Episode 1: How a 3-Min Carousel Ride Can Change Your Life

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. On today's episode, we'll share the origin story of the Carousel of Happiness located in Nederland, Colorado. You'll hear how carousel creator and carver, Scott Harrison, was first called to the idea of a carousel, and how the carousel itself has impacted the lives of thousands.

The Carousel of Happiness is a nonprofit arts & culture organization dedicated to inspiring happiness, well-being, and service to others through stories and experiences.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider visiting the Carousel of Happiness online (https://carouselofhappiness.org/), on social media (https://www.facebook.com/carouselofhappiness), or in real life; or consider donating (https://carouselofhappiness.app.neoncrm.com/forms/general-donation) to keep the carousel and its message alive and spinning 'round and 'round.

If you have a story to share, please reach out to Allie Wagner at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org

Special thanks to songwriter, performer, and friend of the carousel, Darryl Purpose (https://darrylpurpose.com/), for sharing his song, "Next Time Around," as our theme song.

Transcript

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. I’m your host, Allie Wagner. 

Before you ride the Carousel of Happiness, the operator will tell you the origin story of the carousel. The details of this story differ, depending on the individual operator and their personal connection to the carousel, but in general they’ll explain that the 1910 carousel frame you’re sitting on has been fully restored, and that every single animal on it was hand-carved by a one man over the course of 26 years. Most operators will tell you that the Carousel of Happiness was created as an act of healing from trauma, and it has a lasting impact on many of those who experience it.

And I love each of the carousel operator’s stories, but today I’m going to share with you a favorite from carousel operator and poet, Burt Rashbaum.

(BURT’S OPENING)

Operators are encouraged to personalize the story they share of the carousel, to make it their own. Because we at the Carousel of Happiness are big believers that the impact of this place can be felt at the precise moment when you personally embody its story, and allow it to shift or change something within you. And we believe this is possible for each and every person who learns of the carousel story. Even if you never visit us in person. Even if you never ride. The impact of the Carousel of Happiness is personal and unique to each and every being. We believe that when you allow the story of the carousel to meet you where you are, you are often met with exactly what you need. That, is the magic of this place. 

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up. As I said before, my name is Allie Wagner. I am the host of this podcast and the outreach director for the Carousel of Happiness located in the tiny mountain town of Nederland, Colorado.

One of the reasons we are starting this podcast is that we understand that the Carousel of Happiness impacts the lives of those who experience it. We understand this because we see it every day. We see people walk into this building as one person, and walk out fundamentally changed in some way. It doesn’t matter if you ride, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been here 100 times before. There is something about this place that allows us, if we are willing and able, to shift and change within.

We also understand this because we ourselves experience it. The people who work here, myself included, have all been impacted in some way by this antiquated machine spinning round and round and round. We work here because it’s an opportunity for us to continue to be molded and shifted by this place each and every day.

I am many things, but above all else, I am a storyteller. Stories are how I understand the world. Stories are how I sift through the details and minutiae of my daily life and make meaning out of it. I love making connections, I love finding depth and meaning in the everyday. 

And, in a sense, this podcast is my version of the carousel operator’s story. It is my way of sharing how this place has impacted my life, as well as the lives of others.

And it is my hope, that through hearing the stories we share on this podcast that you, too, will be fundamentally changed in some way.

*

There’s this special moment that happens when you ride the Carousel of Happiness. The operator has told you the story, they’ve taken your ticket…You’ve thoughtfully chosen the animal you’ll ride (a very important decision, as we’ll see), you’ve fastened your safety belt, and you’re ready. Waiting. 

This moment happens before the 1913 Wulitzer band organ begins to play over 100 instruments on its own. It happens right before this elegantly simple, seemingly timeless, piece of machinery begins to churn and move. This moment happens before the spinning, before the sounds, before the centrifugal force.

In this moment of stillness, of pause, you can feel the anticipation start to build and swell. The energy in the room appears to have a life of its own. Riders and visitors alike can sense something is about to happen. They can sense, beyond all logical explanations, that after a three-minute ride everything will be different somehow.

And it’s at this moment you’ll hear the sound of a gong. A Japanese gong, specifically. Donated to us by local friend of the carousel, Stuart Horowitz. Stuart and his wife, Kay, spent many years in Japan raising their family. When rung, the gong in the Buddhist tradition is thought to activate experiences of bliss and rejuvenation. The sound of a gong signifies something special is afoot. So, while many traditional carousels begin with the ringing of a bell, we start our special little carousel by striking a gong. 

Welcome, dear listener, to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. Let us begin with today’s story.

GONG 

I haven’t worked at the Carousel of Happiness very long. Only a couple of months. Which is not a lot of time at most places, but it’s particularly miniscule in this work environment. Most of my colleagues have worked here since we opened almost 15 years ago in 2010. As volunteers, no less. Some of them even helped build the thing, in fact. And, as you’ll hear today, carousel creator and carver, Scott Harrison, has been attached to the idea of this carousel since 1967. Almost 58 years.

So my measly couple of months means nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket, as they say. But what is so striking to me is that, even in this short amount of time, I literally have found myself changed. Completely. My relationship with my own story, my own past, has changed. My relationship with my art has changed. My relationship to myself has changed. All because of a carousel.

How? Why? What is going on here? Isn’t this just a ride for little kids? I am a childless woman in her 40s. What is happening here? 

And I’m not alone. One of the first emails I received when I started working here was an email from Nick in Denver. He shared this.

In 2015, I quit drinking alcohol after many unhappy years and ended up in the ICU for about four days as a result of complications.  After getting out of the hospital and spending a couple of tumultuous  weeks recovering at home, I started driving the Peak to Peak highway as therapy.  Often, I'd end up driving through Ned, and one day I decided to stop at the Carousel of Happiness.  I'd seen it for years, but had never been in.

I was completely alone (this was mid day during the week), and rode for maybe 30 minutes.  Almost immediately after starting my ride, I felt a deep sense of calm, peace, and happiness come over me.  I realized, and told myself, "Everything is going to be ok". 

To this day, I carry a Carousel of Happiness penny in the coin pocket of my jeans to remind me of this fact.  I’m coming up on a decade free from alcohol! Ive been married to my best friend for three years now and we have two beautiful tiny dogs lol. After getting things turned around, I knew I wanted to give back to people around me so every year on my soberversary I make a social media post inviting anyone to talk who thinks they might have a problem with alcohol and every year I get more folks. I have personally helped about a dozen people get sober, so many in my Millennial generation have been affected by alcohol so severely, it is great to be able to utilize my insights and experiences to positively impact others. 

I was also directionless when I was drinking. When I was on that carousel, I knew that I needed to find some meaning in what I do in life. So, after I got sober, I got started down the path of sustainability. I worked for EcoCycle for six years and I’m now managing the waste and diversion systems for the Denver International Airport!

And every day I do that, I’ve got my talisman from the Carousel of Happiness. My coin. I hope others get as much joy and comfort as I did and still do. 

Much love.  Thank you for facilitating this profound, life changing moment for me.

Nick

And, the truth is, we get emails like this almost everyday at the carousel. And while the details are different, they all sort of have a similar pattern. People tend to be called to the Carousel of Happiness. People usually have a story about someone dragging them here or them noticing out of the corner of their eye a flyer on the wall somewhere. Typically, we hear about the meandering story that brought them to us. Synchronicities. Signs. And then there’s some type of hurt, maybe it’s a loved one’s passing or, as in this case, a personal struggle with addiction. While we are the Carousel of Happiness, we find that people open up to us about their most tender moments here. And then we get the stories of transformation. Of moving from the dark to the light.

There’s something going on here. I can feel it. Nick felt it. And many of you who’ve already visited have felt it. This is what we’ll explore together on the podcast. What makes this place so special?

For today, we’ll start with the seed of this idea. How the first of us, Scott Harrison, was called to the Carousel of Happiness. And as you might expect at this point, the seed for this idea – this phenomenon – was planted in very dark soil. 

Our story begins on the other side of the world. 58 years ago. In Vietnam. Con Thien, to be exact. Known as the “Hill of Angels” in Vietnamese, Con Thien is a little hill just over 500 feet tall located on the border between what was North and South Vietnam. And, in 1967, it was the site of the northernmost US Marine outpost during the Vietnam War.

And while the name “Hill of Angels” sounds lovely, the reality of Con Thien in 1967 and 1968 was anything but. During that time, the area was the site of intense fighting and shelling between American and North Vietnamese forces. 

Starting in February 1967, and continuing for the next two years, the fighting near Con Thien resulted in the deaths of 1,419 Americans, as well as left 9,265 Americans wounded. On the opposing side, the numbers are even more staggering. 7,500 North Vietnamese troops were killed during this period alone and an unknown number were wounded.

One of those 9,265 wounded Americans was Carousel of Happiness carver and creator, Scott Harrison. 

Scott Harrison grew up in a small middle-class suburb outside Dallas, Texas. According to Scott, his upbringing was fairly typical of the time, a standard 50s experience. He had two brothers, one sister. His father was an engineer. Scott was a talented boxer in high school.

Two weeks before graduating from high school, Scott enlisted in the Marines. But,the truth is, he was never supposed to be in combat in the first place. When he enlisted, he signed up to attend language school in Hawaii. His intention was to be part of an elite group of Marines who would win over the hearts and minds of civilians in Vietnamese villages with their language skills. His plan, all along, was to be a liaison, a bridge between two worlds. He intended to interpret for the Vietnamese during the conflict, not shoot them.

But after two months of language school, the government had different plans for Scott. He was shipped off to Con Thien and given a machine gun. He was a gunner now. Not an interpreter.

Scott shared some personal essays he wrote about his time in Vietnam with me. He wrote them about a decade ago as part of a Veterans writing course. And I didn’t know what to expect when I read them. In some ways, I figured I sort of already got the gist of his story because my dad was in the Navy. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both Marines. I, myself, worked for the Navy as a civilian. I figured I knew how the story went…war is hard, but you dealt with it. Suck it up, buttercup.

But it’s one thing to read about war data. About history. About policy. X number of casualties over the course of X number of years. This type of engagement with history is superficial. While valuable, it is a way to experience the event from the intellect, not from the heart. 

But, we experience life with our senses, not just our minds. And when I sat down to read Scott’s essays I discovered it is a completely different experience to see the battlefield from a 17 year old boy’s eyes. Because that’s who Scott was back then. A teenager. A baby. 

There was something about the details he remembered that haunted him, sights and smells that have lingered in his memory over 50 years. And what struck me was how innocent they were. How naive. 

As an example, one of Scott’s first priorities upon arriving in Vietnam was fitting in. Typically teenager stuff, huh? When he arrived in Con Thien, naive and green, Scott was more concerned about how shiny his new fatigues were compared to the dirty, salty grunts who had been there for a while. Completely unaware of what lay before him, he was more concerned about looking cool, looking like the other Marines. 

He compared it to the first day of high school, when you desperately try to wrinkle the creases out of your jeans before homeroom to make yourself look hip, or, at the very least, to make it seem like your mom hadn’t laid your clothes out neatly on the bed the night before. 

And when Scott arrives in Vietnam, preoccupied with his clean uniform, a split second later, a mortar round screamed in toward him, narrowly missing him, but ripping into the body of a Marine nearby. 

In that moment, Scott’s new, green fatigues were not his only problem. 

And that mortar round was the first of many. The fighting at Con Thien during this time was relentless. Mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and automatic weapon fire was constant and unrelenting. And the little Hill of Angels was highly exposed. No trees for cover, only shallow holes in the mud for protection.

When there was a brief lull in the fighting, Scott and his fellow Marines found unique ways to cope with the seriousness of their reality: some meditated, others smoked, some let off steam by joking around with others. Other Marines found solace by looking at photos of wives or girlfriends. These men, boys really, did anything they could to take their mind off of where they were and what was happening around them.

During this time, Scott’s sister, Chauncey, knew he was having a rough time so she sent him a care package. In addition to some food and special treats from home, there was a small music box that played (INSERT TRISTESSE HERE) a musical piece by Chopin called “Tristesse,” which ironically means “sadness” in French. During breaks in the fighting, Scott found that if he pressed the music box mechanism up to his ear he could trigger himself to disassociate. There was something about that song that allowed his mind to leave the scene, even if it was just for a little bit.

And when his mind wandered, it took him to a place he didn’t expect: a mountain meadow. In his mind’s eye, on that battlefield, he could see it lush with green grass, with children playing and laughing. Picnicking families, and…a carousel.

It’s important to note that up until this point Scott did not have a “carousel connection” at all. He did not have previously fond memories of riding one as a child. The image of a carousel seemingly came out of nowhere.

It called to him.

And these mountain daydreams served as a meditation for Scott. A survival mechanism. These daydreams allowed him to survive in a seemingly unsurvivable environment.  

In the early morning of January 26, 1968, on Mike’s Hill, four days before the TET Offensive began, a firefight broke out. Northern Vietnamese forces attacked Marines from 3 sides with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and automatic weapons. In what would later be called a “wild melee,” U.S. Marines responded in kind, firing shots, later turning to hand grenades when they ran out of ammunition. After two days of relentless fighting, 31 medevac helicopters cycled through the battlefield, hovering and picking up wounded. Picking up the dead. 

And in one of those medevac helicopters was Scott Harrison. 

During the battle, a North Vietnamese soldier, a stranger as Scott likes to point out, likely a teenager himself, threw a grenade at Scott. The grenade missed him, and killed another Marine nearby. Except for one tiny piece of shrapnel. Which ricocheted out of the other Marine and back toward him, wedging itself into the back of Scott’s left knee, severing his femoral artery. 

Scott woke up in the U.S. Navy Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. In a room with 80 other beds. The hospital was packed. Wounded men were spilling out of hospital bays into the hallways. Everywhere you looked were wounded service members. The morphine drips were steady; the moaning was constant.

After a long, painful recovery, Scott was sent to Okinawa to finish healing and get ready to be shipped back to Vietnam. He had only 64 days left on his orders.

And that number of days – 64 - is important. Because at that time, government policy was to send wounded service members back to Vietnam as long as they had at least 60 days left on their orders. If you had 59 days left, you didn’t go back. But if you had 61 days left, you were shipped back to Vietnam.

And in a twist of fate, or what I like to call “carousel magic,” as soon as Scott’s knee started to feel better, his teeth began to hurt. As it would turn out, his wisdom teeth did not intend to return to Vietnam with him. They would need to be removed before he went back. 

During the procedure, the military dentist shared his anti-war sentiments with Scott.

So, with 64 days left in his commitment to the U.S. government and orders to return to combat in his hand, Scott went to that dentist with shaking hands and asked him to issue a “do not travel” order for him. For 5 days, at least.

The dentist agreed.

Scott Harrison would never return to combat in Vietnam.

But, as we’ll soon see, the battle was not over for Scott Harrison when he returned home.

In learning more about Scott’s story, we can see some common themes pop up. First is the fact that Scott, too, was initially called to the carousel. In those brief moments of stillness on the battlefield, Scott was somehow given the image of the carousel in the mountain meadow. It did not come from his conscious mind. Remember, he did not have any memory of a carousel of any kind as a kid. The image appearing in his mind was not Scott recalling a familiar memory. This seemingly appeared out of nowhere. 

And I know you’ve experienced this too. Those aha moments in the shower or on a long road trip. When your mind is just quiet enough that you know – just know – that you didn’t conjure the idea or image yourself.

And that’s my invitation to you, dear listener. To explore this inner voice. To notice when it talks to you. What are you doing when it happens? How can you hear it best? I encourage you to be curious about what it has to say. Even if it’s “crazy” or doesn’t make sense.  And I know this might sound a bit strange, but that is one of the things I’ve learned since being involved with the carousel. Scott received a seemingly strange message or image or whatever you want to call it. And as we’ll see in the next few episodes he followed those images, those bread crumbs one by one, taking it one step at a time. And wound up with more beauty and joy than he ever could have imagined.

Why not this for you? Why not use his story as a catalyst for your expansion and growth. This does not require any religious affiliation or acceptance of any dogma of any kind. As you’ll see, we at the Carousel of Happiness welcome and accept any and every one.

I invite you to allow this story to be the impetus for you exploring how you receive signs. Messages. Have you listened to them? How did it work out? If not, could you possibly consider trying something new?

I’d love to hear from you. If you are following along with the podcast and have something to share, I’d love to hear it. You can DM us on social media or send me an email directly at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org. Or maybe stop in and experience the carousel for yourself. Whatever you choose, I’d love to hear how you personally are interacting with the story of the Carousel of Happiness. What have you experienced? What have you noticed?

On our next episode, we’ll explore the dynamic between light and dark. How do they interact with one another? Are they two sides of the same coin? Can you have one without the other? What does the Carousel of Happiness teach us about our sadness?

In the meantime, take care. Be well. And, as we like to say at the Carousel of Happiness, “don’t delay joy.” And we’ll see you next time around.