Sally Breslin: My Life: SUMMERS REMIND ME OF CANOBIE LAKE AND THE OLD YANKEE CANNONBALL ROLLER COASTER

My grandmother was a real roller-coaster fanatic. In fact, she took me on my very first roller-coaster ride at Pine Island Park in Manchester, NH when I was about eight years old. From that day on, I was hooked.

But I’m hooked on only the old-fashioned wooden coasters, not the new-fangled ones with all of the loops and corkscrews. When I look up, I want to see the sky, not the ground.

One of my favorite coasters, with its impressive 64-65 foot drop on the first hill, was, and still is, the Yankee Cannonball at Canobie Lake Park.

But it still can't hold a candle to my all-time favorite, the Wildcat coaster at Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts. Riders who reached the top of that 74-foot hill had a panoramic view of the ocean, complete with Queen Elizabeth waving at them from her balcony at Buckingham Palace across the way.

Believe me, I went through a long period of mourning in the 1970s, when the Wildcat was torn down. Even now, whenever I visit Salisbury Beach and see the spot where the roller coaster once proudly stood, I still can hear its ocean-weathered wooden frame creaking in the wind and I want to cry out, "Why? Why did you have to tear it down? How could you do this to me?"

At least the Yankee Cannonball is still running. Back in the “good old days,” visitors could wander throughout Canobie Lake Park park and pay only for the rides they wanted to ride on. But later, the park started charging one big admission price that included unlimited rides. That was a good deal for someone who wanted to go on 25 different rides, but not so much for someone like me, who just wanted to ride on the roller coaster two or three times and skip all of the rest.

My last visit to Canobie Lake Park was back in 2004. The admission price was a shock to me at the time – $25 per person. But seeing I'd arrived at about 6 p.m., I was given a discount price of only $16.

Immediately upon entering the park, I felt like a kid again and headed straight for the Yankee Cannonball, the sprawling wooden monster I’d missed so much over the years.

I arrived to find a line of people that rivaled the ones at Disney World. I was shocked. After all, the reason why I’d gone there on a Monday night was to avoid the lines.

I guess everyone else must have had the same idea.

Determined, I took my place in line…and waited. Twenty minutes later, I still was waiting. By then, I’d made friends with the four teenagers from Michigan in front of me, and a lady and her daughter from Maine behind me.

One of the Michigan teens, who was wearing about six heavy, thick-chained necklaces, told me how his jewelry had flown up and nearly knocked him unconscious when he’d gone on the Starblaster.

I had no clue what the Starblaster was.

“It’s a ride that shoots you straight up into the air just like you were in a rocket ship,” he explained. “Except you’re sitting in these seats out in the open, with your feet dangling! One woman even lost her sandals during the blast! It was SO cool!”

Recalling I was wearing a bra that had stretch-straps, I made a mental note to chalk that ride off my might-want-to-try list.

Another thirty-five minutes later, as I inched closer and closer to the coaster, my heart began to race and my hands felt clammy because it had been about 10 years since I’d been on a roller coaster. What if, I wondered, my metabolism had changed since then and now I couldn’t stomach the ride? What if I ended up throwing up down the neck of the guy in front of me? Or what if I emerged with a severe case of whiplash because my over-the-hill neck had become too brittle to handle the velocity?

By the time I took my seat in the last car of the Yankee Cannonball, I seriously was contemplating chickening out.

“Fasten your seatbelts and then pull the bar down over you,” the attendant instructed.

I fumbled with my seatbelt and couldn’t pull it far enough to hook it. By then, everyone else already had fastened their belts and pulled down their bars. Not wanting to be a different, I also pulled down my bar. Two attendants then came by to check each one of us.

“Your seatbelt’s not fastened,” one of the attendants said to me, as if he were telling me something I didn’t already know. He leaned over and tried to adjust it. “I think it has a knot in it,” he said.

He signaled to the guy at the controls, and everyone’s bars suddenly popped back up, giving him more room to work on unknotting my seatbelt. By then, I could hear impatient mutters from the other passengers, which told me I probably wasn't about to win any awards for Miss Popularity.

Finally, I was properly fastened in and the ride was set to go. As the coaster inched its way up the first hill, I held my breath. The hill was a lot higher than I’d remembered it. In fact, it seemed to take about 18 hours to reach the top. By then, I was perspiring in places I didn't even know had sweat glands.

I clenched the bar, my knuckles white, in anticipation of what was coming, all the while praying my neck wouldn’t snap like a twig and my lunch would stay where it belonged.

Whoosh! The rest of the ride was a blur of hills and curves and people screaming. By the time I realized the ride had begun, it was over.

All of that waiting in line, all of that nervous anticipation…and it was over in the blink of an eye.

So I got right back into the line and waited another 55 minutes.

Knowing I was going to survive the second ride made me less apprehensive and antsy. Also, they seated another unaccompanied woman next to me who served as a buffer, so I did less side-to-side bouncing during the ride and was able to look out across the park and enjoy the view…just before each death-defying plunge.

I would have gone on the coaster again, but the line had grown even longer and the park closed at 10 PM, so I didn’t want to chance it. But I thought for the $16 I’d paid, I should have squeezed in at least one more ride to get my money's worth.

I’m hoping to return to Canobie Lake Park again in the future and ride the Yankee Cannonball at least one more time.

In fact, I've put it at the top of my bucket list.

But by the time I finally do get back there I'm wondering which might fall apart first - the vintage old roller coaster or my body – which I'm pretty sure is older and even more rickety.

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Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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