One of my friends called me last night, excited because she'd heard that the annual spring carnival was returning to the JFK Coliseum's lot in Manchester this week, and she was eager to take her grandson to it and relive, through him, the fun times she'd had there when she was young.
Her call immediately brought back many fond (and several crazy) memories of my teenage years and my annual spring ritual of attending that carnival.
All through high school, my friend Janet and I looked forward to the carnival every year, and we always chose to go on a Friday night. We would walk from my house all the way to the JFK, which took about 45 minutes, just to spend our hard-earned babysitting money on rides, junk food and games that were nearly impossible to win. If we didn’t come home penniless and nauseated, we didn’t consider the evening a success.
My favorite carnival treat was a caramel apple, and my favorite ride was the Octopus, which was a ride with eight “arms” that went up and down, with seats that spun around on the end of each arm.
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| THE OCTOPUS |
One night, I ate one too many caramel apples before climbing onto the Octopus.
Unfortunately, Janet and I were the only ones on it, so the bored-looking attendant decided to be generous and give us an extra-long ride. The more the ride went up and down, the more the caramel apples in my stomach also went up and down. They felt like miniature cannonballs rolling around inside.
“Let me off!” I screamed at the attendant every time my twirling car swooped past him. Apparently he interpreted my screaming as, “Wheeee! I’m having fun!” rather than, “Eeeyuuu! I’m about to throw up!” because he let the ride go on for at least another 10 revolutions.
I never ate another caramel apple again.
As Janet and I stood near the Octopus afterwards, our faces green and the scenery still spinning, two really cute guys walked by us. One of them had blond hair and was wearing a light-tan suede jacket. The other was dark-haired and clad mostly in denim.
“Wow, look at those two cool guys!” Janet said, embarrassingly loud enough for the guys to hear her. They turned around, stared at us for a second, smiled, and then walked over.
“Want to ride on the Octopus?” the blond guy asked. “Our treat.”
At that point, I would have preferred to have been dropped naked from a helicopter hovering over a field of thorn bushes, but I managed to smile and say, “Sure!”
Masochists that we were, Janet and I boarded the ride with them. I sat with the blond guy, and all I can say is he was lucky the ride didn’t go even one more revolution, because his tan suede jacket would have been covered with caramel apples.
Janet and I also always enjoyed playing the games at the carnival. We managed to win a few small prizes, my most exciting being an 8”x10” mirror with a picture of the Bee Gees etched into it. One year, however, a new game appeared, and the prizes were huge: TV sets, radios, stereos, fancy cameras. We immediately were interested.
“The game starts at 25 cents, the carnival guy told us. “All you have to do is toss a ring around one of these pegs. On the back of each peg is a number. That’s what makes tossing your ring such a challenge. You can’t tell what number you’re aiming for. When your numbers total up to 25 points or more, you win your choice of prizes. But…if one of your rings lands on a peg with a black star on the back, you lose all of your points.”
To give us an example, he let Janet toss a ring. It easily circled one of the pegs. The guy, who was standing behind the pegs, stooped to read the back, then excitedly said, “24! If you were really playing, you’d need only one more point to win your choice of any prize here!”
Janet and I were hooked. Imagine, I naively thought as I eagerly dug into my change purse, coming home with my own TV! No longer would I have to beg my parents to let me watch my favorite shows, like "Shindig" and "Gidget." No longer would I have to suffer through one more evening of “Lawrence Welk.”
We handed our quarters to the guy and threw our rings. Mine landed on 19 and Janet’s on 20. “Now, if you want to continue, it’s 50 cents,” the guy told us. Janet and I were confident our next shots easily would add up to the much-desired 25 points or more, so we turned over our money.
Janet’s ring landed on a 2, and mine on a 1. “Now it goes up to $1,” the guy informed us. Janet and I hesitated. A dollar was a lot of money back then. Still, that TV set sure was a beauty. We dug out our dollars.
To make a long, painful story short, we both ended up hitting the dreaded black star just before our totals reached 25.
I narrowed my eyes at the guy. “I want to actually see that black star!” I demanded. “In fact, I want to see the backs of all of the pegs! How do we know you were telling us the truth when you told us what was on them?”
He shook his head. “No unauthorized personnel allowed back here. You just run along now, OK?”
“I want my TV!” I protested. “You’re a cheat!”
When passersby began to turn and stare, he reached under the counter and pulled out a couple teddy bears and handed one to each of us. “Here,” he said in a hushed voice. “Take these and scram!”
Only because he was big and mean-looking with a lot of tattoos did we leave. But he’d ruined our night. We didn’t have any money left to spend on our favorite treats or any more rides.
We never saw that peg game at the carnival again. Janet and I liked to think it was because some customer who was a professional wrestler with an anger-management problem played it and got really ticked off at the guy…then showed him exactly what he could do with his pegs.
But even when we had no money at all, it still was fun to walk around the carnival grounds and mingle, or watch other people trying to win big prizes...and failing just as badly as we had.
I really do miss those spring-carnival days of my youth – the ice cream and fudge, the Octopus and the Ferris wheel, the games and the cute guys.
But most of all, I still miss that deluxe black-and-white portable TV, which I’m positive I really did win.
# # #
Sally Breslin is
an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for
newspapers and magazines for most of her adult life. She is the author of
“There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “Inside the Blue
Cube.” Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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