Free Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories by Jean Shepherd Page A

and it began. Slowly at first, we began to spin. The landscape outside our wire-mesh cage blurred as we gained speed. We leaped skyward, up, up; paused briefly at the top of the arc at what looked like thousands of feet above ground level, then plunged straight down. Just as we neared the earth, we were whipped upward again. By this time, the car, caught by enormous forces, had begun spinning centrifugally on its own. We were trapped in a giant cream separator.
    There were brief flashes of dark sky, flashing lights, gaping throngs, my old man’s rolling eyes, his straw hat sailing around the interior of the car.
    â€œOh, no, fer Chrissake!” he yelled. A shower of loose change—quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies—sprayed out of his pockets, filled the car for an instant and was gone, spun out into the night.
    â€œOh, Jesus Christ! No!” he yelled again, as his brown-and-white marbled Wearever fountain pen with his name on it, given to him by the bowling team, flew out of his pocket and disappeared into the night.
    Higher and higher we flew, swooping low to scream upward again. My kid brother, chalk white, whimpered piteously. I hung onto the iron bar, certain that my last hour had arrived. My head thumped the back of the car steadily as it spun.
    â€œAin’t this fun, kids? Wow, what a ride!” shoutedthe old man, sweating profusely. He made a grab for his hat as it sailed past.
    â€œWave to Ma, kids! There she is!”
    It was then that the operator turned the power on full. Everything that had gone before was only a warm-up. Our necks snapped back as the Rocket Whip accelerated. I was not touching the seat at any point. Jack-knifed over the bar, I saw that one of my shoes had been wrenched off my foot. At that moment, with no warning, my kid brother let it all go. His entire day’s accumulation of goodies, now marinated and pungent, gushed out in a geyser. The car spun crazily. The air was filled with atomized spray of everything he had ingested for the past 24 hours. Down we swooped.
    â€œMy new pongee shirt!”
    Soaked from head to foot, the old man struggled frantically in his seat to get out of the line of fire. It was no use. I felt it coming, too. I closed my eyes and the vacuum forces of outer space just dragged it all out of me like a suction pump. From a million miles away, I heard my old man shouting something, but it didn’t matter. All I knew was that if I didn’t hold onto that bar, it would be all over.
    We gradually spun to a stop and finally the wire-mesh door opened. My feet touched the blessed earth. On rubbery legs, clinging weakly together, the three of us tottered past the turnstile as other victims were clamped into the torture chamber we had just left.
    â€œGreat ride, eh, folks? I left you on a little longer, ‘cause I could see the kids was really enjoyin’ it,” saidthe operator, pocketing the last of my father’s change as we passed through the turnstile.
    â€œThanks. It sure was great,” said the old man with a weak smile, a bent cigarette hanging from his lips. He always judged a ride by how sick it made him. The nausea quotient of the Rocket Whip was about as high as they come.
    We sat on a bench for a while to let the breeze dry off the old man’s shirt, and so that our eyes could get back into focus. From all around us we could hear the whoops and hollers of people going up and down and sideways on the other rides.
    There was one across from the Rocket Whip that my kid brother, who had great recuperative powers,
had
to go on. We didn’t have the strength to stop him. It was a big barrel made out of some kind of shiny metal and it spun around like a cocktail shaker on its side. The people were screaming and yelling; their skirts were flying up, their shoes falling off. Randy loved it. We hung around and waited until they threw him out.
    It was late now and getting a little chilly. It seemed like we had been at