A buddy of mine and I were reminiscin’ this week and we started talkin’ about the fair; in particular, spook houses at the fair. Well, that brought up some fond, and not so fond, memories and so, when I got home I looked up this old story I’d written back before the turn of the century about a trip to the fair. I don’t know if y’all will enjoy it or not, but I’m pretty sure my cousin, Coy will.

Ahhhhh, I dearly love that smell. Candied apples, cotton candy, and the smell of diesel fuel. Yep, the fair’s in town. I love the fair. I don’t know why, I don’t ride any of the rides anymore, or play any of the games, but I do love it. What I really like to do is eat at the fair. Oh, I know that junk they serve down there is not good for you, but who cares? Eatin’ is the first thing I do when I get there. It wasn’t like that when I was a kid though. Nope, I never ate first back then, because if I did, and then rode those rides, well I risked the chance of seein’ whatever I ate one more time. Believe me, there’s nothin’ worse than seein’ a foot long hotdog for the second time around, especially if you’re trapped in a cage that is spinnin’ you, or slammin’ you around. It doesn’t do a lot to impress the girls either.

That was one of my jobs back when I was growin’ up, you know. Impressin’ a girl, that is. There’s a fine line between impressing girls and makin’ a complete fool of yourself. I have never been very good at doin’ the first, but man let me tell you, I’m an expert at the second.

I never took a girl to the fair back when I was a kid, because all the girls I knew, well, they knew me. So, I always went with my cousin Coy. We figured that we could find a girl at the fair that didn’t know us, and we could impress them at the midway booths with our skills. You know what skills I’m talkin’ about. Like throwin’ baseballs at lead milk bottles, or passin’ a football through a tire, or my favorite, shootin’ the star out of the card with a BB machine gun. Throwin’ money away on a girl was easy. Findin’ the girl to throw money away on wasn’t.

Once we saw these two girls readin’ the sign above a scary ride. This was one of those little train like things that take you into a dark building, and things jump out at you and try to scare the crud out of you. Although, we’d never been on this particular ride, we’d been on a bunch just like it. We figured those girls would get scared, like girls do, and they’d hug onto us to keep them safe. A top-notch plan, don’t you think?  

Coy and I first flipped a coin to see who was goin’ to get which girl. We figured if by chance we were ever successful in getting some girls to do something with us at the fair, we’d better know who would be goin’ with whom. Anywho, we moseyed up and stood beside the girls. Coy was beside the girl he’d chosen and I was beside the other (Coy won the toss). I read the sign out loud while pretending not to notice the girl beside me.

“BEWARE!” I said, reading the sign. “He who enters here may never return alive. No children! No heart patients! No expectant mothers!” (Nobody used the word “pregnant” back then, because their mothers wouldn’t let them use language like that.) I continued reading. “ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!”

I leaned forward and looked past the two girls at Coy. “Well, what do you think?”

Coy looked as if he was thinkin’. “Dudn’t look that scary to me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.” Then I looked at the girls. “Oh, hello,” I said. The girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Now this might have discouraged lesser men, but Coy and I were used to this maneuver.  

“My name is Rusty, and this is my cousin Coy.”

“Hi there,” said Coy, a few octaves lower than his real voice. He also had an Elvis curl in his lip to make him look cool.

“Are you ladies (notice I didn’t say girls) thinkin’ about goin’ into that spook house?” I asked.

“We were thinkin’ about it,” said Coy’s girl.

“Ever been in one before?” Coy asked her.

“No,” she answered.

“Some are pretty scary, you know,” said Coy.

“Is that right,” said my girl. She had a hint of sarcasm in her voice that I’ve always found mildly sexy.  

“That’s right,” I said. “In fact, the last one Coy and I went into, they dumped a bucket of bloody guts on us.”

“They did?” said Coy. I gave him a look. “Oh yeah!” he recovered quickly.  “That’s right…. A bucket of bloody guts.

“Tell you what ladies,” I sighed. “Why don’t you let ol’ Coy and me here, take y’all on this ride, and we’ll make sure nothin’ happens to you.”

“Yeah,” said Coy.

“No thanks,” they both said quickly and walked up to the ticket booth.

“What’ll we do now?” asked Coy.  

“Let’s go on in,” I whispered. “We’ll get in the car behind them, and when they get scared, we’ll be there after the ride, and we’ll comfort them. Women like that kind of stuff.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, and we bought two tickets.

We climbed into the cart behind the two girls. They turned, looked at us, rolled their eyes again, and looked back forward. I elbowed Coy. “Say somethin’ about me,” I whispered.

“Uh,” Coy said in a loud voice. “Hey Rusty!  Whatever happened to that girl friend of yours that said that you reminded her of Steve McQueen.”

“Oh, her,” I said loudly. “I had to break up with her.  Her dad didn’t want her hangin’ around with someone who road motorcycles.”

“You have a motorcycle?” asked Coy. I jabbed him in the ribs.

“OOOF, “he ooofed. “Oh yeah, that’s right you ride motorcycles.”

Then the ride started. The cars jerked a couple of times, and then started off.

“I hope this isn’t too scary, har, har,” said Coy sarcastically.

“Really,” I said. I could hear the girls rollin’ their eyes.

The train of cars pushed open a set of doors, and when the last car was in, it slammed shut. We were suddenly engulfed in total darkness.  

“Ooooo! I’m so scared,” I laughed.

“Yeah. Me too,” said Coy.

Then the car we were in jerked into a right turn, slammin’ Coy up against me.  At the same time a lighted figure flashed before us. It was the Devil.

“WHOA!” I yelled. “What was that!”

“The Devil!” said Coy. “And I think it was real!”

He didn’t get that statement out of his mouth good when a skeleton, with an eyeball hanging out of the socket in his skull flashed to the side of us.

“IIIIIIAAAAAAAGGGGG!” was heard echoin’ from the walls.

“What was that horrible sound?!” I yelled.

“That was you!” yelled Coy. Then he screamed.

“WHAT!” I yelled. Coy was pointing to my left. There was the Devil again, and he was walking toward us. I joined in with the screamin’.

“We’re gonna die, and the Devil’s gonna git us!” I yelled.

Just as the Devil reached for us the lights went out.

“IIIIIIAAAAAAAGGGGG!” I yelled again. “THE DEVIL’S GOT ME!”

“HE’S GOT ME TOO!” Yelled Coy.

“HALP!” I yelled. I just knew I was dead. The Devil had me by the neck chokin’ me. I had my eyes slammed shut, and my hands were around his neck tryin’ to choke him off of me. Then the train stopped. I figured I might sneak a peek to see if there was a way to escape. I cracked one eye, and then slammed it back shut. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “That looked like Coy.” I opened my eye again. Sure enough, there was Coy. At least it looked like Coy, only he was blue.  His eyes were shut too. Then I realized that it was Coy’s neck, not the Devil’s, that I had my hands around. In fact, it was Coy’s hands, not the Devil’s, that were around mine.

“Hey,” I coughed out. Coy opened his eyes. “Let go of my neck,” I grunted.

“You let go of mine first,” he said.

It was then that I realized that the reason the train had stopped was because we were back outside. The ride was over. I let go of Coy’s neck, and he let go of mine. Coy went into a coughin’ fit as I tried to swallow some spit to see if my swallower was still workin’. Then I looked up, and there our girls were, staring at us. I jabbed Coy, and motioned with my head toward the girls. Coy looked up.  Quickly he curled his lip.

“Wudn’t nothin’ to that,” he coughed.

“Waste of money,” I said. “Hey! You girls want to grab a bite to eat?”

The girls rolled their eyes, and left.

“What a couple of losers,” Coy said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Looky there!” I said. “There’s a couple of more at the house of mirrors. Let’s go.”

“Okay,” said Coy.  “But this time you say somethin’ about me lookin’ like Elvis.”

“It’s a deal.”

Needless to say, the fair was not fair to us that year.  

All Rights reserved 9/26/99