I said I hadn’t seen any cicadas but I’d spoken too soon. The other day on the North Branch trail, I heard them before I saw them. At first I wasn’t quite paying attention to the droning sound coming from somewhere off in the trees. But it was persistent, and it slowly changed pitch, cranking methodically down and up and down again. As the noise grew thicker and harder to ignore, I started spotting the cicadas on tree trunks—just a few at a time on each tree—and I stopped the bike and pulled over to the side of the trail to get a closer look. And then, as I stood there, I could see the cicadas weren’t just on the trees, but on the leaves and the tips of the tall prairie grass, dozens of them, with new ones landing and whirring about. They were everywhere and the sound was enough to drown out my own voice.
I don’t think I quite believed in this seventeen-year cicada business —that the damn things would actually emerge from the ground and buzz and mate and zorch around. I’m cynical about nature like this; nature has occasionally disappointed me. I know how it’s supposed to work, but years of being bad at science (biology is hard!) and being even worse at dieting has made me wary. Sometimes it’s hard not to think that after all the damage we’ve done, the world is just a little bit broken, a half-assed machine that takes your quarter and doesn’t return it. So to stop next to a field and witness these great big badminton-birdy-like creatures partying hard—just as nature intended—still kind of blows my mind.
Also, the last time the cicadas emerged I was nineteen years old, and I hadn’t started smoking yet, and while I know I didn’t really bike much that particular summer, I’m sure I was still in good enough shape to ride 20 miles or more in a day. I mean I’m sure that was the last time I could take that for granted. After that, I burrowed underground and fed on Marlboros and Lean Cuisines and apathy for years and years. It’s taken me this long to shed all my old skin and dig myself the hell out.
On Saturday Chris and I went to Kiddieland, a place that has nothing whatsoever to do with nature. It is a very old amusement park, the oldest in the Chicago area, I think. There are old photos and home movie footage of my brother and me riding the short-kid rides—the ones where you went around in a circle while sitting in a rocket or a flying saucer or a hot rod or a helicopter. I think my dad even went there when he was a kid. The shortie rides are still there, and so is the roller coaster, which gets scarier the older it gets, particularly when you notice that the whole thing is controlled only by four splintery wooden levers. Really, the whole thing looks like something Our Gang slapped together with planks from an old boxcar and assorted rusty barrel hoops. It totally puts the “die” in “Kiddieland.” There’s also an extra violent Tilt-A-Whirl and an octopus ride that still goes by its old unfortunate name, “The Polyp.” There are newer rides, too—a log flume and a sort of sinister water slide where you cling to an inflatable raft and get washed down a big dark pipe. When you walk around the park you’re assaulted by giant fiberglass clown faces and the most rancid food-service smells ever. Oh, and the whole place is across the street from a horse track. All and all, Kiddieland is a most excellent and unwholesome good time. Lest you think all I do these days is ride my bike and gaze wide-eyed at caterpillars.
Greater Baltimore had its 17-year cicadas in 2004 and they freaked me the fuck out. Fortunately we live in a lawnless enough area that they didn’t bother me at home, but if you went out a bit they flew around lazily and stupidly, and if one accidentally landed on you it would latch on to you creepily and then you would slap at it and scream like a little girl until you dislodged it (or you would if you were me, anyway).
It could have been worse, though: two friends of ours got invited to an outdoor wedding in the country that summer, which apparently was something of a horror show.
Where I used to live in Oakland, I was right up the street from “Fairyland,” which was a similarly old-timey amusement park, though less ride-intensive. I never went in because you actually were not allowed in without a child, presumably to keep out the perverts. There was an enormous FAIRYLAND sign just outside the place in the adjacent public park, which was apparently a popular spot for nightime cruising.
I have horrible memories of The Polyp. I once went to Kiddieland with my mom, dad and 11-year older brother and it was late and the weather had scared off most of the other kiddielanders so my brother and I were the only ones who boarded the dreaded Polyp. The extremely scary operator who was a perfect vision of a carney ride operator (tattoos, giant gut, wife-beater tank top, grizzled beard and wicked sunburn) started up the ride and then…….walked off. Probably to get stoned with one of the other ride operators. As the world went rushing by I saw him mosey off and sharted shrieking as loud as I could. In my tiny little 5 year-old brain I was sure that I was on this ride, like, FOREVER. Eventually he came back and let us off but the memory stuck with me. Luckily it didn’t scar me and I still enjoy amusement parks.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like the seventeen-year cicadas come around every four or five years or so. Or maybe they work in shifts? Kind of like the old Looney Tunes cartoon where the sheepdog and coyote would punch in on the timeclock right before spending the day chasing each other around?
Kiddieland is a long-standing tradition in my husband’s family. Three generations of them have enjoyed the summer ritual of a trip to Kiddieland, follwed by large quantities of barbeque at Russell’s Ribs. But I have to admit, it was ramshackle-scary even when my then-fiance took me there for the fist time, 23 years age. They do have the best old Tilt-A-Whirl in the universe, though.
My grandma lived by the old Kiddieland in Lincolnwood. That was my Kiddieland. Man, I was thinking about the dumm ride with the sparkly cars on it. You just went around like on a merry-go-round. The sound track/music was like when the phone is off the hook.
I am the floral manager at a not so close to Chicago Jewel, and we have commercials running in our store constantly for Kiddieland. I had all these images of it being a candy colored wonderland of awesome kid rides. You know, where you eat cotton candy while going round and round on a pretty carousal? Instead, I now know the truth: it’s full of carnie-esque rides and creepy clown faces. My daydream of Kiddieland and it’s wonders are now crushed. Now when i hear the commercials, I’m going to see those damn clowns in my mind.
Let’s see, the 17-year cicadas are the ones with the creepy red eyes, aren’t they? We get the camo-colored jobs every summer. The noise is mind boggling! We pick ’em off with a BB gun so the chickens can eat them.
I’m actually afraid to ask, but…can someone describe The Polyp? *shudder*
Just click on “The Polyp” and it takes you to Ms. McClure’s Flickr shot of what most carnivals unimaginatively call “The Octopus.”
*I’d love to zorch around on The Polyp!*
(I can confidently assert that the sentence above has never been written or uttered in all of recorded human communication…)
I dunno about 17 years… We had poplar trees in my back yard in TX while growing up. There were fresh cicadas every year. Noisy critters.
In 1995 or 1994 we drove from Wyoming to Minnesota and encountered an infestation of some type of cricket-locust thing in South Dakota. Even though it was summer and in no way close to Passover. The gas station/bathroom stops were filled with more than the usual dread and the roads were actually slick with their innards. They became a true, possibly AAA-recognized, road hazard.
My husband and I went to Kiddieland today on the basis of this post, and we were not disappointed. The creaky old rides, the bad food smells, the screaming every time a cicada landed on someone (often) – it was all vaguely surreal. No, I take that back. There was nothing vague about it.
Being from the Bay Area (I remember Fairyland too – always wanted to go, always denied by my lack of kinder) I never experienced this cicada thing before, and boy am I glad about that. I knod they’re benign, but they freak me out, the way they get in your hair and zzzzz zzzzzz. I nearly ejected myself from the Tilt a Whirl once I noticed one wedged into the seat, flailing its legs and buzzing.
OMG! Kiddieland was awesome when I was a kid. Remember there was no such thing as Great America in the Chicagoland area and Six Flags was for vaccations only. I remember the tractor rides and the rail thing you had to crank with your arms, talk about a torture device.
And about Cicadas. There are yearly cicadas and the 17 year kind. And I do think they are freaky with the loud buzzing and their clumsy flying. Yuck.
“giant fiberglass clown faces” a.k.a. my idea of hell! Who finds clowns entertaining?!
Josh/Kelly:
I grew up in the Bay Area, and am all too familiar with the contents of Oakland’s Fairyland. The focus is more on interactive storybook tableau, no rides so much. Some of them were fairly terrifying to me, such as Rock-a-bye Baby, sponsored by Gerber foods – a giant cradle suspended high in some tall trees, with a giant baby’s hand visible at the edge. Many of these tableaux were surrounded by stagnant concrete ponds, including Noah’s Ark, which at one time imprisoned a live monkey of some medium sized species. There was also a giant concrete whale whose dark and narrow throat led down to a subterranean fish tank. It was nuts. I think it was started in the 1930’s, and stayed with the original program inspired by the Great Depression. My mom was born and raised in Oakland, and never got over the nostalgia, so I was forced to have a few of my early birthday parties there, as well as some random visits. I would have paid good money, at four years old, to stay far away from the place.
Thanks for dredging that up for me!! Gah!!!
So, if you grew up in Quebec and such and then moved to the West Coast where there are no cicadas, you end up missing that searing whine.
Out here, first week in August, regular as bran, we get crickets, but never a cicada. And when there’s an ad on TV produced by those insensitive brutes in Toronto that has the cicada sound in it, you end up explaining that there must be some problem with cable, and it only shows up in the Tim Horton’s ad.
Cicada whine, thunderstorms, poutine, that really cold snow that squeaks when you walk on it … that’s what I miss…