In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [41]
Treasure Island was a true island. There was water all around it, with little boats and swans, and Indian canoes and rocky grottoes, and even a pirate ship riding at anchor. Everything great, all in one place. Everything that kids want to see was there.
I am just absolutely out of my skull. I am wild. The sun is shining down, the birds are singing, Kid music is playing; it is all there.
And right in the middle of it, the Magic Mountain, rising high up into the sky, six or seven, maybe even ten stories high. It’s made out of that stuff that they build fantasies of. It’s made of whatever they make things out of that they’re going to knock down in a year. It had snow painted ’way up there near the summit. It was a real mountain. A mountain, in the Midwest, is really a mountain mountain. They don’t have mountains in the Midwest, except in stories and cowboy movies, and here is a real mountain. My kid brother and I just couldn’t believe it.
Only kids were allowed on the Magic Mountain. No grownups, even mothers, just kids. Kids under ten. We went in through the turnstiles and got in line, a long line of kids, jostling cheek by jowl, snaking into the Magic Mountain.
The line led onto a ramp that wound its way in a spiral round and round the sides of the mountain, and up and up. Slowly we climbed, higher and higher. I’m wondering what’s happening to the kids at the top. I can hardly wait.
About every thirty or forty feet there’s an attendant on the ramp, wearing a red cap and a blue jacket.
“Come on, you kids. Move along there. Straighten up. Come on, straighten up that line. Dress it up. Come on, you kids, quit shovin’. You, there. Hey, cut it out. Move along.”
And so we inched along slowly, higher and higher. I am looking down over the railing from a tremendous height, maybe ten stories high above the Fair. I can see all the people down below, like ants. My mother is way down there. Flags flying. What a great thing!
I am hanging onto the railing and moving upward, my kid brother right behind, until finally, the last turn and I am at the summit—a flat wooden platform. There was only one kid ahead of me. And the Chief Attendant He was taking each kid as they arrived on top of the platform, pushing him, shoving him into a dark doorway. A dark doorway, like a cave into the side of the mountain, right up at the very peak, where the snow was painted on. He grabs this skinny kid ahead of me by the shoulders and gives him a shove into the darkness.
“AAAAIIIIIIIIII!” And the kid is gone!
I am facing this black door. Alone! This is the moment I have been waiting for for maybe two or three years. I am at the core of my entire life. I have been building my existence on this, and now I am terrified. It’s a black hole! Just a black hole! Nothing!
The guy with the cap grabs my shoulders.”
Come on, kid. Move.”
“NO! NO!” Remember, I’m five or six.
“NO! NO!”
“Come on, kid, get in there. You’re holding up the line.”
He shoves me. I am in a hollow tube, a black, inky hollow tube, flat on my back. I start moving. Faster and faster in the darkness! A thousand miles a minute, round and round and round!
“AAAIIIiiii!” I’m spinning round and round in total blackness. I can’t catch my breath. I’m getting green, purple, red. Faster and Faster!
zzzwwooooomp! I shoot out feet first in the sunlight, onto a pad.
“Aaaaiiiiiii!” Immediately another guy with a cap on grabs me and shoves a red plastic fire hat on my head, with a sign on it:
“ED WYNN, The Texaco Fire Chief!”
“Get moving, kid, here comes another one.”
I could hear coming out of the black hole behind me: “Aaiiiiiiiiiii!”
My brother flew out. Purple and green.
“Klonk.” The fire hat on his head.
“Aiiiiiiiiii!” Another kid shoots out into the sunlight.
“Klonk.” Another fire hat.
We went out through the turnstile together. And there was my mother, eating a taffy apple.
“How was it?”
How was it! I have never been able