Lawrence Mace In Search of Whole Rainbows, Unpublished Manuscript, 1994, 1952, 1948, 1942
pp. 107-108 (circa 1942, Lawence is twelve years old)
"Our favorite outing was Venice Pier at the beach west of Los Angeles. A fat, jolly lady robot rocked backward and forward, laughing incessantly above the front of the fun house. Ernie [Lawrence's younger brother] and I would play there for hours. We groped our way through a maze of mirrors and staggered through an obstacle course of moving stairways and walkways. An operator blasted compressed air through holes in the passageway floors, forcing girls to hold their dresses down with both hands.
"There was a huge hardwood slide with lanes for several riders. It was convex and then concave several times. We started by sitting on a burlap pad high up near the roof of the building, then hurtled down the slide, going weightless flying over each convex bump, finally scooting out onto the flat surface at the bottom.
"There was a twenty-foot rotating, hardwood disc with a slight downward incline from its center. We climbed onto it and sat at the center with our backs together. The disc began to rotate, moving faster and faster. Soon, the centrifugal force began to take its toll. One after another we lost our positions, sliding outward off the disc, crashing into a padded trough surrounding the disc.
"Sometimes a rider was able to center perfectly and stay on while the disc spun at top speed. There were metal buttons embedded in the hardwood near the disc center. Whenever maximum centrifugal force failed to dislodge a rider, an operator pressed a switch sending electricity to the buttons. The perfectly centered rider then left his position quickly, to the delight of everyone watching.
"Ernie and I both loved the fabulous, scary roller-coaster on the pier, but our favorite ride on the pier was the Dragon Slide. The dragon wrapped itself around a one-hundred foot conical tower. Its tail stuck straight upward at the top, with its huge head next to the bottom of the tower.
"The slide was inside the spiral dragon, constructed from split bamboo strips attached to the inner walls of the spiral. A rider sat inside a heavily padded bag, on a swivel board, at the top of the dragon tail. An operator pivoted the board from horizontal to vertical. The rider plummeted straight downward into the dragon tail, spiraling around and around, finally zooming out the dragon's mouth. It was an awesome thrill. The Dragon Slide was closed and torn down after several years. A bamboo strip had come loose from the slide impaling a rider."