Where Have All The Carnies Gone?

I'll tell you where they are (or were). They were at the Fall Festival at Cupie's school on Friday & Saturday.

We had a lot to do on Saturday - School Festival, Hot Air Balloon Race, Island Luau. Since the festival started early in the morning, we started our day there. That way we'd have time to cram all the other events in later.

We pre-purchased tickets for the games & rides and were able to bypass the ticket booth. We had blue tickets for the rides and purple tickets for all the other stuff.

Whew! We didn't have to wait behind the one other person buying their tickets that morning.

The first thing the girls saw upon arriving at the festival was the petting zoo consisting of goats, chickens, roosters, ducks, sheep & alpacas. They went bonkers over the idea of the farm animals. I don't get this - we live by a farm. They see these types of animals all the time. One cool thing was they got to feed the animals (one purple ticket).

Once we were done with the animals and a thirty second pony ride (four purple tickets), we headed over to the carnival rides - the ones with the carnies.

They had the required carousel, tea cups/barrel ride, something scrambler-ish, a bounce house, swings, and that ride that goes around with seats that alternate going up and down (if that doesn't make sense, there is a picture in a bit).

Both girls saw the swings and made a bee-line for them. The ride was running so there was a wee bit of a wait. Good grief, you would have thought the world was going to end.

When the Carney came over to get the tickets, we were able to read his shirt. Mind you, he woke up that morning, knowing he was going to be working an elementary school festival.



The writing on his shirt, while not readable from this picture, said:

I Get Sh*t-Faced Drunk
How Do You Handle Stress?

How's that for class?

I wonder what's really in that Pepsi bottle.

You will also note the yellow swing seat at the left side of the picture. This was indicative of the condition of all the rides. Rusty and frickin' OLD.

Stinkles howled when the Carney told her she wasn't tall enough to ride the swings - she was only two inches short. Now the world really was going to end!

At least the carousel was height appropriate. It wasn't a fancy carousel. That would have been out of character for the operation posing as a carnival company. There were no horses that went up and down. Nothing went up and down. There weren't even horses. It was fire trucks and motorcycles.

I think she was the only kid on the entire ride. Doesn't surprise me. After about five rotations she was telling us, "I'm ready to get off now." Even a three-year-old was bored with it!

The next ride Cupie chose also had a height requirement taller than Stinkles. There was no howling because Daddy was putting her a different ride already. I gave Cupie a ticket and sent her by herself to Hustler.



So far we have a stressed out, sh*t-faced Carney and a ride called "Hustler". Nice, huh?

When I turned away from Hustler and looked at the ride Stinkles was on, I almost had a heart attack.

One of our friends commented that it looked like it had been around since the Roosevelt era. Hubby said, "Yah, the first one."

It was rusty everywhere. The hydraulics no longer worked so the cars didn't go up and down like they were supposed to. Most of seats didn't have cushions, only a wooden seat. The ones that had cushions were torn and you could see foam peeking out.

Oh, and the lanky Carney (who had three day old stubble and greasy hair) had to push the ride to get it going. Visualize the guys getting the propellers going on old prop planes.



Stinkles didn't understand that the ride would force her body to the outer side of the car and insisted on sitting on the inner side. She was holding on for dear life. At one point I shouted at her, "Just slide to the other side." Hubby then pointed out that sliding across that wooden seat might give her a splinter in her butt.

We're up to a stressed out, sh*t-faced Carney, Hustler ride, and a splintery Roosevelt-era, half functioning ride. Doing good, right?

Our final ride of the day was the bucking bronco ride. Eight purple tickets! Each! Both girls and Hubby wanted to ride it.

On level one, it doesn't move very fast. Cupie was actually a little bored, but watching Stinkles hold on was pretty humorous.




Like that crooked horn?

It was made out of duct tape. The real horns had broken off some time ago.

At one point it fell out and some kid just picked it up and stuck it back in the hole on the side of the bull's head. We didn't realize it was the horn at first. My first thought was that the bull had a realistic pooping feature. Thank goodness, I was wrong.

Hubby got on the bull too.



Ride Indie, ride! He started out at level one - pretty boring. He asked the guy to bump it up to the next level.

It must be a Richter scale type thing. That bull went twice as fast and jerked around violently.

Hubby was down in about 3 seconds.

All this excitement (stress out, sh*t-faced Carney, Hustler in the house, Roosevelt-era prop plane turned carnival ride, and horns optional bucking bronco) in only 2 1/2 hours. Whew, and we were hardly starting our busy day.

Silver lining:

1. The kids had a good time.


2. The kids are alive after the perilous rides they were on.


3. I didn't read about any accidents at the festival so the rides must have held up


4. The rest of the day, while busy, didn't seem to put the kids in any danger - aside from the burning propane less than five feet from them and the rolling hot air balloon baskets nearly squishing them at the balloon race.