(With an update added today! Vocal Trash returning next year! YAY!)
Our parents were far
better at getting children suffering from Up the Lake levels of exhaustion out
of bed in the wee hours of the morning than we ever were.
As the supposedly
responsible adults, there have been some years we’ve counted ourselves lucky if
we made the fair by lunch time. Our
return home invariably involved carrying some of the younger Fair goers in our
clan directly into bed in a limp and floppy state.
As kids, in stark
contrast, there were years after a full Fair day and dinner stop when we’d get
back to the Lake in time to hit the beach for a sunset swim.
In other words, our
folks got us up early.
I have no idea how early
as it was well before my visual systems or most of my rational thought
processing functions were on line.
I do know, on those late
August mornings as I trudged up the hill to the outhouse through the Gorillas in the Mist level fog, it was
the only time I was cold Up the Lake before going on blood thinners.
With morning rituals
completed, enough families went on the journey to yield an extended line of
cars pulling out of the gate, punctuated by a loud “WAGONS HO!!!!!”
The cry came from Nick's Dad, George-
inevitably in the lead car because no one could keep up with him anyway. That’s why we always wanted to ride with him,
as it was a much safer experience of exciting speed than anything on the
Midway.
There was no hard and
fast rule about which car we young ‘uns rode, but there were two guidelines.
1) We didn’t travel by family, but by age
group. Nick, Skip and I were in the back
seat of one car. The girls slightly
above our age were in another vehicle (and never closer to us than that car
distance throughout the day if they could help it) and the younger kids went in
a third. There were some early years where a pack of older Joe’s were in a separate
car as well.
2) Any potential victim
of carsickness was stapled to a window seat.
We’d leave insanely
early enough to have time to feed the entire normally woodland based horde at
McDonalds on the way, and still make it there for Fair opening time.
To appreciate that
insane earliness, this was not the one nearest the Lake we’d hit on abortive
attempts to rekindle this tradition when we began returning to the Fair. It was the Wappinger Falls McDonald’s, three
quarters of the way there. None of us
were conscious enough to eat before that.
Honestly, the truest evidence of our lack of being our usual
rambunctious selves was that our folks could get us all into the restaurant,
filled up with random McCholesterol items, and back into the vehicles with
minimal delays, injuries or property damage.
In our youngest years we
stayed with our parents the whole day for our safety. In retrospect, we should
have stayed with them in our teen years for the Fair’s safety, but (once more)
I get ahead of myself.
Early Fair memories are
kind of a blur of moving en masse through packed shopping barns, tempting ride
and game filled Midways, and odoriffic animal pens.
The old time
construction equipment, blacksmithing and woodworking displays were always a
big draw, and remained so for our children.
Embarrassingly, I need
to admit that another nearby area I enjoyed back then, and up through
adulthood, was the garden displays.
There was something about getting a peaceful, organic stroll through
beautiful floral and Zen like patio displays that served as a relaxing
counterpoint to the chaos of the rest of the day….
But if you tell anyone I’ll
have to kill you.
The equally long lasting
travelling zoo, sponsored by the Rod and Gun club and featuring small cages and
focus on taxidermy seemed like a unpleasant throwback to the years of the Bronx Zoo’s long converted to office space “Hall of Horns and Heads.” The
less time dwelled upon it the better.
In the vendor barns,
there were a series of items I would look at year after year, purchasing them
one at a time over our visits.
Invariably, they were five bucks a piece, and something that was usually
advertised in the back of a comic book.
This is where I
purchased my pair of working metal handcuffs, which proved their value as part
of an exploding Halloween KISS costume and in a Mother’s Day talent show magic
act in fifth grade. (That was the same year of the Wrinkle in Time parody
play. Oddly, the performing bug vanished
to be replaced with total and abject stage fright after that up until college. Puberty does weird things sometimes.)
Another item long sought
after and eventually obtained was my “switchblade” comb. The reason behind that should be obvious to
anyone else who grew up in the Seventies when it was impossible to be cooler
than “The Fonz.”
Looking back on it, the
most amazing “toy” I got from the “five dollar bin of gags” vendor was the
“electric shock lighter.” Unless wielded
by the Joker, the typical joy buzzer is far more dependent on surprise than a
true jolt. The wind up action causes
vibrations and noise that are reminiscent of a zap.
Shock lighters on the
other hand, are battery powered.
Newer versions are far
more user friendly than the one I obtained- featuring small watch batteries to
deliver, again, something more startling than voltage based.
I had my lighter in top
working condition for an excessively brief period of time. The reason was simple. It was powered by a
full size Double-A battery which was connected to an equal sized coil of thin
copper wire wound extensively and repeatedly around a magnetic core.
The electromagnetic
feedback loop formed when the “ignition” button was pressed delivered enough
power to insure a scream from the holder, and a dropped Fair souvenir for me.
This litigation heavy
society removes far too much fun from the lives of our children. Now there is
no way they could purchase a toy that could so easily be converted into a
functioning pacemaker.
Asking out parents for
money to buy ridiculous and dangerous items was one reason we didn’t mind being
with them in the barns. Another was
insuring we were all together for the old time photo shoots. These adventures
in having sepia tinted images taken of ourselves whilst donning cowboy and
gangster costumes that got used by up to forty thousand sweaty Fair goers a day
were mandatory in the innocent days before digital photography, high quality
home printers, Photoshop, and massive increases in bedbug and head lice
populations.
The goal of those images
was to always look as stern and serious as possible, as we took on the personas
of various rough and ready periods in American history. Maintaining that demeanor became darn near
impossible after the first year.
My sister was in a Southern
Belle dress and I was in a Confederate Cavalry uniform. She stood next to the chair, straight faced, prim
and proper. I put on my best scowl,
placed a hand on the hilt of my saber, and sat through the chair.
No, that wasn’t a typo.
The chair cushion popped out, and I did a Civil War reenactment of sitting on
the toilet with the seat up.
My hat and uniform went
askew as I waved my arms and legs desperately, while my butt was the only part
of me nicely framed for a picture.
Thanks to the wrapping of the line in front of the booth, I was the main
entertainment attraction of the area. (Maybe there is a good reason for the
stage fright after all.) Once I was
popped free of my predicament, returning to the required facial expressions
became difficult for us and the next thirty people on line. Since the same chair graced the booth on each
return visit, memories served to destroy our straight faces on an annual basis.
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