A Carnival Moment

The Carnival came to a nearby small town this weekend. I knew this would be the perfect setting for a follow-up to my hit YouTube video Coin Pusher and some good clean fun. Truthfully, with all this hub-bub, I was just excited to try the coin pusher again.

The drive was a bit longer than expected, but Tiff and I were still excited when we arrived. We knew going in that this was just a carnival and not the County Fair, so there wasn't going to be the award-winning animals or the art contests or the demolition derby or the like. What we did not know was that Just The Carnival was going to be so... so... what it was.

We were on a mission to find the coin pushers and the dime-toss, a game Tiff remembers from her childhood. As we entered we headed towards a permanent wooden tent with the sin, Dime-Toss on it, a reasonable place to begin. The structure was empty, but more than that it appeared abandoned, like an old home with nobody living there, slowly taken over by vines. If I was a Building Inspector or Fire Marshall or whoever, I would have condemned the Dime-Toss Tent right then and there.

With our high hopes having taken a pretty big blow, we continued on. We knew pretty quickly that the coin pusher that we sought out was not there, but we gave the freak show - I mean carnival - a walk through. There was the One-Ton Man, asleep at the entrance of a rickety-old ride. There was the Tattooed Man, who was also dressed in greasy leather, manning another carnival attraction. After walking past several trying to get me to "Win the Lady a Prize!" the Tattooed Man stuck out with the line "I'll give you a prize whether you win or not." And I'm pretty sure I saw a few Bearded Ladies milling about in the crowd... they must have been on break.

Anyways, the most telling line of the hot and humid day, however, came from my wife when we got back in the car to leave. "Ah, good. The car's still nice and cool."