It’s beginning to smell like summer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/06/2010 (5772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Red River Ex smells of diesel fuel and cooking fat, of sunblock mingled with sweat. There are the lingering background scents: popcorn, root beer, funnel cakes, mini doughnuts and cotton candy. If you’ve got small children, the stink of the potbellied pigs and the hay in the petting zoo will cling to you all day.

The Ex is the sound of summer, shrieks of laughter and screams of terror. Mothers call for their children, the children beg for one more ride and the carneys beg to separate the rubes from their money. Around every corner there’s a gravelly voice asking riders if they wanna go faaaaster!

As long as there has been an available piece of land, carnivals have been coming to towns. Every collection of 300 houses and a gas station attracts, at very least, a Ferris wheel, whirly rides designed to scare the tarnish off a toddler and some aged bumper cars. Add junk food, toss in a few shady-looking guys and you’re in business.

Even Winnipeg Beach has its own carnival, a dodgy assortment of rides middle-class parents wouldn’t let their kids near at any other time of year. Somehow, in the lake-washed air, it seems safe.

There have been circuses since Roman times. But the modern Ringling Brothers shows, held under the big tent ladies and gentlemen, were really the beginning of it all. They offered danger, forbidden sexuality, a chance to gawk at the freak show and a the temptation to gamble away a pay packet.

The modern carnivals are a pale imitation. Still, they have an edge, the feeling you might find your pocket picked or plummet to your death on the Pharaoh’s Fury. They hardly ever hurt anyone, of course, not here or anywhere else. But the truly wise read the disclaimer ("Guests should expect rapidly changing forces; physically or mentally challenged guests and those with a health condition may not find this suitable") and reconsider their options.

The muscled guys who work the rides wear Safety First T-shirts. We have to trust they’re being sincere.

We don’t have freak shows anymore, which is probably more an issue of human rights than of concern for those former attractions. If folks want to see little people now they can just turn on the TV. Bearded ladies no longer cut it, not when you’ve got gender-identity issues discussed on Oprah.

The families who come, the lovesick teens and the starry-eyed of all ages are there because there’s a heartbeat at a carnival you don’t hear anywhere else. It’s in the blaring rock music and the flashing lights and the serene beauty of a Ferris wheel at night. It’s in the dream that this $5 bill will be the one that wins a tiny made-in-China bear, its stiff fur dyed an unconvincing shade of green.

It’s in the swagger of a young man strolling the midway with his girl, the jumbo toy under his arm proof of both his skill at dart-tossing and his virility.

We are drawn to the Ex, sometimes 40,000 of us in a single day, because it allows us to step outside our normal lives, to be frightened on purpose and to not care about calories and cholesterol. We are kids again, daring each other to go in the haunted house, stretching on our toes to make the minimum height requirement. We believe we can aim a stream of water into a tiny hole and emerge victorious.

The Ex is only here for a short time. That’s necessary in order for the realities of too much money spent and too many hot dogs eaten to be erased. The carneys knock down the rides and hit the road again, leaving quietly like thieves in the night.

They’ll be back next year, maybe with a different gang of roustabouts, maybe with the men who have been spoiled for ordinary living by their time on the road.

And we’ll be back, at least some of us, because we are drawn to the bright lights, the smells and the thin patina of danger. We go to be frightened and to be thrilled. There are far too few other chances in life, none of them safe enough to recommend to your family. But when the carnival is in town, when we see the posters and hear the pitch, we’re willing to believe in the magic. For a single night, we get to pretend.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca