Clack, clack, clack went the chain as we ascended to the top. My hands were white-knuckling the safety bar, when a string of muttered obscenities burst forth from my mouth.  Shit, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, all the way up the 98 foot lift hill, until we plunged over the edge.

The year was 1984, a warm spring day in late May. The day had started innocently enough with a phone call to my then girlfriend, now wife. “What are we doing this weekend?” I had asked, expecting 48 hours of going to the movies and dining out. “We’re going to go down to Paragon Park at Nantasket Beach and ride the roller coaster.” was the response. Not really what I wanted to hear. I had ridden roller coasters before, but only a few, and my main two memories of them were of the supremely scary: Lincoln Park Comet, North Dartmouth, MA (1946-1987) that I rode in my youth, and a ride on the Corkscrew coaster (1975-1989) at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, when my cousins lap bar didn’t lock, and I spent the whole ride holding her in the car.

“You can ride the roller coaster, and I’ll watch.” was my response. She just said “We’ll see.”  After a quick trip down Route 3, and a scenic drive along the Massachusetts shoreline, we reached Paragon Park. Standing in front of me as we got out of the car was a beast that made the 65 foot tall Lincoln Park Comet appear tame to my eyes, the Paragon Park Giant Coaster (1917-1985, rebuilt in 1986 in as The Wild One in Maryland). “No way” I muttered under my breath, as we walked towards the gates. This was an old fashioned park, where the entrance was free and you paid for each ride. We bought a load of tickets, and so began the dance. We rode the carousel. She suggested the coaster. We rode the dark ride. She suggested the coaster. We rode the Ferris wheel, again the coaster suggestion. Finally after about two hours of walking around riding the tame non-spinning rides and the repeated questioning of my manhood, I relented. We entered the coaster queue line.

Clack, clack, clack, we went up. After we crested the lift hill, and took off down the first drop, I stopped cursing and started to smile. Around the back turn and down the bunny-hop hills to the finish, I was nearly giddy. We pulled into the station with a lurch, and my hands released the safety bar for the first time. She looked at me and asked “Well, what did you think?” I looked back, “Let’s ride it again!”  So was the start of my love affair with amusement parks and riding roller coasters. I discovered, over the years, that the reason the Lincoln Park Comet had scared me so, apart from it’s disrepair, as a derailment ended it’s life, was that it was a kick-ass roller coaster. It was designed by the same man who designed the Coney Island Cyclone, which still thrills riders today, nearly 80 years after first opening.

As a history buff, amusement parks also offered me a rich and varied history to explore and learn about. My wife and I joined an organization called the American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) in the early ‘90s, and began going to far flung places to ride roller coasters and visit historic amusement parks. (Though I am a member in good standing, let it be known that the opinions and statements that I express in this column are my own, and do not reflect in any way the opinions of ACE, or of any of my fellow members.)  We went to Santa Claus, IN, Sandusky, OH, Bessemer, AL, Lake George, NY, West Mifflin, PA, Santa Clara, CA, and more. As of right now, 22 years after starting my love affair with the roller coaster, I have ridden 198 different roller coasters, 70 of them wood coasters, 128 of them steel.

Yep, roller coaster geek that I am, I keep a tally, and that tally is broken down into the two main types of roller coasters. There is a big difference between wood and steel coasters.  It’s all about the track, not which material the superstructure of the ride is made. Wooden coasters have a seven layer wood track that is covered by a thin sheath of metal that the coaster car wheels travel on. The cars have a hidden wheel that rides below the track, parallel to the wheel above. This under-wheel is what keeps the coaster car from leaping off the tracks.  Invented in the early 1920’s, it gives one pause to think about the early looping coasters from the 1900-1910 era that relied solely on centrifugal force to keep the cars on the tracks during the ride circuit.

It is this arrangement of steel on wood, however, that gives wooden coasters their characteristic shimmy and give. It also is what gives the illusion that the ride is rickety and will fall apart as you hurtle off the end of a sharp turn to your certain death. Wooden coasters move with the forces, or the wood would break. The days of allowing a ride to fall into disrepair are over. All modern wooden coasters are carefully inspected daily to maintain their safety in our litigious society.  Almost all wooden coasters have a wooden superstructure, but there are many examples of wooden coasters with steel superstructures, such as the Comet at Lake George, NY, and the Hoosier Hurricane, at the un-ironically named Indiana Beach, IN. The most feared coasters in history, the terrible triplets, were wood track/steel superstructure wooden coasters. The triplets were The Crystal Beach Cyclone at Crystal Beach, ON (1926-1946), The Revere Beach Lightning, Revere Beach, MA (1927-1933), and the original Cyclone at Palisades Park, NJ (1928-1934). These were twisted beasts of metal and wood with nary a piece of straight track among them, built by the Picasso of roller coasters, Harry G. Traver.

Steel coasters burst onto the scene at Disneyland, CA with the advent of the Matterhorn (1959-current). This was the first major ride to use a tubular steel track that the wheels locked around. Chosen by Disney for its smoother, less jarring ride and its easier maintenance, the Matterhorn is a rather tame, but historically significant, ride. The invention of the tubular steel track would usher in the advent of the loop and the corkscrew elements, which further evolved into the multi-looping monstrosities that have been built since the 70’s. Many variations on the theme, such as stand-up coasters, inverted coasters, and floorless coasters, have been designed over the years, and there is always new innovation in the industry. One of the most welcome steel coaster developments within the past decade has been the construction of super smooth “hypercoasters” that tower 200 feet and more, do not have loops, and rely on sheer size and speed for their thrills. There is only one steel coaster that I can think of with a wooden superstructure and that is Gemini, the dual racing coaster at Cedar Point, OH. Most people, I’m sure, are assuming they are riding a wooden coaster because it looks like one. Don’t be fooled, however. That smooth ride and tubular steel track indicate that it is, in fact, a steel coaster.

Amusement parks have been with us in some form or another for hundreds of years. Most started as resorts, with gardens and music. These parks, like Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, started operating in the 1600s and 1700s in Europe as ways for people to escape their daily drudgery. This type of park, as well as so-called trolley parks, which were built at the end of trolley lines to encourage weekend trolley use, sprung up all over the US during the 1800s. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution came the Golden Age of the mechanical ride (though there are drawings of a carousel type ride from about 500 AD!).  Roller coasters can trace their history back to the seventeenth century ice slides of Russia, though their more modern ancestor is the switchback and scenic railways of the late 1800s. The history of amusement parks, rides, and ride designers and builders is a fascinating one.  Furthermore, it is a history of how popular amusements have helped shape popular culture and the amusement industry’s impact on society at large, especially prior to the advent of the automobile age.

In this column, I hope to help everyone better appreciate the unique character and nature of amusement parks, their history, and the history of roller coasters and other rides. As you can probably tell by how I’ve illustrated this column, I will write a column about postcards, in a narrow sense about antique amusement park postcards, and in a broader sense of how the postcard was the preeminent communication tool of the early 20th century. For you list freaks out there, I’ll be sure to include some best of/worst of type of columns somewhere along the line. For you freak freaks out there, I will do a column on sideshows, sideshow performers, and the other seedier parts of the amusement world.

Mostly, the column will give me something to do while I wait for the springtime and that first rush of wind past my face. I will descend that first hill somewhere, hands no longer in a death grip on the safety bar, but thrust triumphantly towards the sky.