Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Terror on the Midway
Apparently you can be too old for the carnivalBy Bob Wire, Columnist, 9-17-10
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Here in Western Montana, the end of summer brings with it many things. There’s always a cold snap on August 31 (I find calendar-driven weather events to be extremely curious), I give up on the lawn, and the prospect of the looming NFL season has me craving chicken wings and disillusionment (I’m a Dolphins fan).
Just before school starts, though, summer gets one last huzzah by way of the county fair. This year, enticed by TV commercials that boasted “the greenest lawn in Western Montana,” we spent a day at the Sanders County Fair in Plains, an hour and a half northwest of Missoula.
We half expected to see a fair populated with Wrangler-wrapped cowpokes, overalls-clad farmers, and stringbean 4H adolescents in crisp, white dress shirts and spotless cowboy hats. We saw all that, but the fair was also packed with exactly the same freak show that’s on display at the fair in Missoula. Copiously tattooed and pierced wasteoids with black hair and wallet chains sullenly pushing around strollers carrying their spawn. Sunburned, four-hundred-pound specimens with butter and nacho stains down the front of their Gold’s Gym t-shirts. Roving packs of savage adolescent girls dressed like hookers, cell phones clamped to their cheeks, leaving in their wakes the broken hearts and crushed self-esteems of the uncool kids. You know, typical fair goers.
We like to check out the livestock first, so we headed straight for the swine barn. I usually tour the pigs while conspicuously eating a sausage on a stick, but couldn’t find a vendor this time. A 4H girl asked me if I’d like to buy a raffle ticket. “Gimme five,” I told her, cheerfully handing her a fin. “What do I win?”
“Well, the prizes are a handmade quilt, a handmade sculpture, and a dressed hog delivered to your home.”
“Dressed hog? Awesome! Do I get to choose the outfit? Does it include a bikini wax?”
We looked at pigs, cows, sheep, goats, chickens and llamas. A monstrous draft horse got a little too friendly, and used his lips to give me the frisking of a lifetime. I think we’re going steady now.
Seeing all this meat on feet made me hungry, so we hit the food booths. I asked the woman in the corn on the cob booth if it was locally grown. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Washington state.” I had an ear with butter, salt and pepper. “What, no stick?” No stick. Psht. People, I wanted to shout, food on a stick is a required feature of any fair! Get thee to a stickery!
Rusty announced that it was time for the rides. I’ve always been the Ride Parent, since Barb’s vertigo is so acute that even parallel parking can make her woozy. We bought two unlimited ride wristbands, and walked into the carnival. We were going to ride the crap out of these rides. Our first stop was a funhouse, the one that starts with a little hall of mirrors, then goes up a set of stairs to a couple of distorted funhouse mirrors. It ends with a spiral slide, and I made the mistake of lifting up my sneakers so I could go a little faster. My foot caught the side of the building, and I spun around backwards. After receiving a few friction burns on my elbows and shoulder, I crashed off the end upside down and backward, crushing my sunglasses underneath me. My carnival experience was not starting out well. It was about to get worse. Much worse.
Rusty and I walked toward the Orbiter, a rotating ride that was moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen at any fair ever. It rotated, it spun, it swiveled and twisted. I was thankful that I’d only had the corn to eat, but I also suspected that it would soon be making another appearance. We boarded the ride and pulled down the restraints, and it started moving. Hey, not too bad, I thought. Then the operator hit the throttle. The thing began to spin so fast that the passing scenery was a blur. I could actually feel my eyeballs going out of round. My lips were flapping like a whoopee cushion, and my internal organs were crammed into the lower third of my body cavity. “No way is this legal!” I managed to grunt, while Rusty howled with delight. I don’t know how many G’s we pulled, but compared to the Orbiter, a ride in a Blue Angels fighter jet would be a tiptoe through the tulips. I was legitimately fearing for my life, and when the ride finally, mercifully began to slow down, I had to struggle mightily to keep from spraying the waiting crowd with creamed corn.
It took me several seconds to peel myself off the seat. I staggered toward the exit, trying to regain my equilibrium. My ass was sore from being furiously clenched for two minutes, and my ears were ringing like I’d been hit in the head with a manhole cover. I followed Rusty and Barb to some shade, where I sat down and hugged my knees. As I waited for the horizon to stop tilting, I vowed to go back and demand to see their NASA training certification.
We were sitting in front of the Gravitron, which Rusty wanted to ride next. It’s a big flying saucer that spins around faster and faster, until you’re squashed against the wall with centrifugal force. The hulking ride was dented, wobbly, missing several light bulbs, and in need of a paint job. Also, I was not filled with confidence by such a huge ride whose propulsion system was based on a spinning car tire.
But we rode it, and my fifty-year-old bones were bent and folded by the punished G-force, this time against my spine instead of my hips. As we hit top speed, my ribs closed around my lungs like a fist. The operator, seated in the center of the ride, seemed to sense my discomfort and kept slowing down and then speeding up with a sneer. I wanted to punch him right in the tooth.
Battered, humiliated (“I think dad crapped his pants!”) and demoralized, I was unwilling to quit. I was committed, and wouldn’t call it a day until we’d tackled the Kamikaze. That’s the ride that features twin arms rotating in opposing vertical circles, with a cage full of reckless idiots on the end of each arm. As we waited in line, I looked around and didn’t see anyone older than thirty. Once we got in our seats and the ride started up, I realized why. The carnival is a young man’s game. By our third swing, I said, “Oh, this was a mistake.” Rusty laughed.
“Let go, Dad! Let go!” he hollered moments later as we paused at the top of the arc. He was suspended freely, hanging upside down. I had my feet curled under the foot bar, I was clutching the handrail tightly with both hands, and, as much as I could, gripped the seat beneath me. “Let go! Let go!” he kept yelling.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I yelled back, my eyes squeezed tightly shut. I felt like I was going to throw up. I mean down. Then the giant arm swung around, and we made several complete revolutions. Then the pause at the top was repeated in reverse. Somewhere a little girl was screaming, and I looked around and realized that it was me. We finally ended the ride and I got off and collapsed in the grass over in the shade by the manager’s trailer. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk,” I said to no one in particular.
I was beaten. Defeated. Bested. Done. Of the many tangible and painful signs of aging I endure as the years pile up, this was by far the worst. My career as Ride Parent had come to an end. I am officially Too Old For This Shit. Barb tried to comfort me as Rusty looked on, giving me a pitiable shake of the head.
“Are you going to be all right, sweetheart?” she asked me, barely concealing her amusement. She was seated in the grass with my head in her lap, stroking my hair.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” I sat up. “I just need something on a stick.”
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Comments
And as to the rest, hey, I haven't written squat in three months. I'll get there. ;-)
Also, speaking of terror on the midway, today James Howard Kunstler writes of the county fair as metaphor, in his newest blogpost, "Puke Time": Our county fair put me in mind of that American classic, Moby Dick, this year. So many white whales among the try-pots bubbling with rendered blubber, where crews of savages from all corners of the world toiled to bring forth batter-dipped Mars bars, Pop Tarts, corn dogs, funnel cakes, and other rarities of the deep fryer... and then the whales ventured a little further down the midway where they mounted the engines of swirling cosmic death, and were flung about in the centrifugal pods of fate on the ingenious mechanical arms of innovation, until their sickened souls gave forth with a mighty spewage of corn byproducts that rained down upon the moiling innocents below....
Go, go, go!
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/09/puke-time.html