Several days before my eighth birthday I rode my bike into the path of a car on A1A. Riding my bike on A1A was strictly forbidden and as I swerved, I fell and broke my arm, knowing that my parents were going to kill me.
If I was expecting fireworks at home I was to be disappointed. My Mom sighed and took me to Doctor Shannon who set my arm and sent me on my way. My parents never asked for details about how I fell off my bike and thereafter I was always much more careful when I rode my bike on A1A.
When I realized that my parents were not angry, I began to worry about more important matters. I had been looking forward to my birthday for months because my big sister and her husband had promised to take me to Pirate’s World to ride the steeplechase. I was concerned that a broken arm would be a deal breaker. Happily, I was wrong.
Pirate’s World was Fort Lauderdale’s version of Coney Island. Located in a barren swamp near the airport, it had rides and a midway that were in a perpetual state of disrepair. Staffed almost entirely by unshaven, drunken pedophiles, the steeplechase at Pirate’s World was a murky local legend.
There is no modern equivalent of the Steeplechase. Riders sat on wooden horses that went at unimaginable speeds along a serpentine track consisting of high, banked curves, steep hills and hairpin turns. Riders wore no helmets and were not strapped in, and were routinely thrown off their horses as they rounded curves at 60 miles per hour. If they survived the fall they were generally bitten by rattlesnakes. This was considered appropriate entertainment in the “simpler times” of the late 1960’s.
Each horse sat two people and my sister decided that she would sit with me. Her husband, a burly two hundred pounder, took one look at the ride, went pale and decided he would take the pictures.
Waiting on line, no one suggested to us that our plan was misguided. I was a chubby child and my sister weighed barely 100 pounds. In addition, I had eyeglasses and only one good arm. “Hang on,” said the operator.
Before I could figure how to hang on with one arm, we were ejected from the starting gate and my weight was thrown back, hard, against my sister. She said a word I had never heard her say before as we raced around the first turn. Hanging on with my good arm, my broken arm flew up and my cast hit my sister squarely in the nose.
As we rounded the next curve I began to slide sideways . She pulled me up by my shirt, and I felt one of her arms tighten around me while she desperately clung to the horse with her other arm. We began to maneuver, faster and faster, through a series of turns, staying on our horse only by centrifugal force.
By the time we went into the home stretch we were at 70 miles per hour and were barely hanging on. As we came to the finish line we stopped short, pitching us forward into the wooden horse’s neck, bloodying my nose.
As we got off the ride we were both streaked with blood and sand. I had no eyeglasses and a torn shirt. My sister had a sprained arm and the crazed look of a wild creature. Her husband, who had seen the whole ride, was ashen.
My sister and I looked at each other. “Can we do it again?” I said.