria that the ride is shut down early.  Instead of three circuits around the track, we only did two.  The jaded ride operator seemed genuinely spooked by the volume and pitch of my screams of “PLEASE stop the ride!” and “LET ME OFF!!”  As we slowed to a stop, there was a protesting chorus of kids’ voices yelling that they’d been gypped.  The operator decided to give them their third lap, once my father had peeled my tiny fingers from the safety bar and pulled me from the car.  Dad held my hand and walked my trembling, bug-eyed form past the taunting faces of dozens of older thrill-seekers.

We rejoined the rest of the family below.  Bob was bent over in a convulsion of laughter, his voice reduced to gasps of “wussy!”  Mom looked as scared as I was, and was comforting a clearly disturbed Dan, who had now cemented his anti-roller-coaster worldview.  But John was beaming at me.  He slapped me on the back and said, “You freaked out so bad they had to shut down the whole ride!  That was awesome!”

© 2007 Tim Mollen

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