Editor’s note: Rather than a news report this report comes in the form of personal remembrance as well as facts gathered from responding to a media day invitation from Lake Compounce staff to ride the newly retracked Wildcat last Friday.
By David Fortier
On those evenings at Lake Compounce, mostly towards the end of the summer and on a weekday, my dad and mom would meet us at the lake.
Either the five brothers and some friends would have spent the day at the beach, or, if for some reason we hadn’t been at the beach, we’d be summoned, and mom and dad would pack us into the station wagon and wend our way up Lake Avenue, down the long drive to the parking lot, that is no longer there, and we would head over to the veranda for a snack and a soda. The veranda would be where the Crock Pot is now.
These mid-week surprise trips would find the park fairly deserted, so we would have the place to ourselves. There might be a couple of people along with us on the veranda, but that was it.
The veranda overlooked the mini-golf course and the stage and, of course, the lake. On those stifling hot evenings, a breeze, a gift from the lake, would waft over the golf course, across the broad porch, and bring some relief.
For us kids, having the place to ourselves, meant a dollar or two for Skee-Ball, and if we were really lucky, enough to get a couple of tickets for rides. On some nights tickets weren’t necessary for rides, though, if the ride operator was a friend of the family.
But first, we’d sit on the veranda, the kids at one table, the adults at another. My dad would order a pitcher of beer for the adults, a pitcher of soda for the kids and a pile of fried potatoes for everyone. There was nothing on the menu called pile of fried potatoes, but my dad and mom knew the chef, Steve, and a pile of fries would appear in the center of the kids table, with salt crystals glimmering in fine coat of oil shimmering on the fries along with enough catsup for a small army.
Paper plates distributed, we would dig in, yammering about the day, scarfing up fries with globs of catsup, and chugging our sodas. To this day, I don’t think fried potatoes ever tasted so good. It might have been that Steve was a great chef with a magic touch. It might have been the very slight breeze wafting through the air from the lake.
It might have been the anticipation of what lay ahead as my parents lounged on the veranda, as the day ended, after a long day at work, relaxed, away from the pressing concerns of raising a family of five boys in a five-room rent with limited income, something none of us kids might appreciate outright, but being sentient creatures, we might have grasped this through some intuition.
From upper left, clockwise, Lake Compounce staff including aquatics instructor Mackenzie Robinson, senior manager for entertainment and events Blake Braswell general manager Doug Hemphill, Wild Cat, assistant general manager Megan Major and marketing director Meg Forno; Braswell sampling chicken tenders; another roller coaster Phobia Phear; and the entrance to Lake Compounce with the Wildcat and Down Time in the background. | Laura Bailey
And what that anticipation was could mean any number of things. It might be a game of mini golf. That was a rare occurrence. It might be the aforementioned Skee-Ball. It might be a couple of arcade games. It might be rides. My parents knew a lot of the people who worked at the Lake, and those people knew us kids. If we came across the right person, it might mean a “complimentary” ride on the train that circled the lake, the original Gillette train, a gem of a machine.
It might mean a spin on the carousel.
It might mean a few turns on the Ferris wheel, or even a couple of turns on the bumper cars.
On the best night, it might mean the best ride–on the Wildcat–and on one magical night, it was the Wildcat, and not just one ride. It was a slow ride. The operator knew the parents. We were behaving.
On this night, with no one around, and the air heavy, and darkness closing in, one ride turned in to two and two turned into three and three into 10 and 10 into 20. Before the night ended, we had gone on 29 uninterrupted rides.
So, on Friday, April 26, when as a member of the media I had a chance to ride the newly retracked Wildcat, all these years later, I answered, yes, of course. Some facts tucked away in my mind, jostled themselves loose, too, facts such as, the original ride was about 48 seconds long.
How that stuck and became unstuck I will never know. What I do know is that riding the Wildcat, up to 2022, when it was closed for retracking, was sheer twists and turns and spine crunching glee–spine crunching unless you knew a few tricks about how to brace yourself and free your arms so that they swung above your head as others tried to hold on for their lives–and their spines–and wonder how it was that you could be having such fun.
And it’s true, leading up to the retracking, the Wildcat had become fairly untamed in a way that typically might result in an unceremonious noncommissioning. It creaked and shimmied along its tracks, with a rattling that did not serve to instill confidence in its riders. But that was then.
Now, more than 50 years after that glorious night of 29 circumventions, I settled into my seat, one seat belt fastened across two riders and an individual safety bar secured separately for each of us, and waited for what was coming — the slow jog around the bent to and the clank of the chain as it caught and carried the cars up the high hill, leading to that first precipitous drop that would provide impetus through all those twists and turns and ups and downs with all their force and unending surprises until that last bend and final chunk chunk chunk on the back run, breathless and exhilarated.
And the run was all of that and more, and yes, the exhilaration is still there–and with the improvements the ride is smoother and even faster and, and even though the memories are magic ones, the experience of the Wildcat on Friday was even better than ones I remember.
Not only did I get to ride, but I got to ride with members of the media who are fans of roller coasts. The media day attracted some interesting roller coaster people, like Jerry, who has a following among roller coaster aficionados of over 1 million, with over 3,800 videos on YouTube. He has been on more than 1,000 roller coaster rides himself. When I talked with him, he was heading over to the Wildcat for his turn, so I never heard what he had to say about The Wildcat specifically, but I did ask him about Boulder Dash.
What he told me floored me. He said, in so many words, Boulder Dash was his No. 1 roller coaster for the past decade, especially after it installed a brake sometime in 2010 before the final run. There is nothing like it in the world, he said, because it is built into the side of a mountain–it isn’t engineered the way other roller coasters are, but it engineered itself. Imagine here in Bristol–the only one like it in the world!
He did concede that newer technologies have won him over these past few years but Boulder Dash holds a special place for him.
We all have special places in our hearts, and the Lake holds a place in mine. Even though the beach house is gone, as is the stage and the arcade, and the carousel has been moved, and mini golf and Skee-Ball have been replaced, the Lake, under its current management, has been able to do something wonderful–it has been able to maintain its magic for families of all sorts, with its careful curation, that maintains a grip on the magic that is Lake Compounce.
And here in Bristol, we are all better for it.
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