I was a carny for two weeks

I turn 50 next month, and upon reflection I suppose like many other people I have made many mistakes, some of which I continue to do, but I have flashes of memories that I need to get down while the mind is fresh or the connections are fresh


The picture above is from one of my cooler expierences, it was 1977 and I had transferred from the boarding High school to the public high school, I will give the reasons later but it was a move that was necessary both financially and emotionally, declaring war on a misbegotten belief or motive on people that did not need the grief that were trying to help me was a bad mistake, however a part of me thinks that it was 1) funny, 2) somewhat deserved but I could have handled it much more maturely, so it goes

Back to the memory, I didn’t know very many of the people in HS, a few remembered me but most have a vague memory that I did something and went to the boys school, which at the time was a 2 year commitment, this was before drugs and gangs led to minors committing adult crimes. Minor crimes could get you sent to “reeducate” you, since I was bulled in Jr High, I did little to change that perception, and those that bullied me, left me alone, my sister who was a year behind me could have contributed to this, but by HS she “changed” and was a girl who had a bad reputation some of it deserved, some of it not. It caused my parents immense grief, and her behavior led to her having a accident in college that damaged part of her brain, a tragedy because she was a beautiful gal and could have done something if she changed, or a drug addict that would have ruined my parents until she finally OD’d.

But I wanted a class ring, and if I recall the rings were about 150.00 and I needed to get a job,it was and is a friend of my mom’s said that the state fair hired temporary help, my sister got a job at a pizza place that hired hot chicks and she had fun there and did a fair amount of drugs and hooked up, had fun, if I had that chance I probably would have done so but if you look at the picture I didn’t look cool and I was about 40 lbs overweight.

I went to where the semi’s were unloading and I got no commitment, but I found a woman named Vi who said they wanted to see me work first, so I helped unload and set up one of the booths on the midway. We all finished about midnight, and the next day I showed up early and found no one remembered me, I ran into Vi who was opening up the booth and I asked her if she needed me, now this on of those moments where chance stepped in and gave me a break. The night before a kid, about my age, was assigned to Vi, and he was swing from the crossbeam and it broke and he broke his leg. He was on crutches and they put him somewhere else and Vi asked me to hop in the booth, and we worked out the hours, and I had a job. No salary was discussed, and I didn’t expect to get minimum since it was cash.

The game involved a spinning wheel with holes at the edge of the wheel and a hole surrounded by a color, I think there was 16 colors, around the edge of the booth was a square with a color and you would put a quarter on a color, A mouse was placed in the center and a cover was put over it, the wheel is spun, and the cover is lifted and the mouse runs to a hole, and if you had a quarter on that color you got the prize which was a decent looking stuffed animal. Vi told me that she was charges by the square foot and she was in the second best place and I think it was $50.00 a square foot, and it was about 10X10 , maybe a little smaller. She needed to make on average about $100 per animal, and that the State fail stop was a bit dreaded because there were mostly lookly loos. Her husband had the booth next door and was clearly 10-15 years older, Vi looked about late 40’s her husband had to be retired. His game was a beer bottle lying on its side and you had a pole a string and a ring toss hoop and the game was to get a bottle to stand on its end before falling off the board.

I heard lots of stories, mostly the teenagers were runaways, and the workers that put up the rides looked like hell’s angel’s, big, tattooed, hairs and scary looking but they were very nice to me, and asked if I wanted to join them. They were the enforcers and policed the midway, a couple of times some of the want to be gangs would get rude or hassle some of the booths and they would get into fights, one tall black dude called the daughter of one of the booth’s some kind of name and the guys and his friends called them out and walked off, a few minutes later some of the ride operators were walking off and they had these huge spanner wrenches in their arm of their jacket and wet after them. About ½ hour later the midway was closed down, a horn sounded and everyone hurried to batten down the hatches. I never found out what exactly what happened but a kid got stabbed just outside the midway. The next day the manager came over and told me that if anything happened, if anyone started anything I was to yell at the guy running the skee-ball game 30 feet away. Nothing happened where I was but there were a few fights, and they had a plan in case it got large scale. Mostly problems were confined to drunks that accused the game of being a cheat, and the state police dealt with them.

The fair ended and I helped tear down the booth and load it and I went to the trailer and got $125.00 and a pink stuffed animal which I gave to little sister, which pissed me off, and he explained that take into consideration that I would steal some money. Which I never did, but I did help a few pals from the old school I went to “win” some stuffed animals and look impressive in front of their gal. Vi got our address but I never heard from her and she wasn’t there the next year, and the people I did recognize either did not remember or pretended to not remember which is the same thing.

I slept in the next day which was a school day, and my mom and dad went down to the fair and had a chat with the Carnival manager and I don’t know what was said but they got me another 50.00, which took care of the ring and frankly I used the rest for beer. My sister worked the pizza the next year but I didn’t even try to work a booth. The son of my friends left with the carny’s, he hooked up with one of the men, and eventually died from AIDS, nice guy. Anyway that was one of my experiences, more fun than anything, saw a different side of life, and got a class ring out of it.