And now let me finish off with pictures of Crossroads Village other than the Venetian Swings. I realize now there's also a miniature railroad which I did not adequately document, but, it's for kids.
This is a low-angle shot of the pony cart ride, manufactured by the W F Mangels Company of Coney Island sometime in the 1920s. It's child-sized, so we did not ride it, but it seems to go a satisfying speed and there's a lot of clanging bells associated with it.
This is a view of the carousel, when stopped. At speed it gets up to approximately two-thirds the speed of Racer X, who is secretly Speed's brother.
The bench seat on a carousel may strike me as usually the dullest ride, but this one makes up some of it with its side feature of a dragon absolutely terrified by a snake. A much smaller snake. The dragon knows his friends are going to be ridiculing him about it for years to come.
On the back of the bench is a somewhat curious scene of a dragon in the pounding surf. I suppose it's the same dragon before he was terrified by a much smaller snake. Or he's trying to recapture his machismo after being terrified by a tiny little snake through taking it out on small boaters.
Each of the carousel horses has its own saddles and decoration and facial expressions and some of them seem to have been carved mid-sneeze.
I choose to believe that the bunnies on this horse's saddle have simply snuck aboard for the ride and I shan't be listening to any different interpretation, thank you.
One of the carousel horses has at its side a sea monster/dragon, for reasons which are too clear to get an explanation. The horse doesn't look terrified at all by this. Note the lack of terror regarding snakes, however.
While the Superior Wheel is an excellent ride the promotional material's announcement that ``The public's appreciation of these facts [ regarding the ride's safety and comfort ] is demonstrated by it's liberal and never tiring patronage'' makes me worry about the copy editing skills of the C W Parker company in 1921.
You want to buy a duck? A price list for various C W Parker Amusement Company products is posted beside the carousel. Apparently you could get small ducks for a mere $3.50, or super-size them for $5.50.
Later in the day we went to Kokomo's and rode The Serpent roller coaster, which around sunset looks something like this.
Trivia: England's King Edward II, in the attempt to modernize the nation's system of weights and measures, defined an inch to no longer be the thickness of a man's thumb and to instead be ``equal to three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise''. Source: Dust: A History Of The Small And Invisible, Joseph A Amato.
Currently Reading: The History Of Mexico, Burton Kirkwood.
