I was born and raised in Mobridge,
South Dakota, a small, rural, farming and railroad community near the banks of
the Missouri River, so my most vivid memories are there from my first seventeen
years. If I don’t commit them to paper, they’ll slip away and vanish along with
me when I die.
As an exercise in memory, I’m going to
recreate what I remember about the carnivals that came to town over Fourth of
July celebrations, either a combination of all those carnivals or maybe just the
one when I was twelve or thirteen.
In the 1940’s, the carnival was set up
on the south end of Main Street. Its
boundaries were the railroad tracks to the south, the Mobridge Wholesale House
to the east, the White Horse Hotel to the west, and the Moose Club to the
north. The Tilt-a-Whirl was always the first thing you bumped into when you
approached from the north. It was about even with the Moose Club. What an evil
ride it was. Young people today would laugh at me for calling it evil because
they’re more accustomed to much more frightening rides now. I remember it as
evil because I’d be called a sissy if I didn’t ride, so I did . . . and hated
it every time. As I remember it, there were nine cars, each holding three or
four people. You got in, pulled down the retaining bar for holding you in and
for you to hold onto, and away you’d go, each car independently spinning in
various directions as the whole ride whirled around. The severity of the spins
depended on the combined weight of the riders in each car, the more of you
there were, the more awful the ride. I think I closed my eyes during most of
the ride and I hazily remember the pain in my upper leg when I’d be pinned to
the side of a fellow rider. All I ever wanted to do was somehow get off without
falling down dizzy or throwing up the hot dog I’d just eaten, the hot dog I’d
just bought at the stand near the White Horse that also sold cotton candy. But
I was wise enough never to eat any cotton candy before my potentially
regurgitating ride on the evil, painful Tilt-a-Whirl.
Close to this ride was the Penny
Pitch, a flat, square board close to the ground, roped off, maybe six by six
feet with small painted squares designating how much you could win if you
landed on the square without touching the line. As I remembered it, you could
win amounts up to a dollar. Did you win very often? No. I remember going there
with both pockets full of the Indian head pennies my older brothers had been
saving. I pitched both pockets empty without winning much, but the young woman
running the game very carefully pocketed all my Indian heads, my brothers’
pennies. I wonder how much they’d be worth today.
The middle of the carnival grounds
held most of the arcade games, side by side along the north and south borders—a
balloon pop where you threw darts at blown-up balloons hanging on the back
wall, the baseball toss where you threw baseballs at a wall with fringed dolls
sitting on shelves, a nickel pitch where you tried to get a nickel to stay in one
of the pieces of glassware you could win (almost impossible to make the nickel
stay in the vase or dish, and why would anyone, let alone a twelve-year-old boy,
want to win some cheap glassware?), the basketball free throw, and the
stand-alone challenge where you tried to ring the bell with a sledge hammer
(and the guy running it would also try to guess your weight). One of my
favorites was the crane you operated with a round handle that you turned to
move the crane into position above various small stuffed animals or above that
tempting tray of dimes. You then dropped the crane and hoped the metal jaws would
grab an animal or a jawful of dimes. Then you carefully lifted the crane and
navigated your bounty to the exit chute where you would drop your prize. Most
often, though, the crane never latched onto anything or you dropped your prize
before you got it to the chute.
Somewhere near the east side, they
always had a long trailer called the Fun House or the House of Mirrors. It
couldn’t have been very scary because the trip from one end to the other, even
though divided into narrow, back and forth passageways, couldn’t have been more
than fifty feet. But you went through it in semi-darkness with warped mirrors
along the way to show you as really short or tall, skinny or fat. I don’t
remember any other little tricks there were along the way, but I suppose there
was eerie music and screams piped in.
And, finally, somewhere near the back
of the grounds there would be a tent housing the freak show. The carny barker
would announce each show about every half hour. “Step right up! Step right up! Come
on in and see some of the strangest things you’ve ever seen! We got the bearded
lady, the fattest lady in the world, the tattooed man, the man who lies on a
bed of nails, the snake lady. She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly
like a snake! All kindsa freaks and geeks! Next show in ten minutes and all of for
just a quarter, one skinny fourth of a dollar!” I don’t think I ever went into
this tent, maybe because they had an age limit. I just don’t remember anything
but the opening spiel.
Sometime in the 50’s the carnival was moved
and set up near the rodeo grounds. I don’t know why. Maybe some people
complained about the congestion on Main Street and the mess that was always
left behind. But the sights, the sounds, the smells of those carnivals on lower
Main are etched in my memory, frozen there by my putting them down on paper.
What are your carnival memories? Some probably the same as mine, some
different. Just let your mind wander back to that time in your youth and see
what’s there.
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