When The Carnival Came To Town, Part One

Growing up in Oglesby, Illinois, summers followed a predictable rhythm. 

There were family picnics in the park, backyard barbecues where charcoal smoke drifted lazily over the neighborhood, fishing trips along the Little Vermilion River, shooting off fireworks on the Fourth of July (some legal, some not) bike rides to the A&W for a frosted mug of root beer, and endless games of whiffle ball that somehow stretched until darkness swallowed the last fly ball.

And then, there was the carnival.

If Christmas belonged to winter, the Fourth of July to summer and Halloween to autumn, the carnival belonged to childhood.

Every year, usually sometime in June or again in August, rumors would begin circulating that the carnival was coming. Posters appeared in store windows. Flyers were taped to telephone poles. Somebody's older brother claimed to have seen trucks heading this way from Peru or LaSalle. 

Suddenly, the countdown was on.

To adults, it was merely a traveling amusement company setting up for a few days before moving on to the next town. To us, it might as well have been a visiting civilization.

One day Lehigh Park, on east end of town, was simply Lehigh Park. The next day it was transformed into a glowing kingdom of flashing lights, spinning machinery, blaring rock and roll, and mysterious strangers who looked as if they had stepped out of an entirely different world.

You could smell the carnival before you saw it.

There was the scent of popcorn, corn dogs, lemonade, diesel fuel, hot electrical wiring, and cotton candy floating together in the warm summer air. The midway glowed with red, yellow, and green lights. Music blasted from speakers mounted on rides with names like the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Octopus, and the Scrambler. Somewhere a generator rumbled like an angry dinosaur while carnival barkers shouted challenges to passersby.

"Step right up!"

"Win a prize for your sweetheart!"

"Three balls for a quarter!"

As kids, we wandered through it all wide-eyed, clutching our ride tickets and trying to look older than we actually were.

The carnival was exciting because it was different. Oglesby in those days was a town of trimmed lawns, family dinners, church on Sunday, and parents who generally knew where their children were. The carnival seemed to operate by entirely different rules.

 

The people who worked there fascinated us.

 

The carnies looked nothing like our teachers, neighbors, or Little League coaches. They were tattooed. Sunburned. Greasy-haired. Tough-looking. They smoked cigarettes, spoke in strange slang, and seemed to possess secrets about places far beyond Oglesby.

 

Looking back, I suspect most of them were simply hardworking people trying to earn a living.

At fourteen years old, however, they appeared about as mysterious as gunfighters, pirates, or escaped convicts.

 

In the collective imagination of small-town America, carnies occupied the same category as drifters, gypsies, treasure hunters, and other wandering souls who lived outside respectable society. Mothers everywhere seemed united in their warning.

 

"You don't want to grow up and be a carny, do you?"

 

The phrase could be substituted with "bum," "drifter," or "gypsy," depending upon the situation, but the message remained the same.

 

Study hard. Stay in school. Don't join the carnival. Naturally, this only made the carnival more fascinating.

For a few days every year, these people rolled into town from somewhere beyond the horizon, set up an entire world overnight, took our money, spun us upside down until we were dizzy, and then vanished again.

By the following week, all that remained were tire tracks in the grass and a few scraps of paper blowing across the park. It felt almost supernatural.

The carnival also fed our imaginations. It offered a glimpse of life beyond Oglesby and beyond everything we knew. Somewhere out there were highways stretching across America, distant cities, deserts, mountains, oceans, and adventures waiting around every bend in the road.

Most of us would never admit it, but at least once we had all entertained some version of the same fantasy. What would it be like to run away and join the circus? Not forever, of course. Maybe just for a summer.

Then there was the truly bizarre stuff. Not movie-monster bizarre. Real carnival bizarre.

 

One year a sideshow arrived featuring an Illustrated Man, a sword swallower, a bearded lady, and its headline attraction: The Frog Woman.

 

The banner outside the tent showed a breathtaking blonde beauty with flowing hair, impossible curves, and the lower body of a giant frog. According to the barker, she had been discovered deep in the Amazon jungle during an expedition and brought back to America so ordinary citizens could witness one of nature's greatest mysteries.

At least that was the story.

For twenty-five cents we entered the dim tent and filed past a large glass tank filled with murky water.

Inside sat the Frog Woman.

Whether she was genuine, part costume, or entirely fake remained impossible for us to determine. What was obvious was that she looked considerably less glamorous than the painting outside. Her blonde hair was stringy, her expression suggested she'd rather be anywhere else, and she certainly did not resemble the jungle goddess depicted on the banner.

A few brave boys tapped on the glass.

She stared back without expression.Was she bored? Angry? Humiliated? Plotting revenge? We had no idea. And frankly, we didn't care. To a group of kids from Oglesby, Illinois, she was the most astonishing thing we had seen all summer. Maybe all year.

The arrival of the carnival itself became an event. Some kids acted like members of a military early warning system. The moment the first carnival trucks appeared on Walnut Street, word spread through town with astonishing speed.

"The carnival's here!"

Within minutes bicycles emerged from garages all over Oglesby. Then came the race. We pedaled east down Walnut Street, across the Dry Bridge, past the old cement plant, past the swimming pool, and toward Lehigh Park as if the fate of civilization depended upon our arrival.

 

Officially, we wanted to watch the carnival set up. Unofficially, we hoped to score free ride tickets. If you were lucky enough to help unload equipment, carry supplies, or perform some minor task, a carny might reward you with tickets. This possibility transformed ordinary schoolchildren into highly motivated volunteer laborers.

 

There was also the chance of earning a few dollars working one of the midway games. And if a certain girl happened to be watching? Well, that made the opportunity even more attractive.

That was exactly what my friend Rick Crickman and I had in mind when we raced toward Lehigh Park at the beginning of the summer of 1972. We had just graduated from Washington Grade School.In a few months our lives would begin moving in different directions. Rick's family was relocating to another county. Looking back, it wasn't very far away. At fourteen, however, it felt as if he were moving to another continent.

Neither of us knew it then, but this would be one of the last summers of our childhood. And like so many important moments in those years, it began with a carnival coming to town.