As a young teen I used to love going to the "Ex" every summer. The Canadian National Exhibition, CNE or the Ex was a summer ritual for all us suburbanites. Before the time of Canada's Wonderland being launched your thrills could come only from the Ex. The Flyer coaster...a wooden death trap that visibly shook it's foundation as it whizzed by. The Zipper, The Skydiver, The Polar Express...all of them evoke memories. Some great and others....well, continue reading.
I don't know how the Ex compared to other big temporary extravaganzas. It always seemed to me to be a bit chintzy but what the hell did I know? What it provided was a distraction, a thing to do on a hot summers night, a chance to see some grown up shit going down. A chance to make an idiot of myself. True story.
As I started to think back to those glorious days more experiences started flooding back. This was going to be a post about hitting myself in the head a few times with a baseball but then I started remembering other events....lo and behold we have other things to talk about.
The CNE was where I was at when the Edmonton Oilers won the cup, yanking it away from the Islanders dynasty in 1984. A cheer ran through the crowd as a Canadian team had finally won the cup again and because Gretzky was a golden child at the time, we were happy the Islanders had gone down to defeat.
The Ex was where I had seen mob mentality in close up action for the first time and I and my buddies actually had a very tiny cameo in this sad night. A few of us were riding the subway down to the Ex...riding to Bathurst as I recall and taking a streetcar or bus the rest of the way. Along the line we met two unlikely friends headed in the same direction. Swan, as he called himself, was a good looking likeable guy with long hair to match our own and an easy way about him. One could tell that everyone wanted to be Swan's friend. In fact, through the course of the night we would glimpse him in the distance every once in awhile, making out with a different girl each time. A blonde near the Zipper, a red head behind the Gravitron...you get the idea. I suspect Swan borrowed his name from the gang leader in the movie The Warriors. Tagging along with Swan was another fellow that looked as odd a match as possible. His head was closely shaved, he wore green track pants and carried a Kendo stick. Right?? If I was to guess I would say that Kendo man and Swan were childhood friends that went different ways but still hung out from time to time.
As we arrived at the Ex we all hung out for a bit to start but eventually went our own ways, us three and them two, to find adventure, vomit inducing rides and in Swan's case, lots of female attention. The night wore on, we were having a good time and suddenly there was a commotion. Fights were not an uncommon occurrence in those days. An 80's version of the The Outsiders really as some groups of people simply did not get along with other groups. Mostly we stayed out of it but from time to time it did affect us, as this night kind of did. The commotion was a sickening display of the crappy part of humanity. Kendo man was getting the crap kicked out of him by a small mob of leather jacket wearing wannabe hoods. I don't know what started the melee as it was already in full swing by the time we managed to get a view, but it's not hard to imagine that the Kendo man had said the wrong thing to the wrong guy....and when faced with retribution, made the worse mistake possible...used his stick to defend himself. I've seen fights before but I've never seen six guys beat the tar out of someone like that. Personally, I wanted to leave, under the guise of not being around when the cops showed up but really because I'm not at all comfortable with violence, especially this kind of display. But we stayed. The fight, if you can call it that, ended when Kendo man got the Kendo stick across the top of his head and was knocked out. It was sickening.
One year the bearded tattoo clad ride operator of the Sky Diver stopped the ride to let me out because as he put it, I was screaming like a little girl. Inside the death trap car, Humberto was spinning the car on it's axis non stop and the ride spun around the larger wheel...I do not like those kinds of rides! Although I didn't think I was yelling that loud....hmmmmmm
I've lost track how many concerts I had attended to be followed by a quick jaunt into the Ex for one last quick ride or a scope of the area. Nothing like 30 or 40 thousand people emptying the mistake by the lake onto the grounds of the Ex. Sizzling energy you could almost see...anything could and often did happen.
It may have been one such occasion where I found myself with Dom strolling around, looking to meet girls. It seemed to be a running thing with Dom, be it Wonderland, the Ex or anyplace else, what stupid line could we use to say hello to some pretty girls....such as this one "Mary!! Oh, you're not in my English class? Hmmm. Wanna go on some rides?" Yeah...classy. Anyhooooooo...for whatever reason we decided to play one of those carnival games to win something stupid. The idea was to knock the wooden slat over with a baseball. Simple enough right. Not with yours truly around. My first throw bounced off the wooden base rebounding back at me perfectly hitting me directly on my forehead. Bahahahahahaha....we all laughed. Well, I don't know how much I was laughing as I was the one embarrassed but for sure Dom and the carny laughed. "Here you go man, take another throw" said the still chuckling carny. OK, here we go again....if you guessed the same thing happened you win the prize. Exact same thing happened. I think Dom was crying at this point. The carny just stared at me...."why didn't you duck?" I walked around with a red welt on my head for the rest of the night.
My last foray at the ex included my one and only ride on the Gravitron. I'm not a fan of rides that spin you so going on this ride wasn't really on my bucket list. It also meant I didn't know what the Gravitron was all about. If I was a tad smarter I might have asked a few pointed questions to get more information on said ride and thus avoiding said ride. But I'm not, so I went along with the crowd. Moron!!! All I knew was you stood in place as the ride spun around with us leaning up against this slanted wall. As we spun around ever faster the floor seemed to dropped out...uhmmmmm OK. I'm sure they would't make a ride to specifically kill someone so I'm sure that's supposed to happen. And next I saw the craziest thing....people were upside down next to me and across from me. I figured out, within half a minute, that the thrill of the ride was to "defy" gravity as centrifugal force pushed you against the wall. That half a minute, in the end, was the difference. As I started twisting myself into a new position, upside down in this case, my fellow riders were already planning their return to normal starting position. The ride wound down as I was slightly horizontal and when gravity struck I slid to the floor with a thud with much laughter from my friends. I know....why am I still alive?
Good, wholesome, scary, funny and painful memories of the summer extravaganza know as the CNE. Like the weekend forays to a cottage, drinking marathons by the tomato gardens, cold beer on the patio at Stripes, the Ex brings about many fond memories of that distant past. Summers gone by intertwined with all manner of tom foolery...ahhhhh, the good old days.
Ciao
D
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