Way back in the 1950s and early 1960s, before my foot ever touched a car's accelerator, one of the best things about summer vacation was going to a carnival or a festival. To a kid like me, they meant games, rides and things to eat that you couldn't get at home.The best carnival in the world was, of course, the Fourth of July carnival in your own hometown. Especially if you could walk to it. High on my priority list was being scared out of my wits by a carnival ride that constantly spun you around and/or lifted you up and dropped you down as your lunch and the loose change in your pocket battled with gravity. Then the games of skill where you threw a ball at wooden milk bottles or tossed rings at bottles filled with colored water, and so on, in order to win a cheap, insignificant prize like a fake Hawaiian lei or a wooden stick with a handle that passed for a cane and other trinkets that were the trophies of a kid's summer. Lastly, I went to the carnival for some stuff that might pass for food and lots of stuff that never would, not in a million years. I'm talking pizza, hotdogs and hamburgers for food and cotton candy, candy apples, snow cones, funnel cakes and sugar waffles just for fun. If you made it home with a few coins in your pocket and no ride tickets left, you were enjoying the gusto.
Festivals, on the other hand, were smaller and run by churches or groups of people in order to raise money for something or to celebrate something, like strawberries or blueberries or lumbering. There may or may not be any rides at a festival and few games of skill but there were a lot of "games of chance" and lots and lots of food. Even real food that came from mothers' and grandmothers' kitchens. Who cared if there was no Ferris Wheel or Merry Mixer or Octopus? Sometimes you got to win money or a prize that wasn't worthless, like a clock or a wrist watch. And, of course, you got to eat.
But the biggest deal of all when it came to outdoor celebrations was the county fair. I wasn't a little kid by the time I went to a county fair and remembered going. I was a grown man by that time. A county fair had everything a carnival had, only five or ten times as much. I enjoyed watching kids shoot a BB-machine gun at a playing card or hit a stuffed animal with a club whenever it peeked out of its hole. They could shoot baskets, roll balls, throw darts, blow up a balloon with a squirt gun and all kinds of stuff. And, if they didn't win, so what? They had fun. Then they could go eat again or join the other grownups, like me, who seemed to enjoy looking at new John Deere tractors and Holland combines and baby animals and jars of homemade canned goods and the latest thing in manufactured housing as much as we liked being scared out of our wits on a ride when we were kids.
I never made it to a state fair when I was a kid but before the 20th Century gave up its wonderful, historic and unforgettable spirit, I got to experience a state fair as a grown man. It had everything a county fair had only three or four times as much. It even had real helicopter rides. I decided to stop while I was ahead after my one and only state fair experience. After going to the "King of Fairs", I couldn't imagine anything bigger. But biggest isn't always the best. From time to time I still enjoy the hometown carnivals as a grown man. But, instead of playing games and getting sick on wicked rides, I just eat carnival food and watch all the kids have their fun.
