So I went to the fair last night. Our best local fair is a tiny affair, located in the midst of towering hardwood trees on the fair grounds, which are over 100 years old. A small barn and other enclosures contain the exhibits — jellies, jams and other preserves in one building, and a few calves, chickens and other home grown livestock in the other.
A carnival company from Connecticut runs the rides — a small assortment of faintly depressing kiddy rides, and beyond them the rickety and rusting rides with enticing names like “The Scrambler,” “The Zipper,” and “The Sizzler.” The rides are operated by rough-looking men who chain smoke and sleep in trailers behind the fair grounds. They have been taught to take your tickets, strap you in, and ensure that you scream — loudly.
It had rained hard earlier in the afternoon and the trees were still dripping when we arrived in the evening. The crowd, on a Wednesday evening, was sparse.
I had three kids with me and I optomistically bought $20 worth of tickets. We would go through them in about 15 minutes and go back to the ticket booth five times. We went on the biggest and scariest rides we thought we could stand and then took a break from our shrieking and bashed one another in the bumper cars. I roamed through the food stands and loaded up on fair food — a hot sausage sandwich followed by a slab of fried dough, washed down with a Pepsi chaser.
As it got later in the evening, small gangs of tween girls arrived; they tore off their t-shirts in the bathroom, stuffed them in their flimsy backpacks and roved the grounds in their tight spaghetti strap camisoles and low-rise jeans. They preened and whinnied like show horses, tossing their crimped manes and checking their mascara in the chrome surface of the rides. The carnies watched them, flicking the occasional cigarette butt onto the grass. Soon enough the local boys showed up, and I watched the two groups circle one another.
Thirty five years ago I was one of these girls; waiting all summer for the carnival to come so that, after a tame summer spent bike riding and teaching arts and crafts at day camp, I could flirt with danger. Watching now, I could hardly bear it. Of course these girls don’t know what’s in store for them. They don’t know that they will graduate from teenage enticements to adult entanglements.
I took my young niece away from the scene to ride the ferris wheel. We were its only customers and we floated gently up, up, up — over the enclosures with their garish lights and the sounds of adolescent screams coming from The Zipper. And we paused at the very top. Looking down through the trees, it all looked very sweet and surreal. Our view extended beyond the fair grounds to the fields and forests beyond, blanketed by an inky night with a starstruck sky and presided over by a perfect half moon.
