A PRIZE EVERY TIME

WORTH WAITING FOR

Autumn in South Georgia meant a slight easing of the heat, going back to school, Halloween, and, hallelujah, the coming of the fair. The fair came to town in late September or early October, after all of the crops were in and folks had a little extra money.

The fair consisted of two parts, the midway and the exhibit barn. The exhibit barn was filled with hogs, cattle, chickens, and other farm animals. Here was where the local women vied for blue ribbons for the best jam, jelly, pies, cookies, quilts, and other foodstuffs and crafts. The exhibit barn was where you hung around when you had spent all your money on the midway and didn’t have anything else to do.

We trooped out to the fairgrounds on Sunday afternoon and watched, with great anticipation, as the fair workers constructed the rides, games, and sideshows that made up the midway. We were instructed in no uncertain terms to stay away from where the work was going on and under no circumstances talk to anybody connected with the fair. The fair people were considered by the grownups in Americus to be a completely subhuman alien species, to be avoided at all costs. That made hanging out with them all the more satisfying.

Wednesday afternoon was set aside as white kid’s day and Thursday afternoon as colored kid’s day. School let out early on fair day and we all headed out to the fair for an afternoon of entertainment and pure fun. We entered the midway by walking through a gauntlet of food booths set up and manned by members of the Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary, and Jaycee civic clubs. Some of the local churches even had food booths, in spite of the fact that their preachers, in the previous Sunday’s sermon, promised an eternity spent in the flaming pits of hell for anyone who dared to even ride by the fair.

We didn’t buy food from any of these food booths unless our parents were with us. Who wanted to eat a hamburger that tasted like the hamburgers you got at home? We snuck around and ate wonderful greasy hamburgers covered in cooked onions and spicy chili dogs with sauerkraut from the restaurant that cooked for all the fair workers, in spite of our parent’s admonitions that fair food would kill us. Some of us bought cotton candy and a few even bought the bright red candied apples, but they were messy, took too long to eat, and the dust from the fair got all over them.

PARADISE FOUND

Once we cleared the exhibit barn and the hometown food booths, we entered paradise. The midway, covered with straw to hold down the dust, had kiddy rides and big-people rides like the Octopus, Ferris Wheel, Crazy Cage, Wild Mouse, Tilt-A-Whirl, Scrambler, and the notorious Bullet. Sideshows and booths that housed every conceivable game of chance lined both sides of the midway, hemming-up the fairgoer until his last hard-earned penny had been squeezed from his tightly clenched fingers.

Bright flashing lights were everywhere. The almost deafening noise added to the air of excitement and adventure. Our senses were bombarded by smells of frying onions and cotton candy, the sound of the barkers encouraging you to “step right up,” screams coming from the rides, squeals of excitement from winning a teddy bear, exotic colors, lights, music, and pictures. The sight of half-nekkid hoochie-koochie dancers dressed in scanty, sequined costumes, making mysterious gestures to overly loud exotic-sounding music, encouraging us to come inside the tent for a once-in-a-lifetime striptease show put a fine point on the entertainment and excitement.

The sideshows on the midway contained all types of weird and Ripleyesque attractions, including such temptations as the bearded lady, the tattooed man (he wouldn’t be considered an oddity today), a two-headed calf, a fake gorilla, a wild boy brought from the jungles of Borneo, and a sword swallower. Some boys at school claimed to have seen a show where a Spanish-looking man bit the head off a live chicken, but I think they were exaggerating just a little bit.

The best part of the Haunted House attraction was standing outside and watching an unexpected burst of compressed air blow up the dresses of the girls coming out of the attraction. The girls caught on to this pretty quick and ruined everybody’s fun by holding their skirts down as they walked across the grate over the compressed air. Why are women like that? God put them in charge of half the money and all the sex and they still want to act the fool every chance they get.

Continue »ADULTS ONLY  (Hoochie-Koochie Show)

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