Carousels...

[White Fox]

I was at a local fair tonight and strolling through the midway reminded me of the history of Carousels. They go way, way back of course, and so difficult to go into that historical area. However, one recent story came to mind. I thought of it tonight while watching the ride called the Himalaya. Quite a number of years back (30 maybe?), at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto they revived an old midway. Brought many pieces together to bring back the history. One ride was called the Coronation ride. (Almost identical to today's Himalaya ride.) You may or may not know that these rides used to go very fast unlike today. Today, we believe these rides like the Himalaya are going fast because of the loud music, the ride master shouting in the microphone, and the loud siren that whales while the ride turns. It is make believe. On the old Coronation ride, it was NOT make believe. They found this ride and put it together. It is so long that I cannot remember the statistics here for certain. It seems to me they slowed it to something like half speed. Maybe even more. To be able to use it in modern times. They knew it would be too fast, so slowed it down right off. But suddenly realized it would still never pass safety rules, so slowed it down way more.

 

Carousels of course were NEVER ridden by kids. ALMOST NEVER ridden by women. Men mostly would get on and they were given a long lance. Idea was to put the lance through the hoop hanging down, and you would get a free ride. (Bearer of hoop gets free ride.) Imagine how hard that would be today with the horses going up and down, and round and round. Well, imagine how hard that would be if the whole thing was going probably three or four times faster as it would have been back then. Very frequently in fact men were simply pitched right off of the things!

 

Don't think there were quite as many people "making out" on the rides back then as there are today. If there were, they must have had some damned sore lips!