Nina Lohman

Abeyance

Only when it stopped was I afraid. The bucket tipped recklessly forward then back, forward then back, a motion once comforting, only now my knuckles clasped white with intent around the handlebar, my feet high above the footrest. Gravity works to retrieve objects, even the dangling feet of awkward little girls, back towards the center of the earth regardless of their distance from the ground. I could accept the speed, the arc of the rotation, the clamorous churn of the engine, the bright bare bulbs tracing each spoke; the jolt. I could accept the peril of height. It was the suspension that broke me, a captive force that released the cry begging to please, please bring me down. Five, shy with glasses and a tangle of blond hair; my body knew. Tuck me back into the place I know.

The ride was commissioned for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago by architect Daniel Burnham who, in response to the acclaim surrounding the recently erected Eiffel Tower, mandated but one requirement of the proposals: make no little plans. Designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a 33-year-old Pittsburgh engineer, the wheel measured 250 feet in diameter, was affixed with 36 cars, each of which held 60 passengers. It was not the first of its kind—pleasure wheels, large wooden rings with chairs attached to the rim turned by the strongest of men, date back to 17-century Bulgaria—but it was the most impressive, which is why today it is known, in homage, as simply the Ferris Wheel.