I was fortunate to grow up in a town with its own carnival. I went every year until I moved away at 21, but when I got out of the Army, I came back and I still go every other year or so. I only go for the food now, so I’ve come full circle.
When I was little, I went for the food. Then it was for the rides (plus the food). Then it was to walk around with my friends and see who else from school was there. (Plus food.) Now it’s just for the food again.
Every year, it’s the same thing in the same order: a prime rib sandwich, a cheese on a stick, french fries, and a funnel cake. Even in the same order, it’s still exciting because this is something I only get to do once a year.
The carnival has so many things going on that it’s almost impossible not to find at least one thing to inspire you to write. Even if it doesn’t spark a story in you, it’s still a wonderful opportunity to practice the writer’s most important tool: observation.
Think of:
The food you most enjoyed eating there.
How much it cost then versus now. When I was a kid, my dad gave me $40 to last me all four days of the carnival (because I would go every single day). That would cover rides and food. This time, I spent $36 in less than an hour and didn’t ride anything.
How it’s one of the few places nowadays that still expects cash.
How it’s so hot in the fry booth that you can feel the heat coming out of it and imagine how much worse it must be inside. How good it would feel to walk out at the end of the night into the cool air.
How it’s the one and only day of the year you eat french fries with vinegar. Not just vinegar, but vinegar that comes out of a spray bottle like window cleaner.
Then think of how the only reason you eat them that way on that day is because it’s how your own father used to eat them at carnivals himself, and although he’s long gone, that little bit of him lives on through you.
How weird a bare funnel cake is. It looks like something that can’t make up its mind between being a flattened brain, a sort of fungus, a hundred ghosts snuggling up together on a cold night, or a colony of something that would live under the sea. Then you add the magic of powdered sugar to it and suddenly it’s an angioplantastic delight.
What it was like riding your first kiddie ride. How grown up you felt, even if it was a dinky little oval with a few dips in it. It felt like flying or riding up the side of Mount Everest on your own personal dragon. You were so proud of yourself.
Then think of riding this monster when you’re actually grown up:
Think of the girl with the long blond hair, clutching it with both hands as the ride slowly comes to a stop. By the time it’s stopped and her friend smiles and laughs and says how fun it was, she’s stopped holding on to her hair like she’s trying to keep it attached to her head and she bluffs, “Oh, yeah, it was great. Let’s do that again.”
The carnival barkers pretending to show suckers how to win the prize at the game, knowing that the marks will fail because he knows the actual trick. The game with the rubber ducks floating around. The game where you win a goldfish if you manage to bounce a ping pong ball into a bowl. The one you won and the goldfish died before you could even give it a name. And, wait, is that actually a four-foot pickle and a banana wearing a rasta cap?
That sparkling, plastic, nubbed golden duck looks like it’s seen horrors unspeakable. What are they? Just knock down a few milk bottles with a baseball and you can be its therapist.
The fight in the parking lot. The heat. The cool breeze that always blows at night off Lake Erie. The time a summer pop-up thunderstorm blew through and everyone had to huddle underneath the few tents over the picnic tables. The beer booth that your parents used to wait for you at that no longer exists now that you’re old enough to drink beer because they no longer serve alcohol for reasons you don’t know and, if you’re honest with yourself, don’t really want to know.
The fireworks on Saturday night: some literal, some metaphorical. The people holding hands as they walk by. The romances that started there. The romances that ended there. Seeing the person you really hoped would be there, then seeing them holding hands with someone. That time you walked a girl you’d had a crush on home. You spent a couple hours with her talking—seriously, just talking—in her garage and by the time that was over, you weren’t interested in her anymore.
How would a marriage proposal at a carnival go over? Good? Bad? Laughable either way? It would be a story for the ages, no matter what.
The baffling yet charming fact that many rides have come and go, but the carousel still gets carted around the country to your local fair, and it still plays the same music it would have 150 years ago. Even though you’ll never ride it—not at that price, at least—you still hope it never goes away.
The trailers where the carnies live. Where do they go next? What do they do between 11 p.m. and 5 p.m.? What’s that life like? How much has that changed? How much have carnivals changed, and how much are they the same?
It’s impossible to walk out of a carnival without the beginnings of a dozen stories. Some of these things happened to me, some of them didn’t (although the popping the question at a carnival actually did, accidentally), but each of them, or only one of them, or even one that’s not here, can be as true as your fiction can make them. You don’t need a ticket to ride this ride, all you need is your pen.
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