Whither Carousels?

To be honest, when I was a kid, carousels kind of bored me. I liked, you know, the weird animals in creepy colors (if it wasn't one of those that just had horses) & I thought the whole going-up-&-down thing was all right, but it moved too slowly for me, took too long for a revolution, & there were always those people standing there, watching you. Maybe one of them was a parent or a family member, but I always felt like I had to be performing a little when I went around & around. Though thinking about it now, I totally loved the metal feel. I loved the raised metal cross-hatching on the floors & the barely concealed, greasy engine in the center. I saw a freaky carousel in Belgium - I might even have a picture:



There were other insects & weird half-animal, half-machine contraptions as well. I couldn't ride it, though, as I was an adult at the time. Boo! Hiss! (Other adults were on it, but with their children. All I had was my childish girlfriend.)

No, the reason to think at all about this show is because when I was a kid my single favorite thing on the playground is the now-all-but-extinct merry-go-round. I mean the kind you could push or someone could push for you. This kind:



I have a lot of happy childhood memories but among them one of the dearest is being spun on a merry-go-round that no longer exists in a park that still does in Garland, Texas. The park is called Rick Oden Park, apparently named for a kid who died from a baseball accident there. One time - maybe more than once, & they've become one memory in my head - one of my older brothers, who was probably bored stiff & looking for chicks - he deigned to spin it for us & he did, mightily, in a manly fashion, just turning & turning & turning the merry-go-round until it was going a million miles an hour & me & my little brother (& possibly some other kid or kids) just holding on for dear life - the centrifugal force pushing us away, legs flailing off the edge, lots of screams, possibly even tears - & me loving every damn second of it. My god that was so much fun. & it never seemed to last, it just never seemed to last.

It was so much more fun when someone else spun the merry-go-round for you, like it was much more fun to have someone push you on the swings. I think my brothers - & it had to be either Ralph or Steve, since I don't remember ever going to a park with my oldest brother Eddie - couldn't have understood how much I & the other kids loved it, or they would have done it all the time, every time, until we were sick of it. Because I never got sick of it (even if a couple of times I probably got physically sick), it's obvious they didn't do it enough. & of course for that I never loved them as much as I could have loved them, & they have suffered in their lives for that lack of love.

I would gladly have pushed my nephews & nieces on any merry-go-round they chose, but by the time they came along, the merry-go-rounds were gone. At least the kind I love. I am sure carousels are still available at carnivals & places like that.

Oh heavy sigh.