"Screaming for Joy," by Guest Blogger Robin Stears
Going to Idora Park was like Christmas in the summer. My family couldn’t afford to go to Idora Park all the time—we only went on company picnic days. Luckily, my dad worked for the mill and later on, he was a Teamster. Idora Park Day was the biggest day of the summer for me and my family.
The first one that I remember would have been around 1967. I was seven years old and my little brother Joey was four. Darren was the baby at age three.
As we walked past the Wildcat, I could hear people screaming and I asked my dad what was wrong.
“It’s okay,” he assured me. “They’re having fun. Sometimes, you just get so excited, you can’t help yourself.”
My dad took us all on the Silver Rockets. We rode the Hooterville Highway antique cars around the park and we kids were allowed to “drive.” We were allowed to go in the Wacky Shack and the Lost River, but my mother wouldn’t let us ride anything really scary (translation: fun), like the Wildcat or the Caterpillar.
Then we spotted the Flying Cages. My brother Joey and I really, really wanted to try the Flying Cages. We watched other people go zooming around and we were convinced we could do the same.
We were wrong. With our skinny little arms and pathetic, scrawny little bodies, we could barely get the cages going back and forth. We were heartbroken.
As our turn came to an end and we started to leave the cages, a group of four large teenage boys stepped on.
“Hey, kids, do you want to go for a real ride?” one of them asked. Joey and I exchanged a wide-eyed look and then nodded and jumped back in the cage.
The operator slammed the door shut with a loud clang and I could hear my mother yelling at the guy to open the door and let her kids out.
The boys split up—two to each side—and started rocking the cage. In seconds, the cage was zooming around and around and around. My brother and I were hurled to the floor by the centrifugal force. We slid to the edge of the cage and clung to each other like monkeys.
And we screamed.
We were trapped on the floor of that cage, clinging to one another, screaming, going around and around and around.
After spinning and screaming for a very long time, suddenly the cage started to slowly swing back and forth and eventually came to a stop.
Joey and I leaped to our feet. We couldn’t stop grinning and we could barely stand, but we’d had the most awesome ride.
“That was amazing!”
“We were flying!”
And then my mother was running up to the cages, yelling at the operator, yelling at the teenage boys, yelling at me and Joey. Then my dad was running up to the cages holding my little brother, yelling at my mom to cool it because we were fine, in fact, we’d had a great time!
My mom eventually calmed down after she’d check me and Joey from head to toe to make sure we hadn’t been damaged in any way and throwing some fierce glares at the operator. The boys were long gone—they’d started running the minute they saw the fire in my frantic mother’s eyes.
My dad was right. We were fine. In fact, that may have been the best ride on the Flying Cages in the history of Idora Park. That day, for the first time ever, two little kids got so excited that they just couldn’t help themselves—they screamed.
As someone who only got to visit Idora Park once a year, I want to personally thank all the people who worked there.
You always managed to turn a once-a-year experience into a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thanks for the memories. They're all good.