Half A Freak

Lofty endeavors, such as divine mystical understanding, selfless service to mankind or subtle life lessons of any kind are not the main attraction at the State Fair.
The prevailing venue is that of rickety thrill-rides, rigged gambling, mybloggers foods and lots and lots of hype.

The crowd consists of an ambling blank faced hoard, devoid of any thought loftier than, "should I get me another Elephant Ear?"
Fair food consists of vinegar soaked French Fries limp with grease, turkey drumsticks roasted to the point of turkey jerky, great pink plumes of cotton candy, amorphous wads of deep fried cheese, and the all time staple favorite, the Corn Dog or Pronto Pup.
Food vendors attempting to peddle sprouts, tofu, or steamed vegetables fail miserably and almost immediately.
The Midway is where the crowd goes to be dropped from great heights or slung around at high speeds, while listening to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell.
Attractions such as the Meditation Pit or the Spiritual Reading tent attract few visitors.
Another favorite, the gaming area is absolutely puzzling, fascinating and a source of wonderment to Physics and Engineering professors alike. The accompanying barkers explain loudly and incessantly, how easy it is to toss a quarter on to a plate and win your choice of a giant stuffed animal.
If truth in advertising laws applied their patter would go something like this, "Hey you there! Yeah you!, with the obviously inept throwing arm, wanna loose your money?" All you gotta do is toss your hard earned quarters on these slick, convex plates. Probability of pulling it off is approximately 1 in a 100 million, give it a try. We guarantee you’ll throw your money directly on the ground, step right up!"

Missing at today’s fair due to the current era of annoying social correctness is the once infamous Sideshow.
We no longer allow ourselves to view Freaks openly and in public, Freak viewing is restricted to the family television. The Alligator Boy, Tiny Lady, and Monkey Girl, have been replaced by the transsexual who was once a man who was then changed to a woman, who now wants to be a man again so he can enjoy a homosexual relationship with his own uncle, who was neutered in a horrible mowing mishap.
It was easier comprehending the idea of a guy who was half reptile.

To me the Sideshow was the heart or in some cases the double heart of the Fair. In one of those seamy Sideshow tents something happened that profoundly changed me forever.
As a young child going to the Fair included parental accompaniment. For one thing the Fair wasn’t located in a pasture like it is now, it was downtown, and as a kid you didn’t go downtown by yourself especially to the Fair.
I’m not sure I even wanted to go to the Fair without mom and dad, it was sort of scary, it was crowded, and chocked full of weirdos. I didn’t have squat for money, so if nothing else I needed the folks to subsidize my outing.

As kids the only thing at the Fair worth seeing was the Midway and of course for me the Sideshow, unfortunately my parents had absolutely no time for the Sideshow, they were much more interested in the Citrus County Orange Pavilion.
We always had to spend the agonizingly appropriate amount of time going through each boring pavilion, looking at the peanut growers, the seemingly endless agriculture displays and the apiarists with their bee stuff. Big deal ! We were then forced to slowly wander through the Livestock Expo. Dad was once a Kansas farmer so I guess I understood his longing to re-experience his youth on the farm. Actually I thought the Livestock Expo was pretty cool, it stunk with an intensity that is hard to describe, funk like you can’t imagine. I used to tease my sister, Linda, by pointing out the great steaming mounds of cow and pig crap. She would always squawk loudly about how gross it was, and tattle to Mom that I was making her look at crap. Leaving Olfactory Hell we headed for the Midway.

My sister and I were like anxious horses at a starting gate, we couldn’t wait to get spun around until we puked. Mom and Dad would offer a few words of caution, and suggest tame rides like the merry go round or the baby Ferris wheel. Linda and I would beg to go on the Flaming Wheel of Sudden Death. Eventually Mom and Dad would acquiesce and let us go on a thrill ride, we would spin around at great speeds until we puked and/or wet our pants. Every year as we hit the Midway I would start my subtle campaign to see the Sideshow, it was an up hill battle, but I had a single-minded objective and would not be denied. Part of the problem with the Sideshow was its proximity to the girlie shows. By today’s standards the girlie shows of the Midway were about as naughty as the Weekie Wachee Mermaid routine. I would point out to Dad the educational aspect of the sideshow. I would explain to him that since I had never been to Europe, seeing the great giant rats of the French Sewers would be a once in a lifetime educational opportunity. He would readily dismiss the exhibit as a fraud and explain something about the rats actually being Louisiana nutrias. He had an explanation for it all, to him the Sideshow was a series of well orchestrated frauds. He used to say, "it’s all smoke and mirrors, don’t waste your money." I would even try to capitalize on his weakness for farm life by pointing out the two-headed cow. Nothing seemed to get past his stoic refusals, frustrated. I decided to try a sneak attack. As kids we were well chaperoned, breaking out on a solo mission while at the fair was almost impossible, I say almost because over the years my desire to see the Sideshow had motivated me to figure out an escape route. The folks weren’t much on the Penny Arcade, I guess they had seen it all before, and it was noisy, a bit stinky, crowded with kids, and to them, once again a waste of money. We had over the years established a Penny Arcade routine.
Mom and Dad would take us to the tent, go in for about five minutes and then, tell us we had a remaining twenty five minutes in which to play the pinball machines test our strength at the arm grip, view the old Buster Keaton stereoscopes, flatten a Lincoln penny in the metal press, etc . This routine had offered up a chance for escape. I planned to swear my sister to secrecy duck out the back of the Arcade and haul ass to the Sideshow. The distance was about two hundred yards, mired by slow moving crowds. I could make it in about four minutes leaving me plenty of time for a tour of the Sideshow. I had the plan detailed in my mind, right down to the minute. I even knew exactly what I wanted to peruse once I was inside the tent.
The seductively enticing Snake Lady was on the top of my list followed by the Alligator Man and the Tiny Lady who lived in a bottle. I would hurry past the Sword Swallower and the Fire-Eater, and had straight for the Giant Rat, Two-Headed Cow, and Siamese Twins. I really wanted to see those Siamese Twins. If I had any precious time left, I could catch a glimpse of the less fantastic freaks such as the Fat lady, Bearded Woman, and Monkey Girl. The day came, we were heading for the Penny Arcade. I had to remain poker faced or my dad might suspect something, I couldn’t afford for him to say. "I’ve never seen you so excited about the Penny Arcade," he might then follow me in to see what all the excitement was about, the plan would be foiled. It was all about to happen, the folks escorted us to the entrance of the arcade and dutifully prepared to post guard outside. I gave my sister a wink, hurried past the pinball machines and ducked out the back. I was free! I whipped around, focused a determined stare at the seductive Sideshow banners, and executed a broken field run any pro running back would have been proud of. Owing to my sense of anticipation and intense will, I made it under the allotted four minutes. As I prepared to cough up my fifty cents and enter the tent I looked up in wonderment at the explicit banner depicting the Snake Lady, I thought to myself she was the most beautifully seductive creature I had ever laid eyes on, I couldn’t wait. Mere seconds and a few steps were all that separated me from what I imagined as the event of a lifetime. I paid the guy at the entrance, a freak in his own right, stepped through the tent flap, and was in. Snake lady, Snake Lady, my eyes scanned feverishly. Standing in a corner on an unpainted wooden platform was a pudgy middle aged woman holding a listless Boa Constrictor. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit kind of like the one my mom wears when she works in the yard during the summer. Underneath the bathing suite she was wearing a badly tattered beige body suit, it made her look like she had saggy dingy brown skin, the opposite of what the body suit was intended to accomplish. Instead of being beautifully seductive as the banner had portrayed, she reminded me more of Mable Nelson, the elderly principal of Roosevelt Elementary School, a fine and gracious woman, but not at all seductive.
The Snake Lady was the first in a stream of disappointing images. The enticing artistically licensed banners outside no more resembled the people inside than my crude stick figure renderings resembled sexy Bond Girl Ursula Andress. The Alligator Boy had some rare skin disease that granted made him look pretty weird, but an actual Alligator with a man’s head, that was stretching artistic license to the point of ridiculousness. The Tiny Lady in a bottle was a scam, smoke and mirrors just as dad had told me. She was a thirty-eight inch dwarf, nowhere near the six inch high lady I had expected, based again on the misleading banner outside. The bottle she lived in was big enough to house the family Collie. My disappointment now mounting I turned toward the rest of the freaks.
The Two Headed Cow had been dead for decades, and for all I knew could have been a stuffed animal. The Giant Parisian Sewer Rat was not very rat looking, I really didn’t know what a nutria was, but I was starting to think maybe dad knew what he was talking about. The Siamese twins were authentic, they were joined at the head, and I guess they had to stay that way, since separating them meant only one of them would be able to continue living. I imagined how very difficult their life must be, and as I viewed them a strange uneasiness washed over me.

We had always been taught as kids not to stare at people who were different, My parents explained that some people got dealt a bad hand in life and other people staring at them only made it worse. Everywhere I looked there were pockets of people pointing and staring blank faced at the various freaks, the whole ordeal was starting to feel very sordid. My eyes scanned for something real and spectacular but were met with one disappointment after another. The mundane Fire-Eater was now starting to catch my interest. There was a juggler, a guy in a dirty tuxedo doing pitiful magic tricks even I could figure out, and an overweight lady with a spotty beard ----- big deal! Looking at my watch, I had about six minutes remaining, just enough time to get back and sneak into the arcade undetected. Just t I was thinking what a disappointing hyped up bunch of crap the Sideshow had been, I stopped to take a final look at what was billed as the Half Lady, it was just some poor woman with no legs. As I paused in front of her to gape, she looked up at me with eyes that seemed to have infinite wisdom and understanding. I felt she looked past my blank gaze and in to my deeper consciousness, which really wasn’t much for my eight years of age. Being startled by her piercing stare, I felt compelled to say something. I hadn’t communicated in any way with any of the other Freaks since I guess I regarded them as exhibits and didn’t think much of their humanity. Not knowing what to say, I blurted out naively, "what’s it like being a Freak?" She leveled her piercing eyes at me and stated with precision and with a sense of infinite understanding, "don’t you know?" I gave her a puzzled look, turned away confused and headed for the exit. Another great broken field run and I was back at the Arcade, no one the wiser, except my sister who’s kitchen duty responsibilities I assumed for the next month, under the guise of being a benevolent big brother. I wondered for weeks what that half a person was trying to tell me. I felt she had tried to convey much in those few words, "don’t you know?" I had only my nine-year old brain to figure out her puzzling comment, but It finally came to me after much pondering. You see, the real Freak was me.

I had betrayed my parent's trust, risked a stern belt spanking, and a month's worth of restrictions, and had let myself be completely duped by nothing more than plain old garden variety hype. I had risked an array of consequences just to gape at some folks who I shouldn’t have been staring at in the first place. Who they were as human beings, their dreams, and aspirations, ultimately transcended their inconsequential physical abnormalities. The real Freak was the blank faced little nine-year old Voyeur.
I got something out of that Sideshow experience, and it wasn’t what I had expected, I believe it was something much more.