Real carousels and merry-go-rounds are synonymous with innocence and sweetness, but Ray Bradbury imagines a frightening ride in “Something Wicked This Way Comes”:  his machine rotates backwards, causing the rider to grow younger with each complete turn.  Credit Shakespeare with another great title, this time from Macbeth Act IV, Scene I.  Also, see the hint for 2-down in the NY Times Crossword for 10/17/13.

Towards the end of J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” (Little, Brown and Company, 1951), Holden Caulfield fiercely defends his younger sister’s right to “grab for the gold ring” while riding the Central Park carousel, even at the risk of falling from her “big, brown beat-up-looking old horse” (does he plan to catch her?).  Ironically, it was probably concern over personal injury suits that impelled carousel/merry-go-round owners to do away with ring dispensers.

It is possible that, from the earliest times, cavalrymen honed their lancing skills on suspended rings.  A vestige of the medieval origin of carousels can be found in the amusement ride described by Adam Gopnik in his novel, “Paris To The Moon”, (Random House, NY, 2000, pp18-19 and pp 93-94).  Children on the Luxembourg Garden Carousel in Paris use sticks to take rings, which probably recalls knights on horseback using lances to “spear” ring targets.

There is a reference to “spearing rings” in a website describing Tampa, Florida’s “Tournament of Rings” (www.tampapix.com/rings.htm).  Re-enactor “knights” on horseback compete by targeting rings of ever-decreasing size.  The smallest rings, used to decide ties, are merely ¼ inch in diameter.  Quoting the tampapix web site, “The first account of ‘Running at the Rings’ dates to the days of James I of England demonstrating a knight’s extreme skill, since the rings were much smaller to lance than a man.  The death of several nobles and at least one king, King Henry II of France in 1559, brought about the demise of the man-to-man type of jousting”.

Cinematic recreations of medieval tournaments generally feature blaring trumpets, but I imagine that both instrumentalists and singers entertained at “Carouselles”.   Even during the glory years of 1880-1920 most carousels/merry-go-rounds did not have ring dispensers, but no ride lacked music from a band-organ/calliope. There are many Internet sites where you can hear the distinctive sounds produced by these instruments.  Nearly all the melodies are in ¾ time, possibly because this rhythm suits the up-and-down motion of carousel horses.  I have listened to selections online, but cannot be sure which, if any, I had heard as a child on my merry-go-round.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were true to the band-organ genre when they composed “The Carousel Waltz” for their great Broadway musical.  “Carousel” opened at the Majestic Theatre on April 19, 1945, a time when many theatergoers must have had childhood memories to enhance their appreciation of the production.  Strictly speaking, Rogers and Hammerstein’s misnamed their itinerant amusement ride, but “Carousel” is a much snappier title than “Merry-Go-Round”.

In 1956, 20^th Century Fox released a film version of “Carousel”, which starred Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones.  The opening scene features a rotating merry-go-round with a band organ playing “The Carousel Waltz”; riders unfurl their arms in a graceful pantomime of ring-gathering (www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyEOm02lWo).  We get just a glimpse of the ring dispenser, which is a pared-down version of the one I remember.  Mine was taller, and had a platform where the attendant stood when he inserted rings for the next ride.  But, oh, that music!  Just search on “The Carousel Waltz” for some terrific listening.  On one site I learned that Dire Straits used the main theme in their intro to “Tunnel of Love”.

Sixteen years ago, around the time I was writing “The Chevalier’s Ring”, I belonged to a book club that happened to be reading “The Great Gatsby”.   Jay Gatsby is a man of action, but the author allows his protagonist a moment of introspection when Gatsby stares across the darkness of East Egg harbor towards the Buchanans’ estate.  Painfully aware of the physical and social space that separates him from Daisy, Gatsby finds his eyes drawn to the green light at the end of Buchanans’ dock, and reaches out as if to bridge the chasm.

My summertime amusement ride was adjacent to a body of water, and rereading those passages loosed a flood of childhood memories.  How might Fitzgerald have incorporated a merry-go-round into that nighttime harbor scene?  Here is my rendition of Gatsby’s poignant moment.

“Tom and Daisy have set up an amusement ride for their party guests.  Colored lights on the rotating merry-go-round distract Gatsby’s gaze from his green lodestone on the dock.  In a whimsical moment, Daisy turns off the merry-go-round lights, and affixes the green light to the head of her horse, a riser.  Gatsby hears the band organ music, but can see only the ghostly dance of the green light atop Daisy’s horse.  What mathematical curve describes the green light’s spectral path?”

During intervals between times at the ring dispenser, I sometimes looked upwards at the mechanism that generated the undulating motion of my merry-go-round horse.  I believe what I saw was a revolving crank shaft and a slip ring attached to a drive shaft.  That combination resembles the generator for a “cycloid”, the curve traced by a fixed point on a circle that rolls along a flat surface.  Of course, Daisy’s green light must be a point in 3-space, with a rotational component imparted by the merry-go-round platform.

I would appreciate insights from real mathematicians.  A computerized 3-D simulation would be really nice.

Movie critics gave mixed reviews to Baz Luhrmann’s recent adaptation of “The Great Gatsby”.  I wanted to see how Luhrmann would stage Gatsby’s inner turmoil and furious resolve at East Egg Harbor.  Perhaps I am reading too much into Leonardo Di Caprio’s gesture, but he seems to be reaching for the Brass Ring.

I doubt that my merry-go-round played “The Carousel Waltz”.  Still, that is the melody, minus its percussive effects, which I summon when I relive those summertime rides.  For general nostalgia, my favorite musical madeleine is the first of the 13 short pieces for piano which comprise Robert Schumann’s “Kinderszenen” (“Scenes from Childhood”).  I hope that “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen” (“Of Foreign Lands and People”), which takes only a few minutes to perform, evokes sweet memories for you.

By way of contrast, the sound track for the final scene of “Strangers on a Train” is positively daemonic.  In this 1951 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, an errant shot from a policeman’s revolver hits the operator of a merry-go-round; when the victim falls, his body pushes the speed control mechanism to its maximum setting.  As the merry-go-round accelerates to a dizzying pace, the sweet and lilting background music morphs into jarring and cacophonous sounds.  Disjointed camera angles and shifts reinforce the effect.

Jacques Brel’s song, “Carousel”, also features rhythmic acceleration.  In this case, lyrics substitute for camera work in conveying the image of life as a rat race.

Thanks to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle of 3/29/14 I learned that “On a Carousel” is also a song, written and recorded by The Hollies in 1967.

The craftsmen who built carousels during the glory years of 1880-1920 were rightly regarded as master wood-carvers and decorators.  I became aware only recently of a carousel in “fine” painting, thanks to a June 22, 2013 article on page 86 of “The Economist”.  “The Big Rupture” states that one of six British artists featured at the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition in London is Mark Gertler, whose “…wartime masterpiece, ‘Merry-Go-Round’ (1916), hanging in Tate Britain, is missing from this show…”.

Gertler’s merry-go-round is not an amusement ride; civilians and soldiers are juxtaposed in a space utterly devoid of gaiety.  You can see an image of this painting at Gertler merry-go-round.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan had an exhibit of photographs by Charles Marville (1813-1879) that was on display until May 2014; these marvelously preserved pictures of Paris were taken before and during Baron Haussmann’s urban planning program (1853-1870).  One view is “The Seine from the Pont du Carroussel Looking toward Notre Dame”.  Could “Carroussel” refer to a famous amusement ride that once stood in the area?  The Wikipedia entry for “Place du Caroussel” explains that this location “…was a public square in the 1^st arrondissement of Paris, located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre Palace…The name ‘carousel’ refers to a type of military dressage, an equine demonstration now commonly called a military drill.  The Place du Carroussel was named in 1662, when it was used for such a display by Louis XIV”.

My conjecture was incorrect, but I learned something from the research.  Perhaps after medieval tournaments dropped jousting in favor of exercises with lances and rings, but before they morphed into amusement rides, “carrouselles” gave rise to stylized routines for horsemanship.

One of my favorite “Twilight Zone” episodes, “Walking Distance” (#5 from Season 1), features a carousel.  A Google search on January 1, 2016 informed me that Rod Serling set this story in his hometown of Binghamton, NY, using the carousel in Recreation Park to stage the crucial encounter between Martin Sloan and his younger self.  “Walking Distance” also incorporates a moment from Rod Serling’s childhood, the time when he carved his name in the Recreation Park bandstand.  A plaque on the bandstand commemorates that event.