Dear Abbey

“Dear Abbey – I have two brothers and two sisters.  One brother is in the carnival games business, and the other was just sentenced to death for murder.  My mother died from insanity when I was young.  My two sisters are prostitutes, and my father sells narcotics to feed the family. Recently I met a girl who was released from a reformatory, where she served time for smothering her illegitimate child and I want very much to marry her.  My problem is this.  If I marry this girl, should I tell her about my brother who is in the carnival games business?”

I love telling people I traveled with the carnival.  I love watching their faces first register shock, then light up and dance with intrigue and fascination as they interrogate me about what it was like.  After all, the carnival is that mysterious counter-culture that breezes into town like a band of gypsies, here for a good time (not a long time), leaving only empty wallets, litter, the smell of old booze and barf, and maybe a disease or two behind when they go.

In 1987, when I was 20, I traveled across Canada with Conklin Shows, working for a corndog stand.  That summer, Conklin’s tour included Brandon, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Toronto, with the midway split up between Prince Albert and Thunder Bay for a short stop in between Regina and Toronto.  My experience gave me a rare and privileged glimpse into a lifestyle and culture that most of my counterparts can only make unsavory guesses about.

2012 - this summer - is the 25^th anniversary of my journey.  Today I am a software developer working for a community college.  I ride the bus, or my bicycle, to work.  I live with my electrician husband in a modest home.  We hike, cycle and cross-country ski on weekends.  I don’t completely blend into the middle-aged noise, but I’m not far from it, and I get some small thrill from the experience of someone else’s discovery of that brief aspect of my past.

This isn’t a tale of debauchery and wild abandon.  I’d finished up with that at least a week or two earlier.  I was pretty focused for a 20-year-old, and even though I was mostly there for adventure, I was also there to save money for my next year of college.  I didn’t go to a single party that summer.  Not because they weren’t available, but I had to make a choice.  With the schedule we were expected to keep, working 7 very long days a week, I always chose a good night’s sleep over the abundant debauchery and wild abandon.