In 1927, thrill-seekers plunked down their quarters to take a ride on the Cyclone, a new attraction at Brooklyn’s Coney Island. Noting the success of the Thunderbolt in 1925 and the Tornado in 1926, Jack and Irving Rosenthal jumped into the roller coaster business to the tune of about $175,000, and the Cyclone was built. It would take only 700,000 riders to recoup their investment. The Cyclone was built on the site of America’s first roller coaster, known as Switchback Railway, which had opened in 1884.
The Cyclone remained extremely popular through the years and has accumulated its share of legends. One is from 1948, when a coal miner with aphonia, the loss of speaking ability, took a ride. He had not spoken in years, but screamed as the Cyclone plummeted down the first drop, and said “I feel sick” as his train returned to the station, whereupon he fainted.
Statistics were never kept to tell us how many other people got sick on the Cyclone or how many threw up. And of course there were more serious incidents. Two men were killed in separate incidents during the 1980s, both Darwin Award contenders who felt the need to stand up during the ride. One fell out and the other was whacked by a crossbeam.
The Cyclone began to deteriorate during the 1960s and was shut down in 1969. Two years later, the city of New York bought it for one million dollars. It was condemned a short time later and, in 1972, it was nearly destroyed to make way for an expansion of the New York Aquarium. A “Save the Cyclone” campaign did just that, and it was refurbished and reopened in 1975. The Cyclone was declared a city landmark in 1988 and a National Historic Landmark in 1991.
In 1927, thrill-seekers plunked down their quarters to take a ride on the Cyclone, a new attraction at Brooklyn’s Coney Island. Noting the success of the Thunderbolt in 1925 and the Tornado in 1926, Jack and Irving Rosenthal jumped into the roller coaster business to the tune of about $175,000, and the Cyclone was built. It would take only 700,000 riders to recoup their investment. The Cyclone was built on the site of America’s first roller coaster, known as Switchback Railway, which had opened in 1884.
The Cyclone remained extremely popular through the years and has accumulated its share of legends. One is from 1948, when a coal miner with aphonia, the loss of speaking ability, took a ride. He had not spoken in years, but screamed as the Cyclone plummeted down the first drop, and said “I feel sick” as his train returned to the station, whereupon he fainted.
Statistics were never kept to tell us how many other people got sick on the Cyclone or how many threw up. And of course there were more serious incidents. Two men were killed in separate incidents during the 1980s, both Darwin Award contenders who felt the need to stand up during the ride. One fell out and the other was whacked by a crossbeam.
The Cyclone began to deteriorate during the 1960s and was shut down in 1969. Two years later, the city of New York bought it for one million dollars. It was condemned a short time later and, in 1972, it was nearly destroyed to make way for an expansion of the New York Aquarium. A “Save the Cyclone” campaign did just that, and it was refurbished and reopened in 1975. The Cyclone was declared a city landmark in 1988 and a National Historic Landmark in 1991.
That quarter ticket now costs nine dollars.
TRUE CONFESSIONS: MY DARK DAYS AS A REPUBLICAN
I used to be a Republican. There, it’s out in the open. It was a long time ago, and I was too young to see the error of my ways. At the time, our family was pretty much all Republican – not avid table thumping Republicans, but Republicans all the same. Truman was a swear word, and we all liked Ike. Ike was like a grandfather, and my grandmother loved him.
As long as I’m confessing, I might as well admit that I probably would have voted for Nixon over Kennedy. Fortunately, I was not old enough to vote. It was a couple of years later in college that I began to change. See, the conservatives are right. Colleges take our respectable fresh-faced Republican youths and teach them unsavory liberal things like literature and philosophy and science.
Honest John
It happened to me, and I never saw it coming. For a few days, I was just an independent. But it’s a slippery slope indeed, and the leftward lurch was inevitable. And by the time I graduated from the halls of propaganda, my mind had been molded into the liberal quagmire it is today.
In the space of time between my Republican innocence and my liberal decadence, I did my mandated military time. Since I was a Republican and Republicans love guns, I naturally opted for service that dealt with guns. I joined the artillery because they had big guns, guns they didn’t have to carry over their shoulders.
After my six mouths of basic gun toting, I became a typical weekend warrior spending some miserable hungover Sunday mornings doing my thing for my country. And every summer I did my two weeks duty, even as I was fast becoming a liberal. Being an artillery sort of guy, we got into big guns, really big guns during our summer mission. This really big sucker of a gun we toted was called an Honest John, and I guess it was technically a rocket not a gun. One summer we got to fire the thing. Actually we didn’t get to pull a trigger or anything; we just stood around while it was fired. It was a holy shit moment when that thing took off, like a launch at Cape Canaveral only lots faster.
During the rest of the two weeks, we got to tote the sucker around the woods of Washington, pretending we were in pitched battle with an unseen enemy (probably Mexican rapists and murderers). For me, the high point of the exercise was the day we camouflaged Honest John so well we couldn’t find it for several hours.
Our Honest John rocket, hidden
Yes, you can see it happening: I was morphing into nasty liberalism, and liberals like nothing better than to hide guns from conservatives. Sad but true. I don’t really like guns any more, little or big, or rockets. As Johnny Cash sang: “Don’t take your rockets to town son, leave your rockets at home, Bill. Don’t take your rockets to town.”
Or perhaps as Waylon Jennings sang: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be liberals.”
success of the Thunderbolt in 1925 and the Tornado in 1926, Jack and Irving Rosenthal jumped into the roller coaster business to the tune of about $175,000, and the Cyclone was built. It would take only 700,000 riders to recoup their investment. The Cyclone was built on the site of America’s first roller coaster, known as Switchback Railway, which had opened in 1884.
Wretched Richard's Almanac 