Carnival

When I was a boy, we were always eager to see “the carnival” come to town, as it did every summer, making its way down our valley from one place to the next. There were some rides, like the Spider and the Scrambler for the bigger kids, and little trains and such for the smaller kids, and plenty of arcade games with prizes — you’d throw a dart at a wall full of balloons, or you’d try to spin a wooden ring around the top of a jug, or you’d shoot a B-B gun at a row of metal ducks passing by. There were a few games of chance, too, with the odds heavily stacked in favor of the carnival owners. And of course there were snacks: candy, slices of pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, hot pretzels, and, if you went a little further south into the more German areas of Pennsylvania, “funnel cakes,” fried dough with powdered sugar. Of course we all loved it. And because in those days you didn’t have to be afraid for the welfare of your child, since every family knew many dozens of other families, we u…