' The Hammer '

There aren’t many rides on this Midway but those that are here give kids a thrill. Precious children are flung through space, turned upside down, and hold on screaming for dear life. This circus has an old time Ferris Wheel. There is the Hammer and the Swinger, the Fun Slide, Mad Hatter Tea Cups, a Spinning Wheel, and a Fun House. Families buy ride coupons at small booths and hand them to scruffy men or tall lean teenagers wearing John Deere ball caps. They wait in lines for a ride to finish and then are loaded into seats, baskets, or capsules like bullets into a chamber. The amusement area at the Punkin Chunkin Festival is a maze of pipes, high voltage electric cables, gears, pulleys, wheels, wire cages and seats, sounds of straining engines, lights, chain link fences to keep people going the correct direction. Machinery is always looking to grab hands in the wrong places. Parents take pictures of their offspring spinning through the air, rushing down a long slide sitting on burlap bags, spinning in tea cups, or locked inside a metal cage that keeps them from falling when they are upside down twenty feet in the air twisting like a dust devil. In old days the circus had elephants, animal acts, bearded ladies, carnie games, clowns and dancing girls. The circus has shrunk, almost vanished. You don’t need a tattooed lady when women in the crowd have tattoos of their own inked in public and private places. Video games have become our new Ferris Wheel.