Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park

by Andy Mulvihill

The Cannonball Loop, open only sporadically over the years due to its uncanny ability to maim our guests.

I’m sixteen years old and about to become the Chuck Yeager of this monument to the total perversion of physics.

Action Park has become a campfire tale, an urban legend, a can-you-believe-this snapshot of our culture that seemed to predate liability laws and lawyers.

Charlie was one of three people in my father’s employ who did not have two working eyeballs. Now that I was also working for him, this gave me pause.

He nodded at John Thornton, a neighborhood kid about my age who sometimes refused to wear shoes and spent the day working in his bare feet. “I’m protesting,” is all John would say by way of explanation.

Soon, he would be famous, and I would have to feign humility when people asked if my father was the Gene Mulvihill. I looked back at my father. He was peeing into a ditch.

He believed the best way of going about this was to legalize drunk driving.

He had finally found a live event that fit the park: A show where people beat the shit out of one another.

“Hey,” he said. “You related to Gene Mulvihill?” “He’s my father,” I said, and braced for a swing. It never came. “Guy is a fucking legend here,” he said. “The shit he pulled? Fucking legend.”