Round and Round: Remembering the Carnival at LeBeau's Field

It’s a warm summer night in June in the ‘burg; it’s the kind of night you only get a handful of times a year, when you are comfortable out in the night air, wearing shorts and a T-shirt with an ironed-on graphic (like “Pinball Wizard"), feeling neither warm nor cool. The biting cold days of winter seem long ago, memories melted like the snow they brought. The days are long, school is out, Mountain Dew is our drink of choice, and bikes are how we get around. We are likely wearing Converse sneakers (“Cons”) purchased from the Sports Mart on Ford St.  It’s 1973; there is no even idea of the internet; no one on phones, and no social media; if you wanted to be social, you had to be….well, social. You actually had to meet people in person.

A  young teen on those nights couldn’t find much more fun than being at LeBeau’s field, right there next to Route 37 and Lake St., because the Carnival was in town.

How exciting it was! I can recall many times traveling with my mom in her Caddy Sedan de Ville ( a real land yacht if there ever was one) and driving past it as we headed back up to the motel returning from Grants, P&C or Kinneys  (For those of you unfamiliar, my folks built Ashley’s Motel, now the Stonefence) and being just absolutely fascinated by the neon lights swinging this way and that, and still able to hear the screaming girls even over mom’s Englebert Humperdinck’s 8-track tape. I loved carnival rides back then, and had the stomach to handle them.

Of course, we would go eventually, and I would be absolutely giddy with excitement, the only part of the kid year that could compare with Christmas. We’d park at either Aunt Marilyn’s on New York Ave, or Aunt Tessie’s on Lake St., and walk over.

I couldn’t get there fast enough.

Invariably, Ma would be a killjoy with admonitions of “Slow down!” “Watch for traffic!” or maybe “Wait for (insert the slow person)”.

Screaming of girls was able to be heard for miles, and is likely still lingering somewhere above Ogdensburg, a sort of acoustic cloud, disturbing the atmosphere and throwing off migratory bird routes. You couldn’t blame them as the classics were all there - the Tilt-a-Whirl, Skydiver, Paratrooper, Scrambler, and RoundUp - to mention a few. All would throw the human body around in all directions, at various speeds, while showing students what physics in practice really looked like.

Then the wafting of the food came; you could have just pushed back from Thanksgiving dinner, and you’d still have found room for goodies only carnivals sell. The aromas of fried dough, funnel cake, cotton candy, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries  - all mixed in with the occasional whiff of diesel exhaust from the giant tractor-trailer generators that supplied the power, are the things of a culinary legend.

Getting in was easy, and buying tickets for the rides was next from the lady in the small booth with ballistic glass in the window.  I can recall them being something like 25¢ each.

The tall grass, pretty much hay at that point in the season, had been mowed and flattened down by the heavy machines and the foot traffic, but you could still smell it. Power cables ran in bunches this way and that, and you feared stepping on them, lest you be zapped into carbon.

The games - all those games - with the carnival workers -“carnies” - trying to entice you to come to play, guaranteeing a win, of course, if you could master Newtonian physics. I recall ring tosses around little glass bottles with half-dead betta fish in them, or the little plastic ducks, which whirred around in an oblong tub, where the challenge was to pick out a winning one; throwing baseballs at "milk bottles", or darts at balloons; the water gun game where you tried to shoot a stream of water continuously into a clown's mouth.  My favorite was the BB gun with a hundred shots in it, the object being trying to shoot out the printed star - the whole star -out of a piece of paper at 10 paces, which is impossible because if you left a molecule of ink on that paper, you didn’t win.

There were displays that barkers would try to get you to come into oogle for a $1, like the guy with the huge leg, sitting in a large wooden box being mocked by people saying it was fake, or the race of little people’s bones found by, I guess, the carnival somewhere. They looked like people, in the academic sense, as they had a torso, head, legs, and arms, but they also looked a lot like poorly carved wood. I guess the Smithsonian Museum was willing to let this incredible archeological find go on tour for the sake of science education.

Invariably, you’d see some guy with his girlfriend, and he’s carrying around a life-size stuffed Magilla Gorilla he won for her at the ping pong ball toss. Several times, you’d find that poor sap carrying that hot, furry thing around for hours, hoping against hope she’d be impressed and that he get a little prize of his own later. Ha! “Sap” is right! Most of the “prizes” really weren’t something you had wanted anyway; it was just more about beating the game - that was the prize.

Of course, it wasn’t just all about the rides and “food”. No, it was about seeing and being seen - young girls dressed up “hot”, trying to impress, I dunno, the carnies I guess, and guys ogling the girls, and actually entertaining the idea that if they became carnies, then they could get hot chicks like these because these same local girls never dressed like this around the ‘burg.  These girls, typically really young, looking way more mature than they should, running around, giggling in packs, seeing what boys would notice them. The gift of very uneven and ever-changing lighting meant you could often steal a long glance at a pretty girl, and she wouldn’t notice…or maybe she would, and a young boy would feel the unusual thrill of both embarrassment and hope.

Then there were the carnies, the nomads of modern America. The poor carnies; sitting there, smoking cigarettes, sporting long shabby hair, watching their ride run and run; stopping, getting people on and off a million times, listening to girls scream and boys beg to get off because they were going to puke (and sometimes would). They’d usually have a stereo blasting rock to make the ride even more thrilling to the senses;  They’d wear concert t-shirts and jeans, high-top sneakers, and have their wallet attached to their jean belt loop with a chain thick enough to restrain a Great Laker ship, because apparently carnies are known for their wealth, and getting ripped off by boys in these towns they go to is just too great a risk.

Later that night, ride by ride, the carnival would shut down; neon lights would flicker off, gamers would close their tents, and food vendors would shutter the doors on their trailers. Adults would tiredly walk out, while the kids, still on a great sugar high of too much cotton candy and Pepsi, whine about leaving; they could have gone all night long, their stomachs immune to the punishment the rides would put out. Betta fish would find a new home, oversized stuffed animals would be shoved into the back seats of cars, and finally, the diesel motor that provided the power would be shut down; the screams now quelled, and the smell of fried food dissipated. The carnies would retreat to their trailers, and in the morning, they’d start packing it all up, ready to move on to the next town to help make fond summer memories for others.