The Fair that Never Was
I used to love any kind of a carnival. I went to the Minnesota State Fair every year and gorged myself on Sweet Martha's Cookies and Corn Dogs. But not anymore. I don't go to carnivals anymore. You know that kind of liquor you can't drink anymore because of a bad experience? It's like that. I have a bad reaction to them now.
I'm a professional stock photographer. I don't shoot weddings, or wildlife, or anything in particular. Just pictures of everyday things. People buy them from places like istockphoto for a few cents each, usually for websites or advertising. With almost a hundred thousand images online, those pennies add up and I make just enough to keep doing what I love - traveling and taking pictures. I think being such a dedicated photographer saved my life at the Marcy County Fair. When things got weird, I was so intent on documenting it that I didn't get sucked in. Or maybe I got lucky.
If you are wondering where Marcy County is, it doesn't exist. At least not in this world. I checked. There has never been a Marcy County in the United States. But I went to their county fair. It was in South Dakota, a ways South of Redig on Highway 85. I was just driving, seeing places I've never been and taking pictures. I don't do that so much anymore.
The hand painted sign for the Marcy County Fair was on an otherwise empty stretch of road. I wish I had a picture of it. A county fair in the middle of nowhere seemed like a great photo op, so I turned off. within a mile, the lights of the midway appeared. I parked the car, grabbed fresh batteries for my camera, and headed in. It all seemed perfectly normal until the light show started.
I expected some kind of holograms or lasers set to country music. But they played some kind of dark classical music that I had never heard before. It started with the things you would expect. A quick welcome to the Marcy County Fair, and some colored lights jumping around in sync with the music. But the lasers were scattered and blurred, like something was wrong with the machine. It wasn't very entertaining, but none of us left. It was hypnotic. I've wondered if actual hypnosis was involved, but I have never heard of hypnosis doing anything like what happened to me that night.
When the light show ended, we all got up and wandered back into the fair. We were all a bit lost. I don't know if I would call it a trance. No one talked, we just stood up and walked back toward the little midway and the booths serving food and drinks.
The midway was so dark. The booths were lit up, but in between them it was almost too dark to walk safely. The light from the booths didn't travel as far as you would expect. It's supposed to fall off at the inverse square of the distance. I'm a photographer. I know how light behaves. Or how it's supposed to behave.
I didn't take nearly as many photos as I usually do. The fact that I took any photos at all was purely instinct. I don't remember thinking about where to sell any particular shot or framing things in any particular way. I just did it because it's what I always do. And I'm glad. I would doubt my own sanity if I didn't have the pictures. The brownie booth didn't earn my business because it didn't smell like brownies. It smelled like ash, wood smoke, and hot flesh, like an old barbecue grill that needed cleaning.
None of these pictures has been altered in any way. They are raw files straight out of the camera. If they are black and white, that's how the camera recorded them. I don't remember switching to the black and white setting on the camera, but it's certainly possible. My memory of the evening is missing some pieces.
The crystal ball thing should have blown my mind. It should have sent me running. Do you see what looks like someone crucified in that tree? I do. I can't stop seeing it. But there wasn't even a tree there. The ball should have shown me a distorted view of the Reptile House. This is why I say that I was wandering around in a trance. Because seeing something completely different through the ball didn't send me running for the hills. It was just something interesting to take a picture of.
The woman who handed me the crystal ball was a carnival fortune teller. She wore a cheesy Gypsy outfit and waved her hands around slowly when she talked for dramatic effect. Next to her fortune telling booth was an ice cream stand. When I looked at it through the glass ball, I saw a vintage ice cream truck instead. I asked her why.
"That one doesn't show the future son." she said, "It shows the past."
Somehow, I took this at face value, and handed it back to her.
I was going to ask if the crystal ball was for sale, because I thought it would be neat to take pictures of old things, but the lights on the Big Wheel came on. I was drawn to the wheel like a moth to a flame. I didn't know why I was walking toward it, I just was. And so was everyone else. Like zombies, we shuffled toward it, staring up at the bright lights and bumping into each other.
There were hundreds of us, just staring up at it as it slowly turned. A line formed to get on. I would have gotten on myself. I wanted to. But there were so many more things to take pictures of.
When I looked around for something else to photograph, the tilt-a-whirl caught my eye a few yards away. There was a kid riding by himself. He was fair skinned. So pale his skin was almost blue. And he didn't move a muscle the entire ride. I thought he might be a mannequin, but when it stopped, he got off and wandered toward the big wheel.
A mother and child were on the ride as well. They were just a few feet away on the other side of the safety fence while they waited to get off. I asked them how the ride was.
"It was nice." she said, a flat affect in her voice. "We saw my husband."
"You saw your husband?" I asked, confused.
"He died in Afghanistan just before Jeremy was born." she said, "We miss him."
I thought it was nice that the kid finally got to meet his dad.
The next thing that caught my eye was the teacup ride. There were old people, mostly in couples, sitting in the teacups smiling, but the ride was powered down and the lights were off. This was interesting enough to trigger a photo, but when I checked it on my camera screen, the people were gone and the lights were on. I thought this was fortunate because it was a better shot with the lights and bright colors.
Next was a kid's ride called Winky the Whale. There was no one in it, but I could hear the sounds of happy children as it went around.
I remember taking the first picture and thinking that it was a creepy looking ride. I don't know where the second picture came from. I don't remember taking it.
I didn't like Winky much, and wandered next door to a little bar. Bloody Mary's Bar and Grill. I went over and took a picture. While I stood there, it occurred to me just how tasty blood really is. How it was filled with protein and nutrients. I thought that it must be like eating the yolk of an over easy egg, still warm. I thought it might be good on toast.
I think what I felt was blood lust, but as I looked around for a warm body, I saw a brightly colored fun house. Ghosts and Pirates wasn't a typical fun house. It was too serious. No clowns and no blaring rock music. No sound at all. I almost went in, but it was dark inside. Tough to get any good pictures in the dark. Maybe that saved me. Maybe I never walk out of there.
A ride called The Dragon was a few yards down. It was moving so slow that I thought it must be ending, but then it sped up. By the time I got my camera up to my eye, the ride was moving quickly.
As I watched, it sped up to an incredible rate, the dragon itself becoming a blur. I wondered if it was safe going that fast, but none of the people on the ride seemed worried. It was moving too fast to get any more good shots. I walked on.
It wasn't the look of the Krazy Klown ride that caught my attention. It was the sound. There weren't many riders, but the people on it were laughing so hard. They were laughing like they just heard the most joyous news and the funniest joke. It was maniacal.
I might have watched for ten minutes. Time is a bit blurry in my memories of the evening. The facial expressions were interesting in the first few shots, but they never changed. Everyone laughing except one guy, who just looked shocked. He was one car behind a kid who was laughing so hard I wondered how he managed to breathe. I decided there was no point in getting on this ride if it was the same thing the whole time. I had all the good shots I was going to get.
The Klown ride slowed as I began to walk off, and the operator looked over at me.
"Ride starts again in a minute. Seats open." he said.
"Does it ever change?" I asked back.
"Nope." he said.
"Then no," I said, "I have more pictures to take."
"Suit yourself." he said, but his eyes followed me as I walked away toward the Wellenflug. It was similar to rides I had seen before like the Wave Swinger in Minnesota, or the Yo Yo Chairs at the Iowa State Fair. I used to go to a lot of fairs. I loved them.
It sped up quickly, even faster than the dragon. In seconds it was whipping along so fast I thought that it must be out of control. I looked for an operator, but didn't see one.
By the end, the chairs whistled through the air, traveling so fast they were a blur even to the naked eye. When it slowed back down, the people were gone. With no people, there were no more interesting shots, and I walked off.
At that end of the midway, there was a back gate. There was no one taking tickets. It was empty. I walked through it, and as I walked around the outside of the fairgrounds toward the parking lot, the haze in my mind began to lift. The reality of what I had just experienced started to set in and I walked faster. I broke into a run a hundred yards from my car. As I jogged to a stop at my driver's side door, I heard a baby cry. It was nearby. I'm not proud of it, but I ignored it and got in my car. I spoke out loud to myself as I started the car.
"That's not your baby. That might not be anyone's baby. It probably isn't a baby at all. Whatever the hell it is, it's not your business."
I think the baby was the last of many close calls for me that night. I think if I had gone looking for that baby, I wouldn't be here today. I'm not sure where I would be, but not here.
I drove out in a hurry and was planning to drive for hours to get as far away as possible. A few minutes away from the fair, I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. It hit me like that wave of sleepy fog half an hour after a Benadryl. I was going to be asleep soon, whether I was behind the wheel or not. I stopped at the first town, about twenty miles away, and got a room in a cheap motel. I slept hard for almost nine hours. I woke up with a lot of questions. When I asked the front desk guy at the hotel, he told me that he had never heard of Marcy County, and there had never been a county fair in the area to his knowledge.
I'm a skeptical sort. I'm not superstitious or spiritual at all. But I couldn't bring myself to drive back up 85 toward the fair, not even in the bright light of day. I was sure it wasn't going to be there anyway. I would love to think that I imagined the whole thing. That maybe I was having a flashback from my LSD days, or that I had a very vivid waking dream of some kind. And I would believe that. It's the most obvious explanation. But if that is true, then where the hell did the pictures come from?