When I was a kid I did not have that much money but when the travelling fair aka travelling show aka amusement park was in town I used to go there to soak up the atmosphere of the bright lights etc. One free bit of entertainment for me was to sneak around the back and admire the artwork painted on the cabs of the trucks aka lorries. In those days there was a certain diversity of design between various brands of commercial vehicles and there was generally more style in cabs altogether. The engines would spin away providing power to the amusement rides. I have never been sure if the engines were producing electricity or powering hydraulics or maybe a combination of both depending on the item being powered. What ever the case I thought it was ingenious that all the amusement rides were powered off the lorries.
the're called charnies, here in my part of the planet. big trucks that pull up to a vacant lot or a fair grounds and then unfold and bolt togather all these porable amusements. never been a great enthusiast of the kind of rides most of them are. except the ones that are like trains except those never have enough track or go anywhere interesting, and i guess are aimed mainly at the very little kids. i did get a ride with one when i was hitching out of some town i got stuck in because i didn't have enough for a bus ticket back. also i did day labour for them a few times. i like the idea of travelling arround and even setting up and tearing down and cleaning up. you know they do go over where the rides have been with metal detectors to collect up all the loose chainge that might have fallen out of people's pockets while riding them. not just a rumor. i helped do that. they gave me a real good dinner for helping out with that too. but you'd have to be more into people then i am to want to make a life out of actualy running any of that stuff. or seeing much attraction in it either other then to just watch the mechanical action of it and enjoy seeing the engineering that goes into it. there used to be a kind of roller-coaster rig called the mad mouse, that always looked interesting to me, but i never got arround to going on. that's about the only one that really did. i just don't find excitement all that interesting to me. to create and explore are what i do. =^^= .../\...
Hello! As a boy I also loved it when the carnival came to town. Usually it was for the Labor Day weekend which meant - I would be going back to school on Monday so it took a little bit of the fun away. Sometimes I wish I would have run away and joined the carnival because I would know how to do those midway tricks.(like getting the base ball to stay in the wicker basket.) As an adult I painted carnival rides for a few years and had some fun times working and partying with the carnies. Cheers to any carnies out there!
