The Carnival is in Town
The carnival arrives every year, and sets up in a huge parking lot only a block away from where Mom, Nat, Owen, and I lived after Michael and I divorced. For the past few days, I’ve watched the trucks roll in, and build their rides, booths, and food venues.
I remember the last time Nat, Owen, and I walked across the street to the carnival. Owen didn’t want to ride any of the scary rides. He wanted to play the games of chance. Nat and I rode the rides, and tried to talk Owen out of spending his money on the hope of goldfish and stuffed animals that were unlikely to make their way home with us. One particular goldfish did, though. He came home with us, and lived with us for a number of months. Then, he met his maker, and we were all sad for a moment.
The drive-through coffee house where I stop every morning is in the same parking lot. It’s been hard to stop there these last few days as the carnival trucks have rolled in. But, I’ve done it anyway. Whether it’s a function of caffeine addiction, habit, or wanting to revisit the past, I can’t differentiate. And, it doesn’t really matter.
Today, though, when most of the rides were set up and ready to go, the rain prevented much activity. It’s Thursday, and I’m sure the carnies are hoping for clear skies by the weekend. I’m hoping the rain stops, so when I drive by, the lights and sounds of the carnival can remind me of the old days, when we took our hard-earned cash to the weekend adventure of rides that, though rickety and full of risk, still held our interest and our hope for the fun of adrenaline and screams of excitement. I will always remember my last ride with Nat, when we disembarked and talked about the thrill of it all. And, I’ll always remember Owen waiting for us at the exit gate, anxious to make our way to the games of chance. He won. The goldfish came home with us - if for only a few months. His winning play lasted longer than Nat’s and my ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl.
I hope the sun comes out for the weekend. I hope my morning stops at the drive-thru coffee house will continue to remind me of times gone by, and times yet to come. I hope I always remember Nat and Owen as little kids full of…hope…and carnivals.
Song for the night: The Carnival is Over, Dead Can Dance
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LtNFQ7RJbaQ
emmitt-owen-riley
linda-siniard
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
Karen Halls
My fairground goldfish (won as a pair, when I was a boy of 6) lasted 10 and 22 years. Only a cake rack placed over the tank could stop them from leaping out.
There is a ‘Mop Fair’ each October in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I grew up. In years gone by it was a gathering where farmers and gentry could hire new staff. The Runaway Mop was held a week later, for the unhappy ones to quit and get secretly re-hired amongst the general din and drunken debauchery.
Fairs have changed out of all recognition over all the centuries since then, but there’s an edginess to an English fairground even today which is captured extremely well in Tunnel of Love.
Another song for another day, perhaps.
Your post brought back a happy memory of my mom and sister and I riding the Tilt-a-Whirl in carnivals (after my folks’ divorce). Funny that I don’t like riding such contraptions anymore. We don’t take our son to carnivals either, though we did take him to Disneyland this summer. I wonder why we don’t do carnivals….
I think carnivals are scary, not just the rides. So, since Lea and Karma are here visiting, we’re going to the carnival tonight. Why? Because we can. We may not even go inside the gate. We just want to see the lights and hear the noises of people with no cares, or too many.
What person young or old, who has stood on the grounds of a real carnival; hasn’t wondered what it would be like to be a part of that world?
One summer, when I was about 14; I went to a tiny one a few blocks from my house and talked every day for a week with a dangerous looking young man, I think to taste the carnival life a little through our conversations. I was not however so enamored of him that I actually thought for a minute that I would run away with them when they left — but I was still sad to see them leave. And I have to say that i have since read a few paperback romance novels & watched movies or TV shows if they had a carnival in the stroyline; just to see if I could understand their strange traveling life.
I,too enjoy the sounds & lights more than the actual activities. Namaste.
For most of my life my father has worked as a general manager at one fairgrounds or another (one of them being Petaluma for awhile, which is how my family ended up there) So carnivals and such always are sort of nostolgic for me.
One year at a carnival, I won a goldfish that lived for over a year. Its name was Pete, and his lifespan amazed us all.
I hope the weather is nice enough to go, such is not the case in San Francisco tonight.