the fun house

Mike's entry about the carnival coming to town triggered not quite a memory since I didn't actually know this until a few years ago--call it an interesting little tidbit, one that goes a long way in making me feel some kind of small connection to my father. See, I've always gotten in trouble for laughing too loudly. At every place of employment other than academe, I've been "asked" to keep it down, please. Lord knows we don't want the other employees to think you're having fun while you work. It surely must mean you're goofing off.

In any case, the little tidbit I learned recently about my father is about the fun house at the smallish amusement park that we used to go to as kids. Mountain Park it was called and jeeebus, I would get so excited when I knew we were going there that I'd get no sleep and then get carsick on the way to the park the next morning. My mom had to stop telling me we were going there. Mountain Park was no Riverside Park (now Six Flags in nearby Agawam, MA), but it had a good-sized roller coaster and fried dough (yummers to this day), so it was pretty exciting. My dad, it turns out, was one of the recorded voices doing the sinister laugh in the fun house at Mountain Park. I wish I had known that when I was small enough to fit into one of those fun house cars. You gotta wonder how he got that gig...someone at work heard him laughing and decided he'd tell his cousin's wife's father about it cuz it sure would make a great addition to the fun house they were working on....