There’s a little carnival in our small town. Every summer when they are setting up, either my gf or I will say, “awwww, christ, the carnies are in town”. Not sure what this means or implies, but it’s a tradition.
In 1974 or so I saw Buck Owens perform. He said he was going to set the world’s fastest guitar picking record. He said the last time he attempted it his pickin’ hand caught on fire and fire trucks had to be called to put out the stage fire.
He was indeed fast, I don’t know if he set any record, but he didn’t catch on fire so I left a little disappointed.
Pomona County Fair in the 1960s.
I remember a barker promising us a look at a “Giant rat! From the jungles of South America!”, and when we went in, we saw a capybara. A sleepy, bored-looking capybara.
I also remember getting to pet the Budweiser Clydesdales, and being awestruck at how colossal they were. That wasn’t everything seeming big to me because I was little; I saw them again as an adult and they were still colossal.
I saw a huge flock of brand-new chicks and when you get that many chicks together, their peeping can be kind of deafening.
Can you tell I like animals?
Some rigged game which was like roulette with a live rodent rather than a little ball. A pretty lady started making bets shortly after I did and I was too young to realize that I should be copying her bets.
Oh, yeah, and a coin-operated machine containing a live chicken that played a piano.
The ‘burlesque’ show. My husband was an excellent photographer and took great photos of the fair at night. He took a great one of all the lovelies standing outside the tent in their feathers and fishnet stockings, in the light of the midway at night…anyway, we finally went in to see the show the last year they had it, and I remember mildly naughty dances, and one middle aged chunky topless gal manhandling her rather doughy boobs, lol.
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. The ‘freak show’ - I guess we waited too long, by the time the freak show came around, there were very few left. One old guy who came out in a sawdust ring viewers stood around, and swallowed a sword. A lot of mis-shapen skeletons and mummified remains of creatures that had been freakish when alive (two headed snake, animal fetuses (I hope) in bottles, and photographs of oddities when they were alive years prior. Oh, and the snake woman - the snake woman was a grizzled old gal dressed like a gypsy, sitting in the ring, smoking and looking absolutely disgusted with us and her lot in life. She ground out her smoke, opened a basket, took out a snake, and stuck its’ head into her mouth! Then she put it back in the basket, picked up a tambourine and shook it, holding it out (indicating we should tip her). We all threw change into her tambourine. And that was the end of the freak show.
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. We were walking through the fair with our 10 year old and a borrowed neighbor boy and stopped to look at some magnificent draft horses. The one nearest to us displayed an awesome length of genitals, big as my arm it looked! Of course, the neighbor boy noticed and made several comments - ‘lookit that, lookit that Mr. Salinqmind - is that the horses’s pee pee? Look how long, is he gonna pee now? How come it’s doing that? Lookit, Baby Salinqmind, look!’ …oooooookay, now, let’s move along, hey, look, over there, who wants Dippin’ Dots???
There used to be a state fair in Connecticut. It’s long gone (and there is now a mall on the site) but we went one year. One thing I remember seeing is a camper van/RV carved out of a redwood tree trunk. And there was a guy selling some sort of kitchen gadget and I remember being very impressed at how skillful he was in delivering the sales pitch, with the whole patter and everything. He was very much like one of those guys selling crap on one of those infomercials.
Our state fair has two or three buildings with those people in them, selling all kinds of things.
I remember her, the snake part was so obvious a costume but the main attraction (for men anyway) was that she would flash her boobs if you threw a dollar at her.
My main fair memory is the big slide that you sat on a burlap sack to slide down. A carnie got mad that a girl (aged 10-12) went down the slide before he said go, and reached out and grabbed her burlap sack as she was in mid-slide, causing her to wipe out ala “the agony of defeat” from the old Wide world of sports intro. A fight broke out between the girls parents and the carnie. My parents whisked me away when punches started flying.
Saw the jars with the misshapen fetuses of animals that were being touted as human.
There was the handwriting analysis machine that then spit out your fortune as a series of computer punch cards. When I went to college and went into computing, looking at the punch cards showed that the holes were just randomly placed. Lots of lights and sounds, but no actual computer involved (this would be about 1970).
Never got to see the “man eating chicken” exhibit, even though it was only a dime…
There was one of those at the North Carolina State Fair one year – the guy was selling knock-off ShamWow cloths. I was impressed enough with his enthusiastic pitch that I bought a couple of bundles. I still have most of them; they’re great for drying your hair, or absorbing water from automotive upholstery when you can’t remove it from the vehicle.
I always avoided most fair food (can’t digest most fried stuff), but I always liked to find unique cotton candies, like maple-based. My family tended to avoid most rides for safety reasons, but fun houses were fine. I remember going to some of the exhibits too, particularly the ones where people would give you a hands-on demonstration of a long-lost craft.
Been years since I’ve been to a fair, my memories of the county fairs in Ohio as a youth are pretty frayed (I do remember one sideshow with ‘lobster boy’, a young man with only two large digits on each hand). Mostly the rides and the cotton candy and the horses.
Last memory was from the early 1980’s at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, where the featured attraction was the Chicago Knockers women’s mud wrestling team; they didn’t call us Hooiser for nothing, you know…
One of my college classmates used to work for a carnival, in the summers. He manned one of the game booths (ring toss, or something like that). The management told him to emphasize how easy it was, but he was honest about it: “How hard is it?” “Pretty hard; we only get about two or three winners a day.”. He says that his booth got more business than any of the others.
No, I remember that the project was done by a girl, and she did indeed write that.
Maybe that was actually crazy ass-shit.
I remember I paid to see The World’s Smallest Horse as a kid. Not worth it.
I also remember a funhouse that ended with a guy in a gorilla mask jumping out, revving a chainsaw. That freaked the crap out of me!
And of course there was the ever-popular Combine Crash (demolition derby with combine harvesters).
EDIT: Too bad that fairs don’t stage head-on locomotive collisions nowadays. - YouTube
In my town we had some low rent Brokeass County Junior Fair… how much of a loser did I feel like that our county didn’t get a full County Fair, just a Junior Fair?
Why did we go to the fair? Because that’s how bored we were! Freak show without any freak on? Fun house with no actual fun? Sure, might as well… nothin’ else to do.
We used to go every day and sometimes sneak out after midnight and hang around the carnies, who were the only dangerous guys we’d ever seen. Moonshine, tattoos, tempers and switchblades… I often think of how lucky we were not to have been cut or abducted.
If you want to get your mind blown by a real fair, do what we finally did: drive to Minneapolis around Labor Day for a fair that’s 10x bigger and 100x more professional than any other fair I’d ever seen. And the food… I mean, we were munching on deep-fried Snickers On A Stick, and washing it down with a hearty pint of Maple Bacon Stout.
Growing up in the 80’s we had the small horse, snake kafy, lobster boy gimmicks. We also often had the guys on motorcycles inside the BALL OF STEEL!!! I went several times to see the old freakshow items like fetuses in bottles and so called mutants. Oh and the rides!
Now it’s all food…
My friend Bryan and I saw 2 guys eat horse shit at the Wisconsin State Fair.
I’m not kidding.
We were walking down Grandstand Avenue of the fair park. There were chunks of horse manure on the street from the police horses that passed through previously. Two drunks were walking in front of us and one of them picked up a golf ball sized glob and bit it in half and started chewing it.
Then he tossed the remaining half into the waiting open mouth of his inebriated friend, not unlike the shrimp cocktail scene in the Blues Brothers.
While people in the vicinity were gagging and freaking out Bry and I were in awe of the level of intoxication these gents had achieved. We’ll never forget it and I’m sure his last words on his death bed will be “I saw a guy eat horse shit!!!”