That year's birthday, my best friend's folks were taking us to Gold Reef City for a day of tangible fun, excitement, fear and flurry. There the scents and smells of sweet candy floss, sticky glistening toffee apples, fear, vile bile and pavement vomit overwhelm the highveld air. Vibrant colours expressed in the jars of technicoloured candies, jellies, textured toffee, short breads, lengthy lengths of rope liquorice, and shining roller coasters fill in the white spaces of an already kaleidoscopic setting. And the sounds of screams, giggles, whistles and yodels of children, teens and adults reverberate through the small historical mining 'town'.
Kids love rides, I don't. The Tea Cups, the Bumper Cars, the petting zoo, those I can tolerate. Roller coasters?. Not for my jellied gut. But to be able to be part of the conversation on the playground, to fit in, to get a girl, I'd have to roll one ride. That ride was to be, The Log Ride.
Queued for a substantial amount of time in the hot blazing sun, the length of the line shrunk like an unattended lit cigarette, and eventually the sausage-shaped ride bobbed and weaved its way in readiness for its excited, nervous and palpatatious passengers.
The barrier gate opened, and the conductor readied himself by inflating his giant pink cheeks to blow his silver whistle hailing us to board the rudimentary ride- a fiberglass-hollow carved and painted to appear as a lumbered log. No cushioning, no foot holds, a 'water ready' Fiat Uno, a Titan submersible.
As his whistle screeched, the passengers scattered like skittled pins rushing to their intended seats. Beginning from the back, us joyriders slotted one by one filling row by row like dominoes. I was stood standing waiting my turn having learnt my manners at government school. Being the last man, there were no pickings but for the gaping seat at front and centre.
Frightened, and white, shaking and shivering, clattering, and teary, clambering over stray knees, I got on board.
Our giant painted boerewors began slowly moving as it was over taken by the water's flowing current. Shifting along arcs, bends and curves as the moat meandered, the log knocked and bumped against walls in the dark. Ghouls and ghosts haunted us, witches soared high up above, their broom sticks brushing our foreheads, tickling us to squeal like pigs.
The boat breached the darkness and entered the light of day.
A short stint and it stopped. Like the jolt of landing gear emerging from the bowels of a Jumbo, the log shuffled and hooked itself onto a conveyor belt-like contraption. click click click the ride began to rise ecking its way up the ramp, the ascent sending my heart crashing against my rib cage. The log reached its fulcrum, pivoted and with immense speed hurtled down the shoot with break neck speed towards a pool of water, our screams and cries in tow.
With my lungs filled with fearful screams, I trying to gasp for air. I wanted this to all end.
Boom!!, we hit the bottom of the ramp and a gush of water engulfed us all. The front line absorbing the brunt.
With the forced stop, my head flicked back like a stationary punching bag being pummeled by Fury and on the return flicked forward belting the rim of the fibreglass log. I heard a crack. Disembarking the Log, I stroked my tongue along my once Wrigley's-sharp smile to find a gaping hole framed by the crenelations of half an incisor.
As I smiled a sense of relief, bravery, self confidence and a will to succeed bounding off of my face, my friends cackled shouting, hey, Alfred E Neuman, that you?
