The Flemington Fair

When I was a kid growing up in Westfield, NJ, the annual Flemington Fair was a big deal. Packed with colorful rides, spinning and quaking, flashing lights and blaring calliope music…mostly run by ex-felons on some work release program. The equipment always looked abused and ready to fail. That was part of the excitement, wondering if yours was going to be the seat that would come loose in mid-air and fly off into the haunted house, three booths down the midway.

The Funnel cakes there were deep fried in oil that hadn’t been changed since the previous owner had done it more than a year prior. I ate them last, knowing that those bad boys would give me terrible stomach aches and explosive diarrhea, a carnival prize for the long ride home. With me cramping up in the back seat of my parents Ford Fairlane 500, Mom would tell dad: “We need to stop right away, pull over at that Howard Johnsons up there and let Hugh out.” She was more interested in getting me out of the car than into a rest room. I’m a dad, so I understand that. As a kid who could normally eat anything, much like a young dog, I could wolf it down, still can, but I think the Funnel Cake guy was pissed off about being the Funnel Cake guy and added a “secret” ingredient or two. I thought about a science class I’d had in 6^th grade when the teacher spoke of how things could replicate themselves by budding, like a yeast starter in beer. Since I had the same reaction two years in a row, I couldn’t help but think that the funnel cake guy may have added a little starter of his own. Something had been budding. Mainly, I knew that I was full of shit. My friends and family assure me that little has changed over the years, but only those Funnel Cakes from long ago had the ability to make me understand what nasty menstrual cramps must be like. They were ahead of their time, like young wives who make their husbands wear sympathy bellies so they would better know the joys of pregnancy. I can bond with women better now. Thanks, Funnel Cakes!

That fair crowd was something else, but I don’t know what. I didn’t quite know where they came from but they didn’t look anything like the people I grew up around in our little white-bread suburb of manicured lawns and show-parade church Sundays that I was used to. One guy drunkenly bumping shoulders in the crowd looked as if he had been cut in half lengthwise, like Bluto was always trying to do to Popeye when they worked together in a cartoon saw mill. Unfortunately, when the doctors sewed that man’s two sides back together, the zipper wasn’t properly aligned. Like a too hastily buttoned shirt, this man was askew from head to foot, one eye even higher than the other. Actually, his whole left side was higher, and he wore a corrective shoe to compensate. I thought about that man for many years afterward, wondering if he had ever worked in a sawmill.

Without question, my favorite attraction, the one I yearned for and pestered the folks about before they finally broke down and took me, was the freak show. Such things were still legal in those days. Several summers in a row, “Pinhead” was their main attraction. She stood just outside the main tent flap, next to a waving canvas sign that boasted of her ability to count to ten. I never heard her make it past four, but that wasn’t the point. The ads pulled me in with their claim that she had a “head the size of a baseball”. At age 11, that was just about the coolest thing I had ever heard of. These days, I guess we catch most of these kinds of things in a prenatal stage and I understand why freak shows are no longer allowed, but Pinhead really appeared to be enjoying the passing crowd as much as we enjoyed seeing her. How else could she make money now anyway? She was happy, all smiles, and seemed to really try to get her numbers in order. She was a star! Anyway, her issues left her few options. Not like the four-legged girl inside. She could do lots of other jobs. How many of us are able to count the exact number of legs on a toll booth worker or the girl selling tickets at the local movie theater? We only see them from the waist up. Hell, maybe some have seven legs...

Just inside the tent entrance sat a fat lady. Alone on a makeshift stage with only an oversize chair for company, she reigned like the queen of quantity, the opal of obese, a bulging butterball. Chunky and colorful, draped in a flowing Moo Moo, patterned with yards of red roses. She wasn’t really all that fat by today’s standards though, maybe 400 pounds. You can see the same at any midnight madness sale at Walmart these days. Scooters overflowing with flesh motoring down the chips isle. We didn’t speak as I entered but I was the last one out, so before leaving, she and I were alone, just sizing each other up. Clever boy as always, all I could come up with was “You sure are fat!”.  It was offered as a compliment. She said” “Yup!” and that was it. Our moment. My brush with stardom.

That job had to suck, how boring would it be to just sit there for hours, days, years? She’s one who could be much happier now, a computer programmer maybe, or making ads for Nutrisystem, hobnobbing with Marie Osmond.

The fat lady was just OK, as was the tattoo girl. These days just another face in the crowd, everyone has tattoos, but at least that woman had a beard too. Again though, I think Walmart has several. I know I saw a very large scooter jockey with sideburns one evening but was unable and unwilling to determine gender.

 Another super special performer though, aside from pinhead, was a guy who could pass a thin sword through his body without pain or blood. He pulled handfuls of flesh out from his legs and stomach, skewering them for the crowd. Anyone who wanted one, was given an extra-long pin with a colorful bead on one end. We were invited to push the pin right through his outstretched flesh when he pointed to a certain spot and nodded approval. My older sisters were totally grossed out by that and immediately left the tent. They gave me their pins so I stayed and eagerly skewered away, feeling lucky as hell to have three pins.  I felt like he and I bonded over that and thought of him fondly whenever I made Shish Kabob as an adult.

The snake lady was too obvious. She spent hours with her head stuck up through the top of a wooden chest that supported an “aquarium”. Inside was a huge paper-mâché snake, curled and ready to strike. You couldn’t see the woman’s neck, just her head sticking out above the coils, making faces and flicking her tongue at the crowd.

The next room was cramped, feted and damp. It smelled like the mildewed tent walls that rippled slowly with the winds outside. Shelves full of bottles lined the walls, oddities, backlit and floating in formaldehyde. Each jar challenged people to figure them out. What the hell is that? On closer inspection, most were obvious fakes. A fish with a monkey head, a baby goat with another half-goat sticking out from its back. I think the world’s biggest rat was just a fat Opossum.

Dad never went inside, he thought it was dumb. He didn’t like anything about the fair but wouldn’t let mom make the drive by herself. Mom was creeped out by the whole freak show thing and hustled quickly past Pinhead and the barker next to her to wait for me on safer ground. There really wasn’t anything at the fair for either of them. They both just wanted to get back home, their parental duty behind them, and go out for an adult dinner, alone. That's exactly how I feel after I take the dogs out for a long romp in the country.

These days of course, freak shows are a thing of the past, we’ve become more homogenized and safe. Everything is padded, and PG, no visually sharp edges to cut or entertain. Make no mistake though, there are still plenty of freaks out there, but now they look somewhat like everyone else. It's only when they open their mouths to speak that you feel the need for fight or flight. The true professional freaks even have high paying jobs on capital Hill. They dress in suits. Some of them make millions preaching on TV.

Like the packed crowds at the Flemington Fair, we keep coming back, reelecting career politicians who promise real change in each new election. We fill the collection plates of the grown descendants of snake oil salesmen. We're so desperate to be anything other than what we are. Politicians and preachers sell false hope. The freak shows sold gratitude. We were glad that our heads are larger than a baseball or that we didn't have to shave around our eyeballs to see.

Sadly, perhaps, the true, old fashioned freak shows have gone the way of Cherry bombs, lawn darts, Green stamps and phone booths. Clark Kent could get arrested for stripping in public.

That spaceship of a Ford Fairlane 500 with three flatulent kids fighting in the back seat, one with explosive diarrhea, and no seat belts anywhere in sight, is just a memory.

What of Pinhead you ask? I'm not sure, but I think I may have actually spoken with her yesterday. It appears that these days she is answering customer service phones for Comcast.