Three for the Festival (Part 1)

Everyone arrived. Wrapped in shawls and coats standing bravely in the chill-blowing wind that cut them deep and made their lung’s most hidden gifts visible to all. Bravely before the turning Ferris Wheel that showed too much of its internal mechanism and had carts, which were laced in scribble, old and wobbly. Wobblier than a major theme park would allow. But, well within the safety standards for Aunt Lil’s Funtime Themetime Festival! Which is what occupied a field just sou-southwest of Turbot on the long weekend of the 3rd to the 6th.

Setting up had begun early on the 30th: Waking up most of the residents at 4:30 AM as the trucks pulled in and emptied out carts, cars, skeeball, bottled, darts, fried dough, tiny hot ticket booths, the plasticy animals for the merry go round and the top and bottom, like two bundt cake pans on top of each other, of the GraviBend. Probably the most feared and loved of the rides.

A large grey UFO-ish contraption where you stepped in, leaned against a side wall and held on to nothing. It would spin so fast that you’d stick to the wall. Then, the floor would drop and you’d still be sticking to that darn wall. Bending Gravity, as Aunt Lil claimed. Many a lunch was lost in that strange carnival nether world between the dropped floor and the feet of the Benders of Gravity.

Every year when this went up: Oh boy...many a bet, a wager, a fight went on in here. Guys would challenge each other to fist-fights here. Slow motion, face bending fights but, if you could raise your arm well for a punch and get in a “gravity bend”, “BAM!”, your opponent would get about 50g’s right in his pressed puss. There wasn’t a lot of gang activity in Turbot. But, what there was met every year in the Bend for a rumble you would not beleive. 30 guys and 20 women in various gang colors, exotic bandanas and/ or powdered wigs spinning, turning, swinging upside down, all in the slowest possible arcs of the body with maximum teeth gritting and brow furrowing. When the floor dropped out, everything became harsher. Many’s a time the floor couldn’t be raised because people’s bodies were jammed into the darkness. You’d hear loud “Ow!” 's and “Hey!” 's as the floor raised and then gravity would right itself and everyone would drop. Each year the festival visited the same brawlers brawled and each year the same people tried to stop it. (Aunt Lil could have cared less. The ride had been won in a bet 20 years ago and any dollar put into it was profit.) After 12 years of carnival, the 30-something brawlers weren’t as tough as they once were and the campaign to halt it all was obligatory. The height of protest was Year Six when the Turbot March wound around the Trailer Park with 111 people. The brawlers snuck in at 3 on Monday Morning before dismantling and went at it. Now, a random mother would send an angry letter to the carnival. Lil kept them all in a drawer that was marked “STUFF I DON’T CARE ABOUT.” And, that was it. Every year there was a brawl. Although, after so many years, they didn’t really have as much to fight about as they all worked together and some were married. The brawls were more of a theatrical event and the times were well-known and the people came out to watch them.

And, I’ve spent a lot of space talking about the GraviBend when it was really an insider thing for the folks in Turbot.

I suppose we should talk about the skeeball court, kitty corner to the fried dough hovel. That’s where a portion of the story tales place. An important portion.

If one had all the money in the world and one wanted to spend it on trying to win the 24-year-old boombox ("Now with Cassette!") which went for 175 tickets at the skeeball court, you’d never win it. The boombox worked, sure enough. It played all through the Festival. (In fact, it was Gimpy’s radio. And, he would keep it.) A great little box. But, you’d never win it. Because the game was fixed. There was a a certain button under Guimpy’s prize counter that he would hit when someone was getting close. The white circular hoops, painted with point desigations, would shift ever so slightly. So, all the strategy the “Big Gainer” was using flew right down the Grumper. And, no grumper pumper could pull them out because Gimpy’s grump-causer had 3 settings: regular, shifted and the one that made a small piece of elastic cover the inside, unseen, of the white hoop. You could not get what you wanted if what you wanted was the boombox. If what you wanted was the fun plastic hand-sized pinball game whose pull plunger thing always broke and whose cardboard back fell off often, then that you could have. You had to alter a lot of what you expected from the world at Aunt Lil’s Festival.

And, let’s not even ask the question: What exactly is the fried dough made of? Didn’t taste like dough that anyone else knew of. Some say it was made of the Devil’s Meat and others giggled when they heard this. I was one.

The dough was formed and fried by Norm and sold by his common-law wife, Duchess. They operated as a a spearate entity at the Festival. Paying a portion to Miss Lil every stop but keeping most of their profits, which they invested in microbreweries around the world. They didn’t drink; it was their retirement fund. No one ever saw dough enter the small hovel. It sat like a ticket booth in the center of a bare patch. You could walk all the way around it if need be. Regardless, you could not figure how the dough came in. Some kids kept on watch one year for a 24-hour period and saw nothing. And, then it hit them: Underground! Somehow they were getting their dough from a secret underground bunker. Or, somehow, Norm pulled the dough from the very crust of the earth itself. So, after the festival left, the kids scavenged around in the ground that was lorded over by the Dough Hovel. And, they found it!

A large hole lined with ripped tinfoil and sparkled with dirt, worms and bits of random earth debris. And, the final ingridient: small, caked bits of white sticky globs along the tinfoil. Some had dead worms mixed in. It let off a smell that was not so much fetid as...corrosive.

These kids vowed never to tell anyone what they’d found. And, never to eat the fried dough again.

But, the pizza was good. So, were the hot dogs except when you got one with that strange skin over it. But, if you had the knack, that would peel right off.

The festival was, is, a glorious place. So loud. But, a syncopated loud that made everybody smile. Bright lights, turning wheels, spinning cars and the giant slide that would whip your drawers and your ass off if you weren’t wearing the special sack pants they gave you on the way up.

A festival always makes people smile and the Turbot Festival did that in joyous spades. But...not everyone can be happy and mirthful. This isn’t a sitcom.

This is our story.

The story of a couple (Alice and Charlie) and Alice’s “Special Naked Friend” Ruben. And, the time they all met up at the festival and Charlie found out the truth. Nothing will dash a carnival to the ground quicker than this.

But, I’ve slipped up.

This story will require another part. Carry the festival with me into it.