Travels to Tennessee
The parking lot is bright and jumbled with little kids, teenagers, and teenagers holding little kids. A grandfather, wiry farm-stock and wrinkled, blued out tattoos visible on his tricep, holds a newborn tightly atop a carousel horse. They spin around and around.
Carnies bark at R to pop some balloons for me, win a prize. We put our money together and I play the ducks. My spider senses can't find which duck hides the larger prize, so I win a tiny stuffed Rottweiler. R takes pictures of him peeking from my sun hat.
Other than children squealing, the carnival is bizarrely still. Unlike in Lawrenceville where music blasts from every ride, booming hip-hop as The Spinner lurches you into space, rock-and-roll for the bumper cars, Elizabethton's offerings are quiet. The rides are longer, but I sorely miss the music. No calliope for my painted horse. No lurching bass to augment The Black Widow as it twists me in another impossible direction.
Later, at the drive-in, there is glorious music and a painted red sky. We eat fistfuls of popcorn, hold hands as 50s warblers sing in the sunset, ready us for the show.
Carnies bark at R to pop some balloons for me, win a prize. We put our money together and I play the ducks. My spider senses can't find which duck hides the larger prize, so I win a tiny stuffed Rottweiler. R takes pictures of him peeking from my sun hat.
Other than children squealing, the carnival is bizarrely still. Unlike in Lawrenceville where music blasts from every ride, booming hip-hop as The Spinner lurches you into space, rock-and-roll for the bumper cars, Elizabethton's offerings are quiet. The rides are longer, but I sorely miss the music. No calliope for my painted horse. No lurching bass to augment The Black Widow as it twists me in another impossible direction.
Later, at the drive-in, there is glorious music and a painted red sky. We eat fistfuls of popcorn, hold hands as 50s warblers sing in the sunset, ready us for the show.