Delta, Colorado
Note: I have recently published an essay in Under the Sun, an on-line literary journal, entitled “The
Carnival Journey.” This essay explores several key transformational moments in
my life, and how these moments intertwined with carnivals. What follows is an
excerpt from that essay describing the last time my daughter Ursula rode the
Ferris wheel in the annual Delta, Colorado carnival.
Three decades later, I was no longer the child
who looked forward to the annual arrival of miniature rides and colorful tents.
Instead, it was Ursula, my eight year old daughter, who waited in anxious
anticipation for the carnival, the one that magically appeared in Delta every
year on May 18th, her birthday.
From our front yard we could watch it setting
up on the banks of the Gunnison River, past the Southern Pacific rail siding
and the grain elevators’ twin white towers. It was an especially delightful
sight at night, when I would lean against the rough bark of the yard’s massive
catalpa tree and watch the Ferris wheel make its grand rotation, its spokes
outlined by flashing lines of blazing light. I could also see the great disk of
a ride called the Flying Saucer, which would heave itself from the ground like
a failed rocket launch, spin for a time with red and orange electric fires, and
then plunge back to earth. When the cooling breeze blew from the Gunnison, I
could just hear the shouts of the riders and the bass thump of the canned rock
music.
Usually the day after the carnival had set up,
I would take Ursula and her sister Isadora, two years younger, to play in the
carnival’s magic spaces – with its popcorn vendors, cotton candy weavers, and
ring-toss hucksters. And, of course, there were the rides – the
merry-go-round’s plastic horses galloping in a perfect circle to recorded
calliope music, the dragon-shaped miniature roller coaster, the fifty-foot high
multi-track slide, and the giant metal strawberries that moved in a stately
dance. But year after year, their favorite was the Ferris wheel. Ursula especially
loved the Ferris wheel, and she would ride it – sometimes with me or her
sister, sometimes alone – six or seven times before our night at the carnival
came to a close, for she was mesmerized by the wheel’s cyclic journey, which
landed you back where you started, transformed by delight and a quarter of an
hour older.
Nevertheless, the day arrived when Ursula made
her final Ferris wheel journey.
She had just turned ten, and was experiencing
many significant life changes. Her mother and I were living apart and heading
for a divorce. Also, we had moved out of our Delta house with its big
glassed-in front porch, its maze of old rooms, its mysterious attic filled with
forgotten furniture, and the big catalpa tree from which we could watch the
carnival rides blossom across the river flats. Now my daughters and I lived on
the ground floor of a small duplex in Grand Junction, a mid-sized city forty
miles north of Delta. Still, on the day when Ursula turned ten, we decided to follow
tradition and took the trek to the lost world of her birthday carnival.
We drove there on a bright Saturday afternoon,
heading south through the shale hills that roll like ocean waves between Grand
Junction and Delta. To the east, the basaltic ramparts of the Grand Mesa rose
into a blazing white sky. To the west, the sun was a sliced-lemon smear of
light behind high, thin clouds. Scattered clusters of antelope stood in the
dry, curving spaces, and ravens played in a stiff west wind. This wind worried
me as its gusts rocked the car and stirred up dust devils, miniature tornados
that tore at the salt brush and sage.
Sure enough, when we reached Delta and turned
into the park between the river and the town, the wind was cutting through the
carnival, blowing in sand from the arid stretches leading to the Uncompahgre
Plateau. Straining to escape, the red and blue and yellow banners snapped in
the gale. Many of the concession booths were boarded up, and half the rides
were shut down and motionless, machines defeated by the elements. Here and
there, groups of sullen teens and blank-eyed families drifted around the nearly
empty grounds, seeking something to do.
And yet, to my surprise, the Ferris wheel was
running, so we fought our way against the wind to the great steel ring
leisurely rotating against the white sky. Scared off by the wind, Isadora
didn’t care to get on, so Ursula rode alone. Tall and slender, she carefully
placed herself down on the aerial bench, and the operator – a tough, heavyset
man in machinist’s overalls and grease-stained denim shirt – clicked the safety
bar into place across her lap. Back at the controls, he threw a great steel
lever and set the wheel ponderously turning.
I watched as Ursula rode up into the glaring
sky and descended back to earth, a faint smile on her face, her long blond hair
whipping in the gale. I pictured what she was seeing as the wheel moved, the
town she had called home for seven years dropping beneath her feet and
spreading out before her – the riverbank where she had skipped stones, the drug
store with its ice cream counter, the century-old brick library where Tin-Tin
waited patiently on his shelf, and even, perhaps, a glimpse of the old house
and its beloved catalpa tree, its two-story white clapboard structure now
occupied by strangers. The wind whistled through the wheel’s struts, the gusts
rocked the seat back and forth, and the wheel revolved, bringing Ursula visions
of her lost world.
Fairly soon, the operator started manipulating
various levers, and the great wheel slowed. The journey had seemed shorter than
usual. There were only a handful of riders, and Ursula was the last one to get
off. After the operator helped her down, he hooked a chain across the gate.
Despite this, she held out the right number of tickets to ride again. The
operator glanced at her and shook his head.
“I’m shutting down,” he said in a gruff voice.
“Too much wind.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, Ursula stood for a
time holding out the tickets. Finally, she turned away and stepped down the
stairs from the short wooden platform with its closed gateway to the Ferris
wheel. Upon joining her sister and me, she still possessed her tight smile, but
as we began to cross the half-abandoned carnival, she began to silently cry.
To read the
entire essay, please go on-line to Under the Sun at the following address: http://underthesunonline.com/wordpress/2017/the-carnival-journey/
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