When I was a little kid, my parents’ best friends lived in upstate New York (near Warwick, the town where we went apple-picking last fall and did our bed-and-breakfast trip a few months ago). They had two kids just a little older than me named Ali and Matt and one a little younger named Nicky, and one day every summer both families would head to the Orange County Fair.
Here’s my first time ever at the fair, in 1983.
For any kid – but especially a city kid who didn’t often see things like ponies and carousels – it was paradise. Obviously I thought Ali and Matt – 3 and 5 years older than me, respectively – were the coolest people in the entire world, so the fact that I was allowed to follow them around on short parent-free journeys to get a funnel cake or get our photo taken for a souvenir was exciting almost beyond what I could wrap my head around. Mostly what I remember was that the carnival felt big…impossibly big, like you could spend entire summers there and never explore it all. And the rides seemed so fancy and advanced, like something out of a Spielberg movie.
It’s a little strange and bittersweet, going back to places you used to love as a kid. The Gravitron that seemed fifty feet high is…maybe a little taller than me? The Scrambler looks more scary than spectacular, my rudimentary knowledge of physics tells me exactly why all those games are so unwinnable, and the hall of mirrors is basically a cardboard pop-up shop. And those super-cool grown-ups who used to operate the machines (and whose job I wanted to have when I grew up so badly) were somehow replaced by vaguely irritated 16-year-olds when I wasn’t looking.
All that newfound perspective that you get once you’re grown, though…it doesn’t change the fact that a carnival still feels like magic.
And there’s nothing like looking at a carnival through the eyes of someone who’s seeing it for the very first time.
(This was the carnival in South Salem, N.Y. – I don’t think the Orange County Fair exists any more – but it was more or less exactly the same thing.)
Indy loved this; I got nauseous. On Dumbo. Because apparently I’m a wuss and an old lady.
The other big winner: the Super Slide, of course.
I would like to announce that I WON THIS (balloon toss). Miracles happen.
Fried Oreos. Arrr.
P.S. On my search through old photo albums to find that shot of my first time at the Orange County Fair, I also found this, from a trip to a country fair in Vermont with my friends Cynthia and Maron when we were sophomores in high school:
Apparently something about carnivals makes me feel the need to wear motorcycle boots.
