Here in Wisconsin summer-time means church parking lot carnivals. I remember Spencer mentioning it once long ago when we were living in Wauwatosa, that every church seemed to have its weekend to hire some carnival rides and games and throw a party in their parking lot. The Serbian Cultural Center, which is in my parents' old neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee, also joins in the fun. We drove down with the boys a couple of weekends ago for Serb Fest.
The cultural hall (which was similar to halls of the same name in our own church, complete with basketball hoops tucked up out of the way and a stage at the far end for theatrical productions) was set up with round tables for people to sit and eat the food purchased from the tables along the wall. It was delightfully intimate with a dessert table that looked like a bake sale. Plates of baked goods crowded in together and had that unmistakable made-in-the-kitchen-of-some-goodly-stern-faced-grandmother-who's-love-language-consists-of-discipline-and-good-food look to it. And indeed, many such grandmothers were seated along the wall behind, over-seeing the proceedings and gossiping together in Serbian. The food was delicious and our meal was accompanied by a traditional band strumming and singing on the unlit stage. It was great.
And then came the rides. Eliot was very shy of the rides at first. It took three failed attempts to get him onto the ferris wheel. Once on board he kept giggling and saying how fun it was. Words belied by the vice-like grip he had on my arm the whole time, flapping his hand away for a milisecond to wave at Rissie and Peter as we went past. Eventually, however, he softened to it and wanted to go on the ferris wheel again and again. The Tilt-a-Whirl was another one that he wasn't certain of at first. He was excited to get on the ride, which helped him last through the long line, but once it came to sitting down inside the shell-like seat and getting clamped in, he balked. Knowing that he would like it once it got going I pulled him in beside me and pulled down the bar. Sure enough, as we started to spin and laugh, he had a great time. The Tilt-a-Whirl was another that he wanted to go on a second time
Standing in line is tough work for little guys.
It's tough work for big-little guys too.
Eliot wasn't too sure about the roller coaster when it was discovered that no adults were allowed. The attendant was really great about it and boomed, "That's okay! You go on, I'll still be here when you get your nerve up!" Peter, however, decided that he was going to ride it even if it meant going alone. He looked about himself with an expression of happy expectation while the buckling-up was going on. And then it started to move.
The roller coaster was not wild by any means (attached as it was to an electrical cable that stretched from a pole in the center of the circuit) but there was a lot of rumbling and jolting about. The expression of happy expectation was immediately replaced by one of fierce concentration, as though Peter was trying, by shear force of will, not to be tossed into the dirt. As he passed by us we would shout and cheer his name and a self-concious grin would tug at the corners of his mouth, but not enough to break his concentration. Sometimes he would glance about quickly, but always just too late, and he would wind up catching a glimpse of the people just beyond us. When the ride finally came to a stop he climbed down from the platform with a big smile on his face and announced that he would be going on the roller coaster only once because, "it was not fun."
What's a carnival without cotton candy? I was going to get the boys each their own, until I saw the person ahead of me in line handed a wad of blue fluff that was easily twice the size of their head. Then I decided that we could all share.
The boys did a pretty good job of sharing it too. They would take turns holding it and tearing chunks off.
The only trouble with cotton candy is that it's terribly sticky, and in the humid summer evening it began to drip a bit and I started finding it stuck to all sorts of strange places: my purse, my hair, my arm. So after we'd all had our fill, the bit that remained on the stick was made to disappear while I took the boys on one more Tilt a Whirl ride.
At the end of the evening Eliot decided that he wanted to try out the roller coaster after all. When Peter saw that Eliot was going, he decided that he needed to go as well.
When the roller coaster jerked forward, the same look of concentration came over Peter's face and for a moment I thought that he might be saying to himself, "Oh shoot, what have I done?" But then Eliot started laughing. And suddenly all of the jolting and rumbling and going up and down became hilariously fun and both Peter and Eliot thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the ride. Later, when Peter was asked what his favorite ride was he said it was the roller coaster, "but not the first time, just the second time, because the first time I was not with my friends." Having your brother by your side can turn even a scary ride into a fun adventure.
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