I never was much for carnival rides

The fair has come and gone and I never even rode the Ferris wheel.

Of course for me that isn’t all that strange. I never was much for carnival rides, even growing up. Others I ran with liked riding those crazy rides with g-forces and free-fall. It wasn’t my thing. I would watch them ride and only occasionally get coaxed aboard something I didn’t really want to ride.

Sure, as a kid I liked the train or the boat rides. I could even get on a carousel if the carousel animals were actually horses and not other creepy animals with scary paint. It was pretty scary if those horses went way up in the air though.

When I got a little older the only two rides I didn’t mind much were the tilt-a-whirl and the scrambler. My mother got me on the tilt-a-whirl and showed me how you could control how fast it would spin — to some degree. I think knowing I had some control helped.

Ferris wheels were OK by my teen years but I thought they went too fast. I would have liked it better really slow so I could enjoy the view. I could easily see my grandparents’ house from the Ferris wheel on the fairgrounds. I figured if they just slowed it down I could see our house three miles west.

As I got older yet disliking carnival rides had an initially unseen benefit. I am, by my nature, pretty dang cheap. While some could blow several months of spending money in one night at the county fair carnival, I would only be out for a corn dog, snow cone and maybe some cotton candy.

After I was married I learned my wife liked to ride the rides — especially roller coasters. I’d never had the chance to ride much of a roller coaster because they never brought much of a roller coaster to Roosevelt County.

One day at that big Six Flags down in San Antonio my better half talked me aboard a great big clickity, clickity, clickity roller coaster with a name like The Deranged Texas Rattlesnake or something. I protested all the way and she assured me it would be OK.

We took off really slow, slow enough that as we got to the peak of that track, I really could see our motel three miles to the west. When we dropped, I knew it was all over. The thing went so fast after it hit bottom it was crazy, then we headed for the loop. As we turned upside down my glasses came off and somehow the scared geek in me managed to grab them as they were floating there in front of me in free-fall. I caught everything that is except my flip-up shades.

I finished the ride out blind while clutching my glasses in one hand. I have not been back on a carnival ride since.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]