More memories of the Iselin Fair

More of Brian Lanigan's memories of the Iselin Fair, from his Green Street Videos blog:

In childhood years, we went with our parents or older siblings. You would see friends from school and quickly try to outdo each other by the amount of rides, or which rides you went on that night. Of course, "The Bullet" was a right of passage for every red blooded American Iselin kid. Even if you never went on it again, you had to try the bullet once. 

Of all my rides on the bullet, only one stands out, my first time when I was around 10 or 11. I starting working on my parents a week or two before the Fair even started. Convincing them I was old enough and wouldn’t get hurt was no small feat. 

The year before, my father almost became ill after a wild ride on the tilt a whirl with me, which left my mother not too hip to the whole ride scene. But, I was ready to have the "I rode the bullet" notch on my belt and said I’d go it alone. As the bullet started to move, corkscrewing to the sky, I thought maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. 

While sitting in my cage at the top of the Bullet while it stopped to load the bottom car, I was facing Flips and desperately trying to regain my composure. Above the din of the fair, I heard a loud rumbling. It sounded like thousands of metal garbage cans falling from the sky and bouncing off the ground. Holding on as tight as I could, I leaned forward and scanned the area trying to find the source of this intense sound. 

There it was directly in front of me, a gleaming white old hot rod stuck in traffic between me and Flips. 

I was frozen like a deer in headlights. The words "Running Scared" were boldly written in very large letters across the side of the car. A rainbow of lights from the fair rides reflected off it’s shiny paint and it’s angry-sounding engine that looked much too large for the car. Beneath it’s chopped top, I could not see the people inside, which only added to it’s mystique. 

This was no showroom-bought, cookie-cutter, racing striped hotrod that I saw on T.V. commercials. This was the real deal. I had always thought cars like this were only in magazines or some mythical town in California. My heart started racing; a feeling you only have a few times in your life. It was surreal. 

After wanting so badly to be on the bullet, at that moment I wished I was on the
ground so I could run over and get a closer look. Maybe I could go for a ride? Hey, I was 10, what did I know? 

Just then the ride started to move, and when I came around again the car was gone. It had roared off into the night. Sometimes the most unexpected moments are the ones you never forget, snap shots burned so deep in your memory that they never fade.