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Roller coaster plunges into past
(by Dave Lange - September 23, 2010)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Roller coaster plunges into past
It's funny how certain memories from your childhood remain vivid throughout your life, while so many others fade away.
I was 7 years old on a sunny day in the summer of 1957. My father worked at the Ford Motor Co.'s Cleveland Stamping Plant in Walton Hills, and we were at the annual company picnic at Geauga Lake Park.
Workers' families of all sizes, shapes and colors got together for food, drinks, games, fun and rides. Being the oldest of four kids in our family, I was the one who got to go on the big rides with my dad. But there one was one ride that loomed above the rest -- higher, steeper, faster and more screaming than anything I had ever seen. And my dad was going to ride it.
"Take me with you," I begged, my eyes and bravado bulging from ground level.
"I don't think so," he said, as my mom shook her head in agreement.
But being a normal child of great persuasion, I soon was in line for the Clipper roller coaster. Back in those days, a parent's presence and permission superseded any height requirements or apprehension about amusement-park rides. Undeterred as I watched the cars being yanked up to the summit and heard the blood-curdling shrieks that quickly followed in rapid free-fall, my anticipating grin widened as the bar slammed shut across my dad's lap but several inches above my skinny legs.
Knots tightened in my abdomen with each reverberating clack of the steel wheels over the track during our ascent. My eyes widened as people on the midway shrank to the size of mice, the parking lot resembled colorful pieces on a game board, and that big lake became a mere puddle far below.
Then we reached the apex. The track vanished. The coaster lurched forward like a pebble flung from a slingshot. My stomach flew into my throat. And my little body slid under the restraint bar in a reflex of horror.
I felt my dad's big hand grab the shoulder of my shirt and hang on for my dear life as I bounced around on the floor of that roller-coaster car for the most terrifying flash of time in my young life.
I didn't stop quivering for the rest of the day. While my brother and sisters were full of laughter and chatter on the ride home, I sat in uncharacteristic silence. I didn't set foot on another roller coaster until I was 13 years old.
The wooden roller coaster I knew as the Clipper originated as the Sky Rocket in 1925 and became known as the Big Dipper in 1969. It is the 10th oldest coaster in the United States and the 14th oldest in the world. But it hasn't brought any thrills, screams or fits of terror since 2007, when Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. announced that the park would be closed forever. Cedar Fair, the owner of bigger and more famous amusement parks, including Cedar Point in Sandusky, bought the historic Geauga Lake Park with its historic wooden roller coaster in 2004 from Six Flags, which had purchased it in 2000, when the downhill slide accelerated.
Our two sons grew up with Geauga Lake Park practically in our back yard. We bought them season passes during the summers, and I rode the Big Dipper with them often. Very likely, the last roller-coaster ride of my life came on the same one that was my first roller-coaster ride.
These days, weeds grow at the ghost town that holds those memories. People who dare to visit are apprehended as trespassers. And soon that wondrous old coaster will be nothing but firewood and salvage.
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