I really don't know who came up with the idea for a carnival. Looking back through history, there can be no one who could ever possibly think it would be a good marketing strategy.
Brilliant idea.
Enter the carny.
Carnies have been archetyped as smelly, greasy, and corrupt individuals whose mere pleasure comes from the misery of others. So how did I get to become one?
Well, money's been tight for me recently, and while the idea of whoring myself out is appealing, I doubted I would have many takers.
Also, I wasn't too fond of my potential pimp.
In a literal "know a guy who knows a guy" situation, I was given an offer that I could refuse, but only if I was incredibly stupid: $100 a day for 11 days. I did the math, and it seemed like a good deal, given my lack of other financial opportunities at the time.
In retrospect, it was actually a very dumb move on my part. First of all, I didn't know the guy who was hiring me at all. For all I knew, he could have been a psychopathic mutant with a distaste for lanky college students. Or a zombie.
That's right, I could have been hired by a zombie.
Secondly, I had no idea where I was staying for the entirety of the week and a half. I knew the general location, but I had no clue as to the specifics of where I was going to be sleeping. Naively, I assumed I would sleep in some sort of bed situation (you know, with a mattress and pillows, and maybe--if I was fortunate--some form of blankets), but there was no way to be sure.
Finally--and some may argue that this is the most important piece of information needed to do my job--I had no idea what my job was. There could have been some mention of food, but for the most part, I was in the dark. I may very well have potentially postponed my prostitution profession so I could clean up horse shit all day.
It's all about trade-offs, in this day and age.
I was fairly unfamiliar with carnivals and fairs at the time, but I had seen the movie 'Adventureland' a couple of times, and used the film as a basis for what to expect.
...Unless my boss was a zombie, in which case, I would use the knowledge I learned from 'Zombieland'.
There were several misconceptions I had about carny working that were quickly debunked upon arrival, including my shift length. I naturally assumed that I would take either the morning or the night shift (or maybe the afternoon shift, depending on how many shifts there were in a day). I ended up working the all-day shift. My point here is that there were less shifts than I expected, and by less I mean zero.
My second misconception was that I would be working in various stands, with various people, creating a spectrum of interesting characters and locations.
False. I worked in the same tiny food cart with the same two dudes for the entirety of my stay. So much for networking...
Also, I assumed that I would receive breaks during the day. Unfortunately, this was based on the assumption that there would be time to do so in between shifts.
I was so fucked.
I had never worked at what people would call a "real job," let alone in the service industry, so my work ethic was not a muscle I had fully exercised yet. It was a daunting scenario, going from complete unemployment to working all day, ALL day, in a setting I was unfamiliar with, with people I had never met before.
I may have cried the night before.
I may not have.
You will never know.
My last exam of the school year was on a Wednesday afternoon, and I was to arrive at the food wagon on Wednesday night, so there was no real "transition time" between my cushy student lifestyle and the anti-cushy carny lifestyle I was entering. My mom dropped me off with her van stuffed with my apartment and I was left to fend for myself in the strange environment with a blanket, a pillow, and four days worth of laundry.
I found my boss and he introduced me to my coworker, a laid-off 40-something who was doing this for some quick money. It was like seeing myself in the future, except he wore a baseball cap.
I tried to learn everything I could that first night before the stand closed. For instance, the stand's primary export was sausage, a food that I have unfavorable feelings toward.
Not that there's anything wrong with sausage, or any breakfast meats for that matter. I'm just more of a cereal guy.
So while the two men cleaned up shop for the night, I attempted to take in as much as possible, which was difficult, considering I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. Standing around like a dingbat, I couldn't get the thought out of my mind: "What the hell have I gotten myself into?!"
Later that evening, I discovered the answer to that question: I had gotten myself into a trailer. This was surprising because, in a million years, none of my expectations for a living situation included a house with wheels. At some point I might have envisioned a tent, but I ask you to find me a tent with on wheels. Impractical? Yes. Totally badass? Completely.
Now, I don't want to piss off anyone who lives, has lived, will live, or desires to live in a mobile home, mostly based on the fact that they are the only people in the world who could kill me and then park their house on top of my grave. Personally, I think living in a trailer takes some major guts. It is an unflinchingly brave lifestyle choice that deserves a pat on the back (with proper hand protection, of course).
The mobile home in which we lived contained only four rooms: a bedroom, another bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room/kitchen. It was difficult for me to collapse into a heap of exhaustion on my fold-out couch, let alone live in the trailer. So for that, I applaud anyone who can stand waking up every morning, eat breakfast, take a shower, and leave for work in seven steps (here, I'm talking about pedometer steps, not '7 Steps To Change Your Life').
But I'm digressing from my main point: my job... whatever it was.
Our schedule started around 8:00 in the morning, for breakfast. Then we would drive to the food cart and begin to set up by 9:30, and as soon as we arrived at the trailer, we were confronted by people demanding a sausage. I tried to put it as nicely as possible that we had just opened and there was absolutely no reason for anyone to be demanding such a disgusting lunch-time meal at such an ungodly hour.
I mean, I get it; sausages and breakfast go hand-in-hand like a sixth grade couple, but the sausages we sold were not like the links one gets on the side of an order of pancakes. Rather, these monstrosities rivaled dachshunds in size and contained enough fats and amino acids (those are bad, right?) to kill a full-grown hippopotamus Olympian.
Just because it's a funny visualization in my mind, here's an artist's rendition of what that could look like:
And, for reference, this is a baby hippopotamus Olympian (as opposed to full-grown):
So, it's been established that these sausages (or, as I now refer to them, 'coronary failure in a bun') are not appropriate foods to wash down a Starbucks coffee or a bowl of Count Chocula (we have a childish demographic, as well). Therefore I can't understand why people need this food so early in the morning.
"We will be here all day," I said. "And for the rest of the week." I didn't want to have to apologize that our food isn't ready as soon as we arrive at the trailer. In fact, what I really wanted to do was hand the customer a still-frozen Polish sausage, wrapped in raw bread dough. But something tells me that the clientele would not be pleased with such shenanigans.
But it wasn't the early birds looking for worms that were the most annoying (I grew used to their squawking). It was the dodos.
Before I go any further, I want to describe the food cart I worked in, at least enough to get a good mental picture of the outside: There were big signs lining the top of the trailer, on every side, that displayed what we were selling. There was a menu with clearly-marked choices and their corresponding prices. There was a clear plastic counter, so anyone could see into the trailer and see every last possibility available.
Despite these "clues" as to our purpose of business, there continued to be--day after insufferable day--a group of people who would approach the trailer and ask what we sold. Apparently, large banners declaring "Sausage!" and "Home-made buns!" and "WE SELL FUCKING SAUSAGES, YOU MORONS!" did not convey our possibilities adequately enough for some people, who made me want to smack them over the head with a corn dog.
My proposed plan of action may have been a bit over-the-top:
(Goodyear was busy blimping elsewhere, anyways...)
These, combined with the bitter fact that breaks were rare--if present at all during a given work day--made the 11-hour work day seem like weeks, like watching 'The Green Mile.' Staying on my feet for that time was a chore in itself, let alone making hundreds of sausage sandwiches a day, pouring drinks, and counting money.
One of my biggest godsends of the 11 days was the limited menu. Because there was only a few items listed, it meant fewer prices for me to remember, all in even dollar amounts. Even with this blessing, I still managed to fuck up bundled prices and change back. It doesn't seem like a lot of work, adding a $6 sausage with two $3 drinks and a $3 corndog, and then giving back change out of a $20.
Where I would run into trouble was the long string of family members who think it's cute to order "together," by keeping their orders separate from each other. So, adding a $6 sausage with a $2 drink and a $4 loaded chips, with a $3 hotdog and a $3 drink, with a $1 bun and a-- hold on, can you add a hot dog and another small drink to the first one...
Fuck you all.
My brain instantly transmogrified from that scene in 'A Beautiful Mind' to that scene in 'Scanners'.
('A Beautiful Mind')
('Scanners')
Basic mental math is easy once you get a good rhythm going, but even that becomes psychologically draining after 11 straight hours. I mean, I love to do sudokus, but I would never attempt to do them all day, as fast as I can, while other sudokus wait in line to be solved, coming up to the counter and asking, "So, what do you have here?"
By the end of the day, I was ready to call it quits. I just needed a nice, long, hot shower to calm myself after an aggravating day of counting, cooking, and sausage. Unfortunately, that was not in the cards for me, either. As it turns out, the trailer where I was staying had an inefficient hot water heater and would therefore only produce hot water for about 1 minute before thinking to itself, "Human skin loves icy coldness!"
Short showers were all I had to keep myself clean. Sure, I washed my hands on a semi-minutely basis to prevent myself from feeling like an entirely disgusting person, but it was that moment of full-body warmth that so many of us take for granted that was a sweet reminder of home.
Y'know, except for the fact that the bathroom was 3ft by 3ft by 3 ft.
In addition to having limited bathing resources, I used up my four days of laundry rather quickly. This part was entirely my fault, assuming that there would be some form of washing machine or near-by laundromat. Then I was surprised that my clothes got dirty on schedule, and by the end of my stay, my haggard outer-wear reflected my inner self-defeat.
I learned a lot of things, spending 11 days in the food cart. I learned about carnies (a subject I plan on pursuing more heavily in college). I learned that they don't necessarily have tiny hands. They may smell like cabbage (or, in my case, sauerkraut), but you would too if you spent every waking hour processing, cooking, and serving it. I also learned that my feeble feet cannot stand standing for periods beyond 8 hours a day. My feet not only felt like they were about to fall off, but also felt like they wanted to brutally gang-shank me. With some sort of foot-shiv.
Through all of my experience, the last thing I want to do is to tell people to avoid carnival food. In fact, I would encourage it. These carnival folk work damn hard to sell their foods (without breaks during the day). Hell, I could go for an elephant ear, if I could ever stomach going to a fair again.
Sure, it was hard work, but I feel that my time spent in this different world taught me a few things about myself, which makes me glad that I didn't spend my first weeks of the summer on street corners turning tricks.
My next source of income is to teach other people the lessons I've learned from this whole ordeal. Making a lesson plan about my job might be a bit diffcult, though; I'm still not quite clear what my job was.
