News

Life’s a carnival for veteran Midway worker

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on August 26, 2009
Posted in: News.

By Dennis Yohnka – The Daily Journal correspondent

Michael Snow is hooked on his brand of show business. At 54, he’s still playing the same circuit he joined 37 years ago, but he loves what he does.

“I couldn’t imagine any other life,” said Snow as he prepared to bring his “Century Wheel” to the midway at the Will County Fair. “I started as the third man on the bumper cars. Now, I drive the semi and I’m mostly a teacher, showing the other folks how to put these rides together and keep them safe.

“I never dreamed I would have been in this so long, but I guess I’m like those people that visit Florida and once they get that sand in their shoes, they just keep going back for more.”

So, for 37 years, Snow has spent seven months of each year on the road. He learned how to cope with a sense of homelessness that others couldn’t endure.

“The movin’ every week … you get used to it,” he said. “It’s like people who live by the airport. They don’t notice the planes. But the visitors are duckin’ under the table. It’s all what you get used to.”

Snow is also used to the six-hour ordeal of erecting a Ferris wheel; the five-hour process of taking it down; and working with five to eight guys they call “green help” (noncarnival workers) to get the jobs done.

“My whole family was teachers, and I guess that’s what I wound up doin’,” he said. “But I never got married so I can do this. It’s not a good thing for a family. You gotta be all in to do this.”

The work has kept Snow in pretty good shape. He stands 5-foot, 10-inches and weighs in under 200 pounds. That’s pretty amazing for a guy who could have eaten like a “carni-vore” — with elephant ears, corndogs and lemon shake-ups daily — since he was 17 and convinced his parents that he would be OK on the road with the carnival.

“I did eat like that for a while, but I started developing high blood pressure when I turned 50,” he said. “The doctor told me to go with more chicken and turkey and I eat cantaloupe or watermelon just about every day.”

Snow said the road crew for the Luehrs Family Amusement Company feels like family to him. He still has his parents, four sisters and a brother back in O’Fallon (near St. Louis), but many more hours are spent with co-workers.

“Some of us bunk together in the crew trailers,” he said. “They’re like little hotel rooms really. Restrooms. Icebox. TV. Bed. Shower. They’re comfortable enough, but I have a camper now.”

And what about your treatment on the road?

“I love some of these towns, especially Peotone,” Snow said. “I enjoy the people. I like the food and the fairgrounds. I even like the folks at the little hardware store I go to.”

And a little farther down the road?

“I really don’t think about retirement,” he said. “It may sound unusual, but I’d like to do this right up to the end. I get to work with hydraulics and plumbing and electrical. Heck, I was once even asked to be like a groupie. Sawyer Brown was playing at the event where we were set up and the boss paid me to go to the show and buy some CDs and get them autographed.”

One more thing: Do you still get a sense of job satisfaction, even after all these years?

“Yes, there is a satisfaction of setting up a ride; washing it; replacing some light bulbs; and then giving the people an enjoyable ride,” he said. “And then when you teach someone else how to do all that … well, it’s like they kind of become a man when they learn how to do it by themselves.”

The annual Will County Fair opens its five-day run in Peotone on Wednesday. Snow arrived on Monday to set up his ride.

Will County Fair

WHEN: Aug. 26-30

WHERE: Peotone-Wilmington Road, Peotone

COST: General admission $3; children under 10 free. Grandstand admission is listed with every event. Must have a ticket if you are occupying a seat.

ENTERTAINMENT: Demolition Derby Aug. 28; carnival rides $1.50 or 16 for $20 daily, Aug. 28 Dollar Day when all rides are just a buck until 5 p.m.

FUN: Baby show 1:30 p.m. Aug. 30.

YUM: Carnival food; beer tent, air-conditioned restaurant.

DON’T MISS: WVLI “The Valley” 95.1 sock hop at the entertainment tent 3-4:30 p.m. Aug. 28.

INFO: (708) 258-9359, www.willcountyfair.org

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Beer On A Stick To Be Offered At Minn. State Fair

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on August 21, 2009
Posted in: News. Tagged: , .

WCCO-TV

Shanghaied Henri’s at the Minnesota State Fair wants everyone to know about their latest offering: Summit on a Stick.

The company said it’s the first time there will be beer on a stick at the Fair. The treat will be sold at the Summit booth at the Summit stage in the International Bazaar at the Fairgrounds.

They add that the stage features daily shows, including “Bazaar After Dark” bands performing evenings.

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Fair operators dispel anxieties over rides

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on August 21, 2009
Posted in: News. Tagged: , .

By Zac Taylor, Observer-Reporter.Com

Mark McGrath watches attentively from his control panel as the cylindrical carnival ride he is operating rapidly spins several giggling, screaming children at a 45-degree angle some 15 feet in the air.

“They don’t put nobody on this machine that don’t know how to operate it,” McGrath says as he slowly brings the ride to a stop and watches as the children dizzily stagger off, shoving and laughing as they go.

McGrath, a 20-plus year veteran of the carnival business who is working this week at the Washington County Fair, said the commonly held belief that carnival rides are hastily erected, poorly maintained, dangerous contraptions operated by unqualified workers is largely unfounded.

Complicated, fast rides that leave the ground like McGrath’s “Round-Up” – a merry-go-round on steroids that spins fast enough to generate the G-forces needed to keep the occupants standing at its sides from flying out – require at least 18 months of operator training, said McGrath.

Some parents remain fearful of carnival rides.

“I don’t feel they’re safe,” said Robin Dunley of Washington, who was attending the fair Wednesday. “I’m a nervous wreck when I come down here.”

Dunley said that despite her worries, she still allows her children to ride some of the rides. She’s skeptical that the rides can be safe when it seems they are “put up and torn down too fast.”

According to the state Department of Agriculture, the governing body that regulates carnival ride inspections, carnival rides must be inspected by a state-certified inspector each time they are erected, and each time they are deconstructed for storage and transportation.

Companies such as J&J Amusements, the company that is operating the rides at the fair, keep state-certified inspectors on staff who inspect the rides both on erection and deconstruction, and also every morning before operation.

“You’re in more danger in a car,” said J&J ride inspector Matt Pierce.

Pierce said he inspects the rides thoroughly every morning before opening to the general public. Any problems he finds, even minor ones, are reported and fixed immediately.

“The only people I’ve ever seen get hurt on a ride was through their own stupidity,” Pierce said, recalling instances of riders jumping out of their seats before the ride was over, sustaining minor injuries.

McGrath has seen worse.

A man riding a Round-Up at a major theme park at which McGrath was working tried to climb out mid-flight. The man fell into the center area of the ride, snapped his neck on the support bars and died. The man was later found to have been suicidal.

McGrath said such serious accidents are rare, and can be avoided if riders simply heed the instructions of the operators.

“As long as they listen, it’s safe,” he said. “If they don’t listen, they’re going to get hurt.”

Bobby Moran runs the game stand “Tubs,” which involves throwing a softball-sized rubber ball into a plastic tub four feet away.

Moran used to be a ride supervisor, but asked for the change because the job was too intense.

“There is a lot more to it than you would expect,” Moran said, adding that the yearly inspection school, near-encyclopedic knowledge required of the complicated rides and rigorous inspections wore on him over the years.

For McGrath, the training and constant inspections are worth the enjoyment he gets from the carnival life.

“I’ll be honest, I Iove this job,” McGrath said as he pulled the lever to the Round-Up, and sent another gaggle of giggling kids spinning through the air.

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Talking to carnival workers at the Ingham County Fair

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on August 12, 2009
Posted in: News. Tagged: , .

by Liz Reyna – Lansing City Pulse

At the Ingham County Fair, it´s easy to be intimidated.

With the array of faces behind booths beckoning you to throw this, or fish for this or take a shot at that, it’s like walking through a foreign bazaar.

And, it’s easy to envision the hawkers behind the booths as a stereotype: the modern American gypsy, the “carnie,” who is portrayed in movies, TV and folklore as freakish and scary. But talking to carnival workers at the fairgrounds in Mason last Saturday, those stereotypes were knocked down like a stack of vintage pop bottles with an air gun.

Carnival workers, like Joseph Bray of Jackson, are just doing their job.

Tossing a softball in front of the “Ball Buster” game, Bray, 18, plans to travel on the road with the carnival. He had only four days on the job.

“I was searching for a job,” he said. “I needed money to try to pay for college, so I decided to just call up and give it a shot. I love this job. It’s more fun than any other job I’ve had and it’s definitely made me want to go to a lot more fairs, too.”

As a newcomer, Bray was assigned a game. But 20-year carnival veteran Dennis Hamm got first pick. Watching him in front of the “1-in-you-win” basketball game, it’s clear why.

“Basketball! Come on in! Everybody wins today!” he yells at passersby. “Take your time aim right for it, get it on this wall, and you get any one of these prizes, honey. Bears, pigs, balls, cats, pandas!”

Hamm got his start in 1989 in Reno, Nev. When the carnival came to town, he jumped on and never looked back.

“It’s part of my lifestyle. I enjoy the kids, I enjoy the crowds and I like smiles,” he said. “It’s all family and it’s business.”

“When I started, I started out on the rides,” Hamm said, who is also a pastor in Byron Center. “You slept in your own rides. I was in a Gravitron. You could shut the door down on it. (We had) our stuff on the back deck, we’d fill up water buckets with hot water and got washed up. It was just like I thought it would be.”

These days, Hamm has a lot of stories to tell. He recalled an incident at the New York State Fair in the late 1990s when a tornado devastated the carnival, killing two.

“I could write a book, honey, I’ve seen almost everything you could imagine,” he said.

Pedaling down the fairway through a crowd, “Mike” and his giant yellow tricycle speaks in rhyme to children passing by.

“You’re as smart as can be and you’re going to make straight A’s at the university,” he rhymed.

Mike’s real name is Jim Herrington, and has been fair performer since 1981.

“I actually started performing to get over the bad vibes of Vietnam,” Herrington, 60, said. “I started singing in the streets waiting for my college G.I. bill money to come through. And so I performed in the streets until I joined with the fair.”

After a stint at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, he came back to Michigan, where his family is from.

Herrington also performs as “Pa Caboodle” in his show, the Caboodlestoppers, with his family, often on stilts. Traveling around sky-high, Herrington is far from the carnival stereotype.

“I like to relate positively with people, make rhymes about the kids, and make jokes,” he said. “We have enough in life that’s tearing people down. I like to be the person who builds them up.”

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