The recent news stories about the Minnesota State Fair reminded me that my father took my older brother Kit and me to the state fair one summer. I must have been six or seven. We were living in Minneapolis at the time. 

I remember that it was warm and crowded and that we walked and walked. At one point we walked through the Midway, with tall painted panels advertising strange beings, like the Bearded Lady and the Tattooed Man. My father hustled us past those. Our destination was the carousel. 

I was entranced—-the music, the motion, the painted images at the top, the lights, the horses with their wooden manes, forever gliding up and down on their metal poles. That was my first carousel ride, with my father watching me. 

I have ridden many carousels since that day, long after I had given up more exciting amusement park rides. When my son and daughter were growing up, they rode the carousel on the Washington Mall, on our summer visits to the Smithsonian museums. Years later, my granddaughter Emma rode that same carousel in its new home in Glen Echo Park in Maryland. On my refrigerator door I have a photo of Emma age three on a prancing carousel horse, with Bill standing beside her, smiling and holding her securely. Forever going around to the music, while the painted pony goes up and down.

Usually the carousel figures are horses of different colors, but sometimes there are zebras or other animals. The last carousel that I saw—-but did not ride, because it wasn’t operating that October day in 2018—was in the seaside village of Cascais near Lisbon in Portugal. It was a beautiful small carousel, with horses, but also a bull, a giraffe, a pig, a donkey, and for little children, a swan and a rooster, all carefully carved and painted. 

I guess it is fitting for my love of carousels that I played the part of the carousel owner Mrs. Mullin in a community theatre production of Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s musical Carousel. My daughter Melinda was in the production, too, as one of the children, and we had fun going to rehearsals together and to the cast parties after the end of the run.

A wish: that I may ride a carousel one more time, before the music ends.

“…And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We’re captive on the carousel of time

We can’t return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game…”

The Circle Game, by Joni Mitchell