Rock-O-Plane

It was the Boonville Fair. It was always the fair, scene of so many crimes and misdemeanors, of joys and neon sorrows.

The Mendocino County Apple Fair and Rodeo was, in my time, Boonville’s small-town essence condensed into three days: the pomp and circumstance of high school football, the ice cream bars dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts (purchased beneath the suspicious eyes of the adjacent John Birch Society booth); the pink gorillas won by tossing ping-pong balls into floating rings; the drunken fistfights and three-day love affairs; the rodeo cowboys in black hats and wrangler jeans; the PA announcer evoking America’s fast-fading past, introducing ponies named Starlight and Chippewa Dancer, and bulls called Black Cannon and Texas Stranger. And all the while the lights blinking, strobing, flashing, blinding, teasing, forming into green arrows, hinting at inter-stellar travel, tempting us with EAT NOW and COLD BEER and PRIZES PRIZES PRIZES!

On Thursday nights my old grade school gang of Eric June, Jeff Burroughs, Danny Pardini, Jerry Tolman and Olie Erickson would make a few bucks stacking crates of apples in the exhibition hall. Gravensteins. Golden Delicious. Mackintosh. Red Delicious. The little I know about apples was gleaned from those long ago September nights. And the excitement of being inside the fairgrounds while the carnival was setting up, and in the livestock area the 4-H kids were trimming sheep, combing their lop-eared rabbits. I remember Charmian Blattner too, her benevolent imperialistic aura, making sure we were safe and reminding us to keep the apples polished and beautiful.

But carnivals, like clowns, have their dark side. And proof of Satan’s hand was the Rock-O-Planes, a ride consisting of eight cages that spun wildly while the larger mechanical arms twirled you through the air. In other words, sickening movement on top of sickening movement. Every year I vowed to avoid the Rock-O-Plane, but nevertheless somehow ended up in a cramped cage with Eric or my cousin Robert at the brake, which could turn our free-spinning seats upside-down and stomach-churning angles. My tormentors would take glee in my screams of fear, my pleas to stop the somersaults, the queasiness in my gut from getting upside down glimpses of trees and corn dog vendors and Don Summit in his varsity jacket… I wanted to be freed and liberated. I wanted the ride to end, for the Rock-O-Planes to be dismantled and sold as scrap metal to Siberian varmint trappers. It was this insidious ride that almost ruined the fair for me every year. But three decades later, on a 747 off the coast of India, remembering the Rock-O-Planes, I almost smile.

* * *

The Willits Fair: Sometime in the 80s I found myself driving a car with a sunroof en route to the Willits Fair, with G.P. Price as my co-pilot. A famished G.P. demanded we stop in Ukiah at a drive-thru burger joint. There were three cars ahead of us, and G.P. got out to relieve himself. But instead of going inside he shuffled a couple of steps into the shrubs and let her rip. I turned around and saw that the stream from G.P.’s manhood was aimed directly at a not-so-well hidden camera. He went, and went, and went some more. Hurricane Katrina dropped less moisture on New Orleans than what he laid down that summer night. What his act looked like on film I can only imagine. Maybe the Loch Ness Monster leaping at midnight. Perhaps an anaconda attacking a tourist. (Or is that “manaconda”?)

G.P. finally got back into the car, and we drove straight to the window, where the entire Burger King staff was looking at us with wide-eyes of fear, loathing and amazement. Nonplussed, G.P. cheerily called out: “Three Big Macs, please.”

The assistant manager meekly stepped to the window. “We don’t have Big Macs.”

“Three Big Macs,” G.P. insisted.

“Sir, we don’t have Big Macs. And besides, we’re not serving you because of the, uh…” As she struggled to find the right words to describe the attack on the camera, G.P. leaped through the sunroof and halfway into the Burger King take-out window, trying to choke the manager.

“What? No f*cking Big Macs!”

The staff shrank back in horror, and the manager yelled, “Call the cops! Indecent exposure and assault!” I pulled him back into the car and stomped on the gas.

“That was Burger King.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Two seconds later G.P. giggled as we pulled into McDonald’s.

“Ha, guess you were right!”

He secured a bag full of Ronald McDonald’s finest and 45 minutes later we were yucking it up on the water bumper cars at the Willits fair. Only after being rammed by a pair of twin seven-year-old psychos that were probably from Laytonville, G.P. vomited into the pool. The attendant started screaming in horror for him to stop, but G.P. only vomited some more. The ride was stopped and we were ejected. Then everyone was ejected as the pool had to be drained and cleaned. Everyone glared at G.P. and me. The attendant banned us for life from both the fair and the water bumper cars (now that’s piling on!). Larry Carr and Chris Hayward appeared as we were being escorted out the gates.

“What’s happened?”

G.P. shrugged. “No more f*cking Macs.”

* * *

Thirty-five thousand feet over the Bay of Bengal and the plane bucks and swoops like a starling drunk on twilight. Rain lashes the window. Spasms of lightning reveal brutish storm clouds. There are monstrous rumblings that could be interpreted as thunder, but I’ve watched enough disaster television to know the truth: the fuselage is tearing away, opening up like a can of sardines. The void beckons as children weep.

The captain comes on the PA to announce, “Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. It’s a little spot of weather, but we should be clear in 45 minutes or so. Give or take a few raindrops.” A few raindrops? This tin can is getting bounced around like Marilyn Monroe between the Kennedy brothers, then blasted with fire hoses the width of Rush Limbaugh’s backside, and the faux-Brit lunatic at the controls is making droll jokes?

Across the aisle the nice man with the Hitler mustache is rolling prayer beads through suspiciously large and sweaty fingers. He looks at me and shakes his head sadly. “I don’t think my whiskey soda is coming anytime soon.”

I muster a polite smile and try to speak, but manage only a lurid half-croak, like a bullfrog swallowing a baby lizard choking on a fly: half rasp, half gurgle, and a jigger of meek cavity search protest (see also the semi-suppressed groan/chortle you emitted that time your roommate unlocked you from the closet, and you were wearing the rubber nurse’s uniform purchased hush-hush from a Tokyo collector.)

To keep my sanity, I jot down possible headlines to accompany the wire story of my miraculous escape: “American Survives Plane Crash Only To Be Devoured Rescued By Sharks”; “Jumbo Jet Survivor Genius Makes Raft From Microwave Hot Dogs and Dental Floss”; “Boonville Boy Hero Swims 300 Feet Miles To Safety, With A Baby 128 Babies On His Back”; “San Francisco Man Records Last Moments on Iphone, Demands Anne Romney To Stop Sending Him Photos of Herself In A Bikini While She Washes Mitt’s Mitt Her Horse”; “Mendoland Native Arrested For Indecent Exposure When Pale, Bloated Buff, Bronzed Body Washes Ashore At Singapore.” (It’s called rigor mortis, officer, not any immoral attraction to the sparkling toilets and lack of chewing gum; though, admittedly the Singapore bathrooms are clean to the point of perverse provocation.)

Meanwhile, back on Terror Air, the plane jerks sideways and down simultaneously, and I have a strong sense of déjà vu: I know this emotional space! I know the bitterness of these tears! I know flailing desperately through the night sky! But when was it? As a fighter pilot in the Battle of Leyte Gulf? A football being thrown downfield by Tim Tebow? A chimp cosmonaut on a secret space mission to Mars?

No. The Rock-O-Plane.