C*A*R*N*I*V*A*L

Did you visit the Cheshire Fair last week? Maybe checked out the sweet farm animals all looking their county-fair best? Chowed down on some fried dough or grilled sausages? Maybe you bought wristbands for endless rides at the midway. I remember as a kid all the excitement, the smells of the fair, the sense that everyone around me was letting their inhibitions down just a bit. Mixing with "carny" people and enjoying a little trashy fun. With a couple dollars in your pocket, a thrilling world of entertainment lays before you. Going to the county fair was right up there with Christmas and the 4th of July in my mind. The terms "fair" and "carnival" are often used interchangeably but they are distinct from each other. A fair is typically a planned community event, usually spread over three to five days and involves local farms and agriculture. There's equestrian events, competitions and judging on anything from the best Holstein calf to best bread and butter pickles. The fair usually also includes entertainment, and that's where the carnival comes in. Carnivals are traveling amusement companies that focus purely on entertainment; rides, games of chance and food vendors. Historically they also included elements that would best be described as spectacles; think freak shows, burlesque shows, adult beverages and "science-gone-wrong" exhibits. Carnivals are also where many people saw their very first motion picture long before the advent of Hollywood and the neighborhood cineplex. There's a terrific website that's called Doc's Midway Cookhouse (www.docsmidwaycookhouse.com) that was created and is administrated by a longtime "showman" whose whole career was in the carnival world. He has so much pride and respect for the industry and he created the site as a time capsule of all things carnival lest they ever be forgotten in our digital age. While indeed much of our entertainment these days is via the digital world, carnivals were all about physicality. Carnivals in America began with the hugely popular World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" of this new world in 1492. Covering over 600 acres, this massive exposition influenced the next decades of modern life in industrialism, sanitation, architecture and the arts. Running for six months, the show was attended by 27 million people which, given the available means of travel at the time, is remarkable. At a separate part of this massive show was an area of amusements called Midway Plaisance, created by a young music producer named Sol Bloom. The term "midway" has stuck ever since. I clicked on a link on the site (He offers all kinds of links to every aspect of carnivals and circuses you can imagine.) and did a deep dive into "Side Show Freaks: The Charles Eisenmann R. Collection. It's a fascinating if not heartbreaking look at some of the freak exhibits displayed long ago. Most performers had actual medical conditions that gave them a bizarre or even scary appearance and many of these folks performed simply to make a living. There was Lionel, the lion-faced boy, and Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy, who it's now known likely suffered from a condition called hypertrichosis that causes excess hair growth. Prince Randian was born without arms or legs yet was incredibly self sufficient and could shave, paint, write and roll his own cigarettes. "Big-Footed" Fanny Mills probably suffered from Milroy's Disease which causes legs to swell. The list of these remarkable and tragic performers is long and makes one appreciate that in today's carnival world, the freakiest thing one's likely to see is a tipsy he-man type hitting his own head with a mallet from the strong man game. One of my clearest memories of being at a carnival was when I was probably eight or nine and approached one of the games of chance booths. There were hundreds of gaudy stuffed animals on the ceiling of the spot, and they all appeared to be attached to individual strings that were gathered together like a big ponytail in the center of the booth. The object was to try to get one of the biggest, "best" prizes by visually tracking the string attached to it. When you paid your quarter, you got to pull one string. I was with other kids, probably cousins, and the booth had quite a surge of onlookers at the moment. I wasn't the only one to notice the swelling audience because as I stood off to the side, I could actually see the game host press a lever with his foot and magically the next string pulled released the biggest purple dinosaur I'd ever seen! The crowd cheered and those quarters just kept on flowing!