High Rollers

"You know how you remember the Top 40 songs from high school, what you heard when you were driving around in your car at night?" Rodriguez said out of the blue in one of our last conversations. "I remember the song that was playing at Coney Island the first time I rode the Cyclone, in 1976. It was Turn the Beat Around by Vicki Sue Robinson. The summer of '77, Afternoon Delight was the big one. The summer of '78 was all Bee Gees and Donna Summer. At most of these parks, a deejay plays the hit songs 10 or 15 times a day. I can still hear Fly, Robin, Fly and Love to Love You Baby. Remember a song called Magnet and Steel? When I hear that, I think of riding the Rebel Yell in the summer of 1978, and it makes me happy and wistful."

Not long ago a woman called me from Premier Rides, a space-age design firm that builds roller coasters with linear induction motors, powered by magnets. I couldn't bring myself to call her back. Whatever lies in the future, I realized, the charm of roller coasters is in their evocation of the past. In addition to the Big Dipper, Blackpool Pleasure Beach has one of the world's last surviving Tunnels of Love. One of the last.

I finally understood Rodriguez and his white-knuckle attachment to roller coasters. It has nothing to do with magnets and steel and plenty to do with Magnet and Steel.