when you first arrive, you're surprised to see how many folks decided to camp in a parking lot
which was a few weeks ago a field of corn or soybeans or maybe sorghum. but there are all sorts of rv type things stretching out row after row after row. as you turn toward where you're parking, you notice a rebel flag flying near a cluster of port-a-johns. there must be folks in rvs of some sort who put it up and you wonder if they realize it looks like the flag is flying over a tiny community of three green, stinking, outdoor toilets. you think about how folks at coney island always put their beach towels down right next to the trash baskets and guess this happens a lot to people who aren't much aware of their surroundings.you walk across a stubble field, corn cobs and fat, dry stalks smashed down in neat rows, toward the gate. at the gate, between two posts, you see two boards nailed up like shelves. each is loaded down with bottles and cans of lite beer of every imaginable sort. you have arrived right in the middle of everything, the second of three days, early afternoon. you can see the tops of massive
trebuchets looming over kiddie carnival rides. you didn't really know what you were getting into, did you? you weren't even thinking about a midway. ferris wheel. carousel. you wander in and over to the fence that keeps you from wandering out into the monstrous machines and the field beyond where the pumpkins all splatter. you hear a voice on a loudspeaker talking about a pumpkin flying wild and possibly heading the wrong direction. he does not sound at all worried. on the contrary, he reports this in a surprisingly gleeful tone. it is excitement and excitement is good. as a paranoid person you were already prepared for this. you have spent several days reminding yourself how these machines are made by brilliant crews who work very carefully to keep pumpkins from flying wild and taking off the head of some poor, unsuspecting fool wandering around the midway with a mouth full of cotton candy. and thirty seconds into the event you find out you wasted your time. the pumpkins most certainly might break loose and kill you today. you are surprised how easy it is to accept this and move on.you watch a few pumpkins fly from the old fashioned monsters and begin to eye the tents smelling of fried happiness. you pass by the skoal tent. you certainly weren't expecting a skoal tent. the skoal tent proudly displays an american flag. it also proudly displays the rebel flag. this is a flag for a country that no longer exists and hasn't for quite some time. you're not sure why they still have a flag. you make a mental note to see what other defunct countries still have flag bearing contingents. later in the day you will see skoal girl, a very sassy young woman in what
looks like a blue neoprene cheerleading outfit, walk toward one of the green portable toilets near the fence keeping you off the cannons. a few seconds after she walks in you see a guy who looks like what would happen if santa did a brief stint with zz top and then joined the military in world war one rather drunkenly steering an atv on the other side of the fence. his hat is askew and he barrels straight toward the green toilet. skoal girl is taking a long time in there, which is unusual for a woman in a toilet of that sort. santa slams into the toilet at low speed and bumps it slightly. however, from the inside, you figure it must be more than a little upsetting. you imagine sloshing. splashing. skoal girl does not come screaming out. santa backs up and nearly bumps the toilet again, but instead brings his vehicle up beside toilet and waits. slowly, skoal girl comes out stomping, rounds the corner and has a surprisingly calm conversation with santa. you decide that nothing will make you feel better about a rebel flag flying over the skoal tent but this certainly moves you somewhere toward better.but back to the food. as you head toward the tents the sweetie mentions nazis and when you realize he's not saying nachos you turn to look. they are gone but the two friends you are with saw them too, one man with a swastika on his shirt, the other two with equally unsettling exteriors. your stomach hurts. you feel your skin getting tighter. maybe your body is battening down. you are now afraid you will see more like when you see a spider and then start thinking about how many spiders are out there and how many of them are probably in your house. your people keep navigating toward the food. you know you'll feel better with chili cheese fries in your belly and the giant paper cup of them settles you a bit. later there will be funnel cakes. you wonder who gets cream of crab soup in the middle of a soybean field next to a tent with a mechanical bull in it but there are quite a few folks in line. none of them are nazis.
the cannons are the last to fire. they are massive and all in a line. you are behind the fence and
you can tell the sweetie wants to be out there, hauling around tanks of compressed air or fuel or whatever, dragging up a good supply of pumpkins, using heavy tools to move the barrel of the cannon up. you want to be out there, too and it is difficult to stand there behind drunk college boys trying to pick up girls when you want to see pumpkin carnage and help cause it. you want to light fuses, load ammunition. the first one fires more quietly than you expect. some of them go nearly a mile and although you can't really see that far you tell yourself you can and you watch the fat orange projectiles spin stem over belly in wild arcs across a perfectly clear sky. they don't all sound the same but the sounds are all hissing and thumping and deep. low. bass. it is the kind of sound you feel in your chest more than in your ears and the smoke that curls from the cannon barrels is the only way you can tell when some of them fire. they are so fast your eyes just can't catch up.the cannons finish and you turn with your friends to leave. you bought a straw cowboy hat for six bucks to keep the sun from your eyes. your friend bought herself a baseball cap with a pumpkin tearing across it. the two men in your group were not lured by souvenirs. the field with the
cannons and midway was soybeans and you put a dried pod in your pocket. you think about what you loved here- the explosiveness, pumpkins screaming out of cannons taller than your house, the opportunity to purchase any food in its fried form, the cleverness and beauty of the machines. you think about the nazis and how they love the same things. this makes you feel sick for a bit. you walk back by one or two rebel flags, drunk clusters of people in trucks made mostly of stereo and speakers. you think about how you've spent your life thinking about what you don't have in common with nazis and people who live with their sort of fear. you want the world to be different and you've always thought this was the way to go about it, showing who you are. showing who they are. now you're thinking about how you love funnel cakes and nazis love them, too. and perhaps this is where that different world starts, finding where your lives intersect, where your vocabulary overlaps. catapults. motorcycles. carnival rides. trebuchets. funnel cakes.
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