A Supposedly Fun Trip to Ohio

If memory serves, I rode my first roller coaster sometime in the late 1990s on a trip to Oklahoma to visit my aunt and uncle. Bell’s Amusement Park was located on the Tulsa State Fairgrounds, with a large wooden coaster designed by John C. Allen as its main attraction. Zingo stood eighty-six feet high and featured trains that reached speeds up to forty-six miles per hour. Admittedly, I don’t remember much about that long-ago ride, other than that I didn’t feel the need to ever repeat the experience.

Bell’s Amusement Park closed in 2006, after which its marquee crowd-pleaser was dismantled and put into storage. So I’m not able to subject my ­current constitution to the ups and downs of Zingo even if I wanted to. But it turns out that Allen, who is credited with helping to revive North American roller coasters in the mid-twentieth century, designed many others, including an iconic woodie at Cedar Point, the sprawling haven for adrenaline junkies in Sandusky, Ohio...