You’re not really going to find a fair without a midway. There’s a pretty interesting article about the guy who owns and runs the midway for the Fryeburg fair on their website. He started working in carnivals when he was a kid, sleeping in people’s game booths as a watchman so the prizes (which they never intended for anyone to win, since the games were basically crooked) wouldn’t be stolen. He says “In those days the games were all crooked,” I guess implying that nowadays they’re not. They’re still so garish that Charley is cringing.
I remember riding on a ferris wheel at a carnival in Fair Haven VT sometime in the ’50s. It went up higher than I realized it was going to. I’m not sure I really liked it.
Emma wanted to do some rides. After we saw (and she petted) enough animals, we walked back to the kiddie rides area of the midway. Nicole was saying, “Now I’ll have to buy you some tickets for the rides,” when a man passing on his way home said, “Would you like tickets? I have a bunch left over,” and gave her a handful — must have been over $10 worth of tickets. So Emma got to go on four rides, and we still had tickets left over to pass on to someone else.
It was getting dark, late, and chilly, but after those good rides Emma was not ready to go home! Nicole and Charley tugged her along. We found our way back to our car, bounced down the power line dirt road to 302, peeked into two restaurants in Bridgton (both jammed, whether with leaf lookers or fairgoers we couldn’t tell) and ended up buying a rotisserie chicken at Hannafords to bring home for supper.