The Sag Harbor Carnival is Coming to Town!
Cotton Candy, Candied Apple, Hot Dog! The carnival is coming to town! Growing up in the wilds of Sag Harbor we couldn’t wait for this amazing annual event. It was as if something electric and magical suddenly appeared in the center of the village. As kids, most of our fun came from the natural world around us-the beach, hiking, camping, fishing. We didn’t have access to amusement parks and trips to the city were rare. The carnival coming to town was something we looked forward to all year!
For many years the carnival site was where the post office now stands and before that my father would let them use our vacant lot before it became the A&P. It was enormously exciting to see the rides and booths begin to set up. The ‘Octopus’ seemed the most daring. The ‘Ferris Wheel’ offered an aerial view of the entire village. I remember racing onto the “Merry-Go-Round’ to that one special horse that transported me to another world. Yet the thing that I remember most were the very tiny loaves of Wonder Bread that were used as prizes-I mean very tiny! What made those little loaves of Wonder Bread stay in my memory for so many years? They were an aberration from everything I knew bread to be. I think we won them at the ‘Pick-Up-Ducks’ booth-that’s the one spot that you never walked away from empty handed.
The carnival was a place where you saw almost all of your friends and neighbors. If you close your eyes, I imagine many can still plot out exactly where each ride and booth stood decades later. Always an amazing turnout, it brought this exciting sense of joy into town. It was palpable. The lights, the rickety-rackety sounds of rides and generators and spinning gears, new faces, elation, and sometimes a found dime in the dusty earth.
Each year we also looked forward to the Saint Andrew’s Bazaar which was held in the back-parking lot of the church. There were a few rides there but what made the Bazaar most memorable was the ‘Cake’ and the ‘Parcel Package’ booths. You placed your bet on a certain lucky number, the wheel was spun and if it landed on your number you selected whatever homemade cake you wanted to bring home. My husband Tom said he would spend all of his money at that booth waiting for his number to come up and walking away with a cake. He is a cake-lover to this day. I can still hear the ‘click-click-click’ sound of that wheel spinning. The members of the church would bake the cakes and wrap up prizes for the Parcel Post booth. Like a small county fair, it was a beautiful community event.
We raised our daughter with a yearly visit or two to the carnival as well. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano she looked forward to this annual reoccurrence with the same zeal and enthusiasm as her parents had. What a thrill it was to see it all through her eyes. Her favorite ride was the ‘Gee-Whiz’ and I loved being buckled-up right beside her. A giant stuffed Sponge Bob was the perfect gaming trophy to carry about throughout the evening!
Joy seemed simpler then-and a trip to the carnival was worth the year of waiting. This week (August 3-7) the carnival will return to town-sponsored by the Sag Harbor Fire Department-certainly a most worthy cause and a wonderful place to see your neighbors and friends. The view from the top of the Ferris Wheel is spectacular and there will be fireworks on August 6th. A wonderful way to come together as a community and help to support our firefighters! Hope to see you there!