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 to avoid the car, I fell and broke my arm knowing that my parents were going to kill me.
But there were no fireworks at home. Mom sighed and called Dad at work and he took me to Doctor Shannon who set my arm and sent me on my way. My parents never asked about how I fell off my bike and the whole episode was quickly forgotten.
Relieved 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 sister and her husband had promised to take me to Pirate’s World to ride the steeplechase and I was concerned that a broken arm would be a deal breaker. Happily, I was wrong.
In 1967 Pirate’s World was an amusement park located in a barren swamp near the airport and featuring a midway that was 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 molded resin 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 breakneck speed. Those who survived the fall were generally killed by rattlesnakes. This was considered appropriate family entertainment in the simpler times of the late 1960’s.
Each horse sat two people and my sister decided that she would ride with me. Her husband, a burly 200-pounder, took one look at the ride, went pale and decided he would take the pictures.
As we mounted our horse 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 and 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 descended the first hill I began to slide sideways. My sister 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 hills and turns, desperately hanging on to our horse.
It was a long ride and by the time we went into the home stretch we were at 60 miles per hour and barely hanging on. As we came to the finish line we stopped short, pitching us forward into the horse’s neck, bloodying my nose.
As we got off the ride we were both streaked with blood, sweat and sand. I had no eyeglasses and a torn shirt. My sister had the crazed look of a wild creature. Her husband, watching, was ashen.
My sister and her husband looked at each other, gulped and looked at me.
I swallowed hard. “Can we go again?” I said.
Guy, The steeplechase ride was the very best at Coney Island! You mounted your horse inside and emerged below an incline that would take you up and around the building and back into it. When you got off you had to walk over an air jet which blew your dress up and people were seated in the audience laughing at you. Life was simpler then.
I have always remembered it and wonder where the ride went after Pirates World.
Thanks for the memory. Lil
we had a similar ride at New York’s Coney Island, in the Steeplechase section of the huge amusement. Apparently that ride had been around for a long time as it was the favorite of both my Mom and Dad. To this day, I still try not to think about that fearful “amusement” as it was the most frightening experience for this eight-year old, but tried, probably unsuccessfully, to convince my parents that this was my favorite ride in Coney Island also. When I do let myself reflect on the ride, I always wonder how anyone stayed on those rickety horses with no safety belts.