CARNIVAL! : It’s the Ride Stuff and More, Much More

I t is spring, and in Southern California that means carnival season. No, no, not the circus, not the fair--the carnival! Those traveling institutions that used to temporarily light up fields and parks in small towns and today appear most often in parking lots next to shopping malls.

The word carnival comes from the Latin carnis (flesh) levarium (taking away). In folklore, this became “Carne, Vale!” (“Flesh, Farewell!”), a celebration marking the last meat-eating before Lent. Such is the ancient tradition that is assumed by the modest , seasonal family-run carnivals like Christiansen’s, which we found and visited recently in the back parking lot of the Plaza Bonita Mall.

The Midway. That’s what it’s all about. The Midway. Is the Midway sparkling tonight? Are they traipsing the Midway? Are they hauling the marks off the Midway? Are they playing? Are the kids riding? Are their dads into the games? Are the roustabouts yelling loud enough? Is the Midway . . . alive tonight?

At the carnival, the Midway is the life. The life-blood of this other life. The magic ingredient that seduces the crowds from their mundane world of worries and work and responsibility. If you haven’t left the Other World behind, if the marks--you and I, the customers from the outside world--don’t feel as if we’ve temporarily left real life behind the moment we step onto the midway, you have lost your carnival. You have lost your reason for living this peripatetic life. And, whether you have got it tonight, or not, you’ll see with one glance . . . down the midway.

Physically, the midway is simply the space running between the stalls. But it’s also the spiritual heart of the carnival, any carnival, but especially a small family one like t his, Christiansen’s.

You can feel how small it is when you come at it by night through the back of Plaza Bonita. Behind, the guards are locking the doors of the darkened shopping mall. Ahead, in the distance, your eye locks on a little lit-up atoll in the dark--a spangle of lights, gold and white and red and green. Twirling and spinning. Warping and melting over the sea of car roofs. A rack of girls’ squeals rings out, fading as they turn a corner on the Big Dipper. An oil-and-sawdust smell sharpens the night air.

Up close, this Midway looks alive and well. You are hemmed in on both sides by stalls and games and rides and voices calling at you:

“Come on now! Four balls a dollar. One-Ball. Easiest win in the carnival!”

“Put out the light! Four slats--here! Just drop them on. Watch me do it. Here. One, two--see! Three, four. Easy! Win a cuddly teddy bear! Four slats to cover the light! Just a dollar . . . “

Under so many lights it is like daylight. You are melding with raucous kids. Moms and dads and wide-eyed offspring. Girls from the neighborhood holding arms and giggling. Young lovers lining up for the Sky Diver, the giant Ferris wheel. “No Single Rides,” says the sign. No problem! It has closed-in, side-by-side chairs, and a steering wheel so you can turn yourselves upside down as you spin around. Dizzy with love!

Glasses tinkle at the most popular stand. It’s the simplest game of all: Linda’s glass pitch. People just pitching dimes, trying to win whatever the dimes might settle in.

“No leaning, no trading,” the sign says.

Shrieks Accent the Night

The shrieks of kids filter through from the merry-go-round behind the glass pitch as they are spun into tight circles by the Tilt-a-Whirl.

But, just look for a moment. Down the main alley, the midway. This is pure Renoir! The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette! Couples walking, looking, eyes shining, laughing at others missing the pots, falling off things, fishing for bottles with a pole and line . . . .

Le Tout Paris? Le Tout National City! A rich night out for the not-so-rich. The family man’s Folies Bergere. It’s the innocence . . . of the games. Of the parents and kids doing things, actually doing things together.

And yet . . . this is also a strange and slightly tainted world apart. There is that feeling of 1930s tawdriness. Of unreality. A sense of Medieval threat. Of a mini-world run by slightly Gypsy, slightly wild people.

The Carny Folk, with their funny in -language. Bred in the demimonde where runaways go. A sort of French Foreign Legion where no questions are asked, where you have to be shiftless to stand the pace. A different place every week. Living in car parks in trailers . . . .

A guy who looks as if he might be one of the Plaza Bonita security guards saunters past a stand that features a row of old-style metal milk cans. He already has an incongruously huge brown teddy bear in his arms.

“Win another, sir!” calls the guy behind the milk-can counter. “Right here, easy as 1-2-3! Just throw the baseball into the can. Four for a dollar . . . “

Resistance Wanes

He thrusts the baseballs out to the mark. The mark has hesitated, his resistance draining . . .

“OK. Just one.”

He sits the teddy bear beside his feet, hands over his dollar and starts lobbing. Slow, underarm. The ball bounces off the lip of the can. The second one caroms off sideways. The third is in and out. Heart break! The fourth hits the lip, curls for a moment, then drops out.

“Hey you were so near you could almost feel it . . . “

The mark shrugs, hands over another dollar.

“You see how it is here,” says a big shambling man in a maroon cardigan, red shirt, and an aluminum hospital walking stick. He’s laughing.

“It’s the kids take the rides, and their dads come here and try all these skill games they remember from when they were kids.”

As he talks, he discreetly collects a wad of notes from the guy behind the counter in the milk-can booth. Twenty-dollar bills. He doesn’t put them away. He twines them through his fingers, absently watching the mark miss his next four balls.

The guy doesn’t need encouragement now. He’s hooked. He’s going to get one in if it breaks him. He hands over another dollar for his third lot of baseballs. Dan Lorenz and his assistant, Al Plouffet, exchange knowing looks. He will be here all night, this guy. Like a cat outside a mouse hole.

Lorenz has been with the carnival 19 years. He’s from Louisiana, a one-time Kirby vacuum salesman. Now, he leases booths like the milk can and the basketball toss, and subleases to people like Plouffet. Lorenz doesn’t count his money here. He and Plouffet have known each other’s families for too long.

‘Just Simple Games’

“It’s just simple games here,” says Lorenz, a kind of kindly Sidney Greenstreet character, “Just look around you. This guy here. He just wants to get a ball in a hole. Those people just want to land a dime in a glass. They stand there all night long . . . “

The mark is into his fourth set of balls.

“See, this isn’t a circus. Everybody’s doing things here. And we don’t make things too hard, because Buzzy wants people to win. That way, they’ll come back. It’s his carnival. You ought to speak to Buzzy.”

Buzzy turns out to be the nickname of Ralph Christiansen, the owner of the whole show. A third generation showman who has developed this from the collection of booths his father handed him, to the full rides-and-games carnival that travels around to 32 events each year. Moving most Sunday nights in the season, packing $3 million worth of equipment and 60 members of the entourage.

Right now, Christiansen is sitting in a folding picnic chair outside the office trailer. Next to the Go-Gater--a green alligator-shaped Kiddy Coaster train that roars by every 60 seconds, loaded with wide-eyed 5-year-olds screaming and holding on for dear life.

He is a mustachioed, darkly handsome man, a cross between Omar Sharif and Burt Reynolds.

“I have always wanted to make this carnival a family thing. One where moms and dads aren’t afraid to bring their kids. So I have made sure I control most of the booths and rides so I can keep it right.

“Most carnivals are a collection of individual operators. You never know how good or bad they are. See, we’re for the low-income people. Places like Disneyland are so expensive. Like here on family day, Sunday, you can get your kid a ticket for $6 and that gives you as many rides as you want. All of the rides. All day.”

Organized to a ‘T’

The 44-year-old Christiansen, who followed his father and his father’s father into the carnival business, has his operation down to a fine art. He has organized his circuit so he can travel to places within reach of Escondido where he lives, until summer vacation, when he travels north to bookings around Los Angeles.

That’s when the kids are out of school and he can take them with him. Places like Bell Gardens, Lynwood, Monrovia.

“But that’s the thing. We’re not like a Midwest carnival that comes once and you may not see again,” he says. “We know we’re going to be back soon, so we have to do a good job.”

But, uh, hold it. Isn’t this all a bit too cozy. It sounds more like running a Mervyn’s than a rough-and-ready carnival. What about the image of the fair--the original refuge for runaways. The home of the fat lady and the fast buck.

“Listen, I come from a carnival family. I’m proud of it,” Christiansen says. “I was born into it. I’ve lived the traveling life. But now, I’ve brought this up to date. I have built it up to be a safe place of fun for families. I’ve built it so I don’t have to live on the road. I have a home in Escondido. I’m an elder in the Cathedral of the Valley. I have built a better class of show. Ask anyone. Do you think Plaza Bonita would let us in on their land if we were going to rip people off? We’re so local we can call on a better class of people to work for us.”

That doesn’t mean they don’t have characters. People who have dropped out of the mainstream of the “world outside.”

“Sure I’ll give someone a break. If he’s willing to abide by our rules. I have a bunkhouse in town where someone down on his luck can lay his head, have a shower. Get him started. And if he works--I’ve got managers who’ve started like that . . . . Most of them have been with me for 20 years.”

Some Rotten Apples

Christiansen has his share of people who take advantage of his willingness to give a man a chance. One guy actually tried to steal some of the receipts--and towed the entire office caravan away to do it. Christiansen had to hire an airplane to search for his missing office.

“But we’re a family affair. That’s our greatest strength. I have two brothers-in-law, two sisters-in-law, a son-in-law, two daughters. They’re all part of the carnival . . .”

“The presumption,” says the guy working the dart throw, “is that everybody here is an ax-murderer. Ha! I tell you I’ve been here eight weeks. It’s an education. The way the public sees you --from the outside. The other day a little girl looked at me up here and said ‘Mommy, where do these people come from?’ Her mommy said ‘They’re out of prison for the weekend.’ That’s what she said! That’s the way they think of us out in the world.”

Bill Kendrick thinks carny now. But when he was out in the world, that’s exactly how he thought, too. He is 29 and has two daughters he never allowed near carnivals.

Not before the stock market crashed, anyway. Kendrick was a stock broker, an over-the-counter trader who got hit by a series of investments that went sour and then Black Monday. Over-the-counter dart selling was the last thing he ever imagined himself doing. He had been reared and geared for success. But as he started a transition from stock-broking to real estate, he needed money. Then he met Christiansen, who offered him a job at his carnival.

“I had to swallow some pride,” Kendrick said, “but I tell you, it has been an education. It has knocked a lot of the pretentiousness out of me. These are good people!”

Cecil Hodson, a welder who has been with the carnival since he was 14, says he had an awful time convincing his future mother-in-law that her daughter would be OK with him.

Hodson, now 32, says the shocked mom thought she was losing her daughter to thieves and vagabonds. “She was horrified,” he says.

His fiancee, Joanne, says, “Some of my friends think it’s horrible that I have run off with the carny people, living a gypsy life. Before, I was doing well selling jewelry. But it’s not so bad. Once people realize what good people work here . . . . “

Next to the Go-Gater a stall tells you that you will get a free engraving for any jewel you buy. A young man and an elderly woman stand behind, waiting for business.

The woman’s fingers are encrusted with rings of gold and many-colored stones. She looks as though she has told many-a fortune. Or could have. A slightly tanned skin, a shawl and topaz-blue eyes look out steadily, ready to hypnotize the next customer into seeing diamonds where glass glitters.

“That’s my mom,” says Ronnie Wald. He’s a bright-looking guy with an educated voice and bright eyes. In the cool evening he’s dressed in a red pullover like a yuppie golfer. “We sell jewelry--and, you know, engrave them as mementoes, like ‘Christiansen Carnival, Plaza Bonita, 1988.’ I come from three generations of fair people. My great uncle is a contortionist and runs a jewelry concession. He’s 88. He’s still going! That ‘s what this life does to you.”

But it turns out Wald has another life too: he has a degree in political science from Cal State Northridge, and an associate of arts degree in journalism and sometimes works as a sports broadcaster with KFSD. He spent his childhood roaming from state fair to state fair. Running away to fairs is part of the family tradition. His uncle ran away to his first, the Minnesota State Fair, in 1919. Now, he and his mom travel 40 weeks of the year. Working till midnight most days. They’re independent. Just rent space from Christiansen every now and then.

But mixing the carny world and the other world isn’t easy.

“Yes, I have lost friends from the outside world, doing this work. I have had to break off associations because they think of these people as part of an unsavory world. I can’t persuade them that here is where the true fiercely independent American spirit is alive and well! THIS is what America is all about! And I’m part of it.”

We’re sitting on boxes behind his stand, as his mom stoically mans the stall.

“This show is very homespun, compared with some,” Wald says. “Others travel much more widely. But Buzz has done well to get control of the whole thing. That definitely keeps it in shape.”

But what’s a guy like Wald, with his broadcasting and degrees doing in a place like this? No matter how nice it may be. “I’m happy. I have two lives. I am not prepared to stoop to climb some corporate ladder. I value my relationships here more than anywhere else. Buzzy is my best friend! And I’m happy just to have the opportunity to make a living. I DREAM of hitting the road, of going to the great fairs of the world! In the meantime, jewelry makes me a living. Look! People here are HAPPIER. Look around you. They’re more relaxed. They refuse to get worried. How many places can you be free? Tonight! Tonight is where it’s at!”

But suddenly, tonight is over. Like Cinderella’s clock, the Big Dipper winks its lights. Once. When it lights up again, an army of roustabouts materializes. They attack the sideshows like locusts. There’s lots of yelling and clunking of wood. Canvas canopies flop to the floors.

The customers hurry out of harm’s way into the night. The quick-draw artist does the quickest withdraw in history. At the ring toss, George Paulus, its manager, is counting the receipts, while his workers wait around for their pay. Always cash. Always at the end of the night.

And now, something is different . . . It’s the midway. The cozy central street of the carnival. It’s gone. The soul of the party has left. There’s only the Big Dipper, and the Gravitron to be dismantled and narrowed down to fit on one side of a California freeway. That will take all night.

Some of the carnies are already making forays into their quarters--four-foot slices of huge aluminum boxes on the backs of two articulated trucks. Six of them per truck. Each with its own ladder. Not the Hilton, but better than the possum bellies that many carnies still have to use--three-foot-high, coffin-length boxes slung beneath the trucks trays.

In her trailer, Ronnie’s mom, Suzie, is getting ready for sleep. All the jewelry is away. Ronnie’s stashing the wooden frame. “You know, back in the old days,” she shouts out through the back door, “the midway was spectacular. The back-end shows they had were full of girlie shows--you’d never know the world I was brought up in was devout and straight-laced . . . . “

She talks on merrily about her old Uncle Jack--the 88-year-old straitjacket artist who taught her jewelry selling so she could help pay her way through school. About Ronnie and his degrees, about Ronnie’s pro-golfer daddy . . . .

She looks out to processions of men carrying beams and rolls of striped canvas. The midway, evaporating under the floodlights.

“The carnival has its own rules you know. Carny life is like living in a plastic bowl. See those boys. They’ve hired to tear down; hiring people from towns was UNHEARD of. Now, there are leaks all over. The mark had no business learning the skills of the carnival. But even now, they’ll tell you some, but not everything. And still, in a carnival, you don’t have to say who you are.

She’s sitting in a gentle pool of light on her bed.

“Me, I was a showgirl. I sang and danced--and a salesgirl. A good one, too. Still am. Have to be, the junk I sell. D’you know what a ‘nut’ is? The nut is what we pay the owner for the privilege of selling at his carnival. We always have to pay our nut. In the old days, it used to be the nut that held the bolt joining wagon to horse, the owner always kept that till you paid up so you couldn’t leave without paying. So he wouldn’t be rousted. Cheated.