The Second Ride

Mama parked the car in the pasture to the side of the school. As we got out of the car, I could hear the buzzing and snapping of the high-tension electrical lines above my head.

“Dennis, you stay with me at all times. There are a lot of people here tonight, and I don’t want to lose you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded.

“Another thing, don’t ask for everything you see.

“You can have a few treats.

“I’ll give you ticket money to play games and ride a few rides.

“But when I say it’s time to go, I mean it’s time to go. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mama, I promise.”

It felt strange being at school on a Saturday night. Most of the classrooms were dark, but the P.E. field behind them was alive with an excitement I never felt during the school day.

Screams coming from the rides.

Cheers from friends playing games—rooting one another on to win a prize.

The smell of sweet, softly colored cotton candy, freshly spun and wrapped around paper cones, then hung in large bags or placed upright in a stand.

The first thing I wanted to do was buy tickets and ride the roller coaster. I recognized the teacher selling tickets from the lunchroom, where the teachers took turns doing lunchroom duty, though I didn’t know her name. Tickets were sold individually or in long strips, counted off as the teacher rolled them from a large spool.

“Twenty-five cents each or five for a dollar,” she said.

Each activity required between one and five tickets to play or ride.

“I want to ride the roller coaster first, Mama.”

“Don’t you want to play a few games? Have some cotton candy? See your friends? Just remember, you’ve got to manage your tickets, because when they’re gone, the fun is over. Why don’t you save the best for last?”

Not wanting to wait but knowing Mama always knew better, I agreed. We walked the long row of booths set up next to the midway, beneath strings of bare lightbulbs crisscrossing the aisle overhead. Loose hay had been scattered along the ground, and a few bales sat here and there beside the booths. Many had been built by the parents, teachers, and school custodians—pieces of wood nailed together—then decorated with colorful posters we had all created in our classrooms. Glitter, tissue paper, jack-o’-lanterns, paper-chain garlands, and large cutout letters were everywhere.

“I helped make that one, Mama,” I said, pointing to one of the posters.

“So that’s where all the glitter and paste came from,” she said, smiling.

I spotted Mrs. Page, my first-grade teacher, and said to Mama, “She’s our teacher, and she helped us with the glitter.”

Mrs. Harper, my P.E. teacher, stood near the starting line of the croker-sack races. As the pistol went off into the night air, a group of children bounced across the field in individual sacks. Then she lined them up in pairs for the doubles race, with one leg from each child inside the same sack. Off they went, trying to hop in step, but several pairs ended up stumbling over one another.

Mama smiled when she saw Mrs. Harper. “Hi, Judy. It’s been a long time.”

“Gaynell, it has been a long time. How are you?” Mrs. Harper answered. Then she looked at me. “Hi, Dennis.”

“Judy?” I asked Mama as we walked away. “Who is Judy?”

“Mrs. Harper is Judy. I went to school with her and her sister.”

“Oh.”

It felt strange seeing my teachers outside our classrooms, dressed in regular clothes—some even wearing blue jeans. Until then, I didn’t think teachers existed outside of school.

The grab bags caught my attention. Plain brown paper sacks were lined up neatly on the table, their tops folded over and stapled shut. Nothing about them gave any clue what might be inside.

“Mama, what’s a gab bag?” I asked.

“A grab bag is a surprise. You buy it not knowing what’s inside. It may have something cheap, like a piece of candy, or, if you’re lucky, something really nice, like a Matchbox car. That’s the fun—you never know. It’s like when Granny and I go to jai alai. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.”

As we walked along, Mama couldn’t resist all the sweet smells around us and asked, “Denny, do you want to share a cone of cotton candy?”

“Yes, Mama, can we get the blue one?”

“I want a candy apple too, pretty please.”

“We’ll get candy apples later, to take home. They’re messy and too hard to eat while walking around.”

“Okay,” I responded, scuffing my feet as Mama paid for our blue cloud of cotton.

Toward the end of the aisle, the midway opened up to games and rides. I could see a few kids tossing rings at Coke bottles. I was about to ask Mama for my tickets and run over to play when I noticed a crowd and heard a loud splash followed by cheers. To my right, Mr. Wheeler, our principal, was soaking wet and climbing a ladder out of what looked like a big metal watering trough. Fascinated by the dunking tank and feeling a little mischievous, I began cheering for someone to dunk him again—it seemed especially funny on such a cool night.

I turned around, eyeing the games, when Mama said, “Dennis, let’s go see if we can win a cake. I just heard a lady say that we have ten minutes before the first cake walk starts.”

“But Mama, I want to play games and ride the rides.”

“The cake walk is a game—a fun one, too—and we might win a cake.”

With disappointment on my face, I said, “I like cake.”

“The lady said we need to go to the music room. Do you know where that is?”

“I know where Mr. Brooks’s room is. He’s our music teacher.”

It was a room I knew well—especially the ceiling. Small acoustic tiles covered it, each one punctured with holes that looked like dots. I spent as much time counting the dots as I did playing my recorder. Mr. Brooks said that my talking in class was “disruptive.” That was something Mama didn’t need to know, I thought.

As we stood in the doorway, music was playing—one of the songs that Mr. Brooks often played in class. I could see him standing at the piano, talking into a microphone. When he lifted the needle from the record, the children walking in a circle stopped, each one standing still on a numbered paper circle taped to the floor. Mr. Brooks called out a number. The little girl standing on it screamed, then hurried over to choose a cake.

“Don’t you want to give it a try?” Mama asked, pointing to the cakes sitting on a long lunchroom table against the back wall.

I was shy and didn’t like the feeling I got when people were watching me, especially strangers, but decided to give it a shot. Jody Lively, the little blond girl from my class, was in front of me. As the music began, we started walking in a circle.

“Puff, the Magic Dragon, lived by the sea…”

Halfway around the circle, we stumbled out of line. Some of the parents laughed, and Mr. Brooks, with an irritated look on his face, said, “Come on, boys and girls, get back in the circle and continue walking.”

As we made one more round, the music stopped and everyone found the number closest to them. “Number three,” Mr. Brooks called out. I looked down, hoping it was mine since I’d seen a cake with lots of frosting, but Jody raised her hand and said, “That’s my number.” I was disappointed but happy that the little girl I had given a special Valentine earlier that year had won the prize—even if she did ignore me.

“Mama, can we go play real games now?” I asked.

“Yes, baby. Let’s go.”

As we made our way back out to the field, Mama said, “Look, your Daddy made it.”

“Daddy!” I yelled.

“Hey, Buckshot. Have you won anything yet?”

“No, Daddy, we’re just going to play games now.”

The first game I spotted was the fishbowl toss. Each bowl had a fish swimming inside—guppies, colorful bettas, and goldfish. As I stood and watched another little boy play, he was given three ping-pong balls. He threw them—one, two, three—all hitting the rim of the bowl, bouncing away, and hitting the ground.

“Wanna give it a try?” the young guy behind the counter offered, handing me three little plastic balls.

“Yes, please.”

My first ball bounced off the bowl onto the ground like the other little boy’s. The second one landed in a goldfish bowl. The third bounced off the rim of one bowl, then landed in the bowl next to it containing a red betta. The man dumped each of the fish into its own bag and filled each with air, tying the tops tightly.

Mama looked at Daddy and said, “Well, I’ll have to buy a fish bowl. We can put the goldfish in the aquarium, but the betta will need to live alone in his own bowl.”

“Why can’t they live together, Mama?” I asked.

“Bettas are mean. They’ll attack and kill the other fish.”

I was eyeing the other games with excitement, moving around a little more than normal, when Daddy asked me, “Son, what’s wrong with you? Have you got ants in your pants?”

“No, Daddy, I want a big stuffed animal. I just don’t know what to play.”

Indecisive and dying to ride the roller coaster, we were headed that way when I spotted THE prize that I’d been wanting since forever. It hung from the ceiling of the shooting gallery—a HUGE stuffed tiger.

“Daddy, you’re a good hunter. Will you win the big tiger for me? Please, please, pretty please?”

“I’ll do my best, Son.”

Daddy took aim and hit two out of three moving targets.

“It’s not the big prize, but you can choose one of these,” the man said, pointing to the prizes on the middle shelf.

I picked a giraffe, thinking its long neck was cool.

“What do you say, Dennis?” Mama said as I showed her the giraffe.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you, Daddy.”

Satisfied, I made a beeline for the roller coaster that I’d been dying to ride since we arrived.

“Come on, boys and girls! Who’s brave enough to ride the Little Dipper?” the man running it called above the noise of the midway, waving children toward the empty cars.

“How many tickets is it?” I asked.

“Three,” the man answered.

I handed him my long strip of tickets, and he took three, then opened the chain. Once the coaster filled up, it started slowly—a small hill, then a bigger one. With each drop, we’d all scream, which seemed to make it go faster—until it made my stomach feel funny, like it had butterflies in it. The cool air blew through my hair, tickling my ears. One of the bigger kids in front of me raised his hands above his head—but I was too scared to let go of the lap bar. The ride seemed to end before it had really begun.

“Can I go again, Mama?”

“Dennis, why don’t you try something else? The Tilt-A-Whirl is fun too.”

Daddy, tired from working all day, left before we did. He took my giraffe and the two bags of fish home with him so Mama and I could keep riding.

“Show me the Tilt-A-Whirl, Mama.”

The domed carts were colorfully painted and spun wildly around at the same time that the whole machine spun, a few even going in opposite directions.

“Let’s do it, Mama.”

“Dennis, you know I don’t like rides, but I do like this one. Let’s get in line.”

Once we had taken our seats in the cart, a man came around and lowered a bar across our laps.

“Hold on tight,” Mama said.

The music blared as the ride lurched into motion.

“Hold on tight, boys and girls! Here we go!” the man called through the crackling speakers, his voice cutting across the opening beat. Then the music took over.

“Baby, I’m burning, baby, I’m burning, baby, I’m burning out of control.”

As our cart began spinning too, Mama said, “Lean into it like this and we can make our cart spin faster.”

“Weeee—it works, Mama,” I said as the world around me began to spin in circles.

As we exited the cart, I was having a hard time walking straight.

“Am I drunk, Mama? I can’t walk.”

“No, you’re not drunk. It’s from spinning around so much, Denny. It will go away in a few minutes. Hold my hand.”

As we were walking away, Mama said, “It’s about time to go home.”

“I want to ride the roller coaster again, Mama.”

“Do you still have tickets?” she asked.

“I have one, Mama.”

“How many do you need?”

“Three.”

“Remember what we talked about when we first arrived? When I said that it’s time to go, I mean it’s time to go?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay, then. Here’s a dollar. Go buy two more tickets. ONLY two, and bring me the change. It should be fifty cents.”

The second ride was fun, but it wasn’t as exciting as the first. I wanted the same feeling—the excitement, the butterflies, the breeze in my hair—but it just wasn’t the same.

“The second time wasn’t a surprise,” Mama said. “The shine had faded because you knew what was going to happen.”

As we were walking back toward the car, Mama stopped to buy a few candy apples. They were a deep red color, wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a piece of jute string.

“Did you have a good time, Denny?” she asked.

“Yes, it was fun,” I said, laughing. “I especially liked watching Mr. Wheeler get dunked in that cold water.”

I turned around and stood on my knees in the front seat of the car as we drove away, looking back at the lights and the rides, remembering the feeling of the ups and downs on the Little Dipper, the wind on my face, the hair tickling my ears. I couldn’t help but think, I wish we had the carnival at school every weekend.

When we got home, Mama set her purse beside the bags of fish Daddy had left on the kitchen counter.

“Mama, why can’t we have a school carnival every weekend?” I asked.

She turned to me and answered, “Because if there was a carnival every weekend, it wouldn’t be special—and that’s part of what makes it fun and exciting—the anticipation.”

Turning back to the counter, she picked up the bag holding the goldfish and said, “Damn, the goldfish is belly-up. Why couldn’t it have been the betta? I guess we’ll need that fish bowl after all.”