County Fair!

Playground equipment ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenRe: the preceding entry, here's an excerpt from Jean Shepherd's story, County Fair!. The story is about ....

... the Old Man, Ralphie and his little brother Randy climb aboard the Whirligig Rocket Whip after a full day of eating all manner of junk. When Ralphie's mother objects, the old man responds, "Aw, come on. It'll do the kids good. Blow the stink off 'em."

The descriptions are great - There were brief flashes of dark sky, flashing lights, gaping throngs, my old man's rolling eyes, his straw hat sailing around the interior of the car. Their father's loose change and fountain pen all spin away into the night as the ride gains speed.

It was then that the operator turned the power on full. Everything that had gone before was only a warmup. Our necks snapped back as the Rocket Whip accelerated. I was not touching the seat at any point. Jackknifed over the bar, I saw that one of my shoes had been wrenched off my foot. At that moment, with no warning, my kid brother let it all go. His entire day’s accumulation of goodies, now marinated and pungent, gushed out in a geyser. The car spun crazily. The air was filled with atomized spray of everything he had ingested for the past 24 hours. Down we swooped.

“My new pongee shirt!”

Soaked from head to foot, the old man struggled frantically in his seat to get out of the line of fire. It was no use. I felt it coming, too. I closed my eyes and the vacuum forces of outer space just dragged it all out of me like a suction pump. From a million miles away, I heard my old man shouting something, but it didn’t matter. All I knew was that if I didn’t hold onto that bar, it would be all over.

We gradually spun to a stop and finally the wire mesh door opened. My feet touched the blessed earth. On rubbery legs, clinging weakly together, the three of us tottered past the turnstile as other victims were clamped into the torture chamber we had just left.

“Great ride, eh, folks? I left you on a little longer, ‘cause I could see the kids was really enjoyin’ it,” said the operator, pocketing the last of my father’s change as we passed through the turnstile.

“Thanks. It sure was great,” said the old man with a weak smile, a bent cigarette hanging from his lips. He always judged a ride by how sick it made him. The nausea quotient of the Rocket Whip was about as high as they come.

We sat on a bench for a while to let the breeze dry off the old man’s shirt, and so that our eyes could get back into focus. From all around us we could hear the whoops and hollers of people going up and down and sideways on the other rides.

... It was late now and getting a little chilly. It seemed like we had been at the fair for about a month. We sat on the bench while the crowd trudged past us, chewing hot dogs, lugging jars of succotash that they had bought at the exhibits, twirling sticks with little yellow birds on the ends of strings that we could hear whistling over the calliope on the merry-go-round, wearing souvenir Dr. Bodley's Iron Nerve Tonic sun visors, carrying drunken cousins who had hit the applejack since early morning, wheeling reeking babies smeared with caked Pablum and chocolate. Long-legged, skinny, yellow dogs with their tongues hanging out kept running back and forth and barking. It had been an unforgettable day.

As mentioned, if one has never experienced the midway at a county fair, or better yet, a state fair, in the good ol' US of A, this story may not elicit the same hilarious response that it does for those who have.