Send out the clowns.
Despite the insomnia, a free-floating discomfort, an increased number of headaches and a general unease, there are certain elements of this foulest of seasons that I do indeed look forward to. Empty, early-afternoon beer gardens, for one. Coney Island on weekday mornings, when the beach is free of everything but Russians. It becomes increasingly difficult in the summer to find open outdoor space that isn't already over-occupied, but it can be done. It's in those spots-the places the masses haven't discovered (or simply haven't reached) yet, that the unease fades away.
There is one place, though, where the unease fades no matter how crowded it is (and it's always crowded), no matter how loud, and no matter how much I'm sweating.
In one way, I guess, carnivals have come to represent how I see the world, but in condensed form. That's not a bad thing. The first book I tried to write was subtitled, "The Carnivalization of Everyday Life," and it concerned the ways in which contemporary, mainstream American society (circa 1990) has adopted and magnified all the tricks of the carnival trade. Not just in terms of the noise and the lights and the screaming and the magnificent mechanical failures-but things as simple as the talker's pitch in front of the sideshow, promising much more than he could ever deliver. We know we're going to be disappointed, but we pay our two bits anyway, and are happy to do so. Sometimes, even as I was writing the book, the carnival and the "real" worlds collided in blunt and obvious ways-like in the murder of Grady Stiles. Or Michael Jackson's career.
Well, I won't go any further with that. It gets complicated, and now, 12, 13 years after I started the damn thing, it's all pretty old hat anyway.
The point I was getting to in all this is the fact that it's been at least a decade now since I've been to a real carnival. Coney doesn't count, being a completely different (and stationary) animal. Neither does Bay Beach, the balsa wood and thumbtack amusement park I haunted as a kid in Green Bay. I'm talking about the traveling kind, the kind that's only in town for a weary, spastic blink of the eye before it's gone again, like the carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes. The kind where the rides are even more dangerous than the signs dare claim, where the funnel cake and corn dog prices drop dramatically in the half hour before closing, and where the sideshows are more than playacting hipster showcases.
There aren't many left around anymore, and most have been absorbed by state fairs. That's fine, though-because if you look carefully enough past the state fair glitz, past the bandshells and the corporate booths, you'll still find the dirty, shamefaced carnival lurking in the back: the "girl-to-gorilla" show, the drug addict show, the traveling museum of barnyard oddities.
It's funny that this should be the case, that they should still remain half-hidden, given the explosion of interest in carnival culture this past decade. (The one that seemed to kick into gear the moment I abandoned that book.) There've been dozens of books (including a new one by Bret Witter, a former editor of mine), a double-handful of documentaries, all that Jim Rose hoopla, fanzines, websites, trading cards, CD-ROMs, photo collections, all sorts of things. Maybe that's because people suddenly came to realize that they were about to lose a connection to something that, despite its ancient historical roots, had always been a fundamentally American entertainment form.
And, over these past years, a number of the people who made carnivals what they were-the showmen and the performers (like Jeanie Tomaini and Percilla the Monkey Girl) have passed away. There are fewer and fewer old-timers left who remember first hand what the carnival era was like.
Well, that's all just another bit of digression. Point being (just to remind you) that I haven't been to the carnival in too long, and I miss it. I could certainly catch some amazing sideshow performers on stages all over town-like the remarkable Todd Robbins, or Johnny Fox and his Freakatorium, even the Coney crowd-but you know, without the smell of cigars and grease and diesel, without the light filtering through the holes in the tent, without the sawdust, without the shrieks of genuine and justified horror from the Zipper over there, it's just not the same. Besides, I'm not sure of any place in town where I can catch a decent "girl-to-gorilla" show.
One of the very last times I caught the Meadowlands Fair when it was in (or at least near) town, I went with a couple of friends and a man named James Taylor. Now, he's since been written about extensively in these pages, but at the time, Taylor was gathering material for what he hoped would be a massive oral history of the sideshow. He was traveling the country, interviewing aging sword swallowers and fire eaters, human blockheads, tattooed wonders, promoters, banner painters-everyone he could find. He knew they were a vanishing breed, and wanted to get their stories down before it was too late. Little did he know that his pile of transcripts would become quite as massive as it did. They're a talkative lot, show people, and they've got plenty of stories to tell. So instead of trying to cram it all into a book, he decided to release it as a magazine called Shocked and Amazed! He also, a few years after launching the magazine, opened the American Dime Museum in Baltimore, which has since become a sort of home away from home for sideshow performers from across the country. Nowadays, Mr. Taylor is generally considered to be the world's foremost authority on sideshow and carnival history.
Since then, sadly, I haven't been able to get back to the Meadowlands Fair. Not because I didn't want to, but because other things would come up, or there was no easy way for me to get out there, or because I simply forgot that it was in town until after it was gone.
Dammit, I thought, this year I'm going. Hell, the fair may well be the last place in the New York area (even though it's in Jersey), where you can smoke and drink at the same time! So yeah, sometime when it was in town, Morgan and I would figure a way to get out there, and we'd go.
I turned on that internet business and looked up the website, just to check the dates this year. I knew it was always around the end of June or the beginning of July, but I wanted to get specifics. And that's where I found this note waiting for me:
The founders & operators of the Meadowlands Fair at Giants Stadium for the past 17 years will not be operating the fair this year. The New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority (NJSEA) has decided not to renew our contract.
We are currently exploring other opportunities?
"But?but?" I sat there staring and sputtering. "But it was family fun for everyone!" I shouted at the screen (I read that off the top of the page). "And they had freaks!"
Shortly afterwards, I shot off a note to Taylor, asking him what the scoop was, and where, if anywhere, in the New York area Ward Hall would be bringing his show this year.
As it happens, James wasn't sure what the scoop was. He'd heard about the Meadowlands cancellation, but didn't know Ward's plans-so he was going to get in touch with him, or his partner, Chris Christ, to find out. One thing James could tell me, however, is that Hall had been increasingly hesitant about going back on the road these past few years. Even the day I was introduced to him, he'd hinted that that year would be his last. He's apparently been saying that every year for a while. Then inevitably the next year, there he'd be again, out on the road with a new show.
He was getting older, though, and a lot of his friends were dying. Even Little Pete was gone. Who knows? Maybe he'd finally had enough of the grind.
That cut it. If he did make it to town-or anywhere near town-I had to get out there.
Then word came back. There would in fact be a show, but it would likely get no closer than Philly, and Chris Christ would be keeping an eye on things. Ward Hall, the King of the Sideshows, had finally decided to ride this season out in Gibsonton.
Upon hearing the news, I couldn't help but think that I'm getting older, too. And now I have to begin to wonder if I'll ever have the chance to see a real carnival again.