Pink Poodle
Every summer Silver Lake Village hosted a summer festival called, appropriately, the Silver Lake Festival. It was held at the lake itself and ran from a Friday night to Sunday night in July.
The weather was always good at that time of year and the festival itself featured swimming, canoeing and sailing races, a parade with home made floats, a marching band, concession stands, areas set up for assorted games and contests, and an arcade with typical fairground games like “ring toss” and “go fish”. It all culminated with a street dance featuring a live band on Sunday night. Although the lake was a private lake, supposedly accessible only to residents of Silver Lake Village, friends of friends came from other local communities and no one seemed to care. It was the highlight of the summer for Village kids.
I played trumpet in the marching band that led the Festival parades different years, built floats with friends, raced sailboats---and once won a race that included a total eclipse of the sun. It darkened the sky and summoned a wind that put whitecaps on the small, 200-acre lake. I took part in swimming races and played the games and visited the various tables displaying homemade crafts, jams and pickles made by Village women every year.
Although we lived two blocks from the lake my sister never made it to the Festival. She was stricken with cancer when I was six and died at twenty-eight when I was eleven. The years she was ill, the operations she endured, her off-and-on housebound state, and the stress our family experienced over the five-year period took a toll on all of us. She was a teenager when I was born, attractive, fun, smart---top student at the University of Akron in the early 1950’s. She was listed in Who’s Who in the American Colleges and Universities publication of 1952, graduated with a degree in medical technology, bought an MG sports car and seemed to have the whole world at her feet before her initial diagnosis. At Christmas time and birthdays she gave me books. She took me to the Cleveland Museum of Art and to see the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall when the great George Szell conducted what many critics consider to be the top orchestra interpreting the classics in the 20th century. I adored her. Her name was Geraldine but we called her “Gerry.”
While Village volunteers handled virtually the whole festival the arcade section was manned by carnival operators---“carnies”. I don’t know where they came from or who found them but they had the authentic gear and pitch lines to match, tons of lousy prizes and a few enticing ones to get you to spend your money for a chance to win. I never was attracted much to carnival games and mostly avoided that area every year. And maybe it’s still the case, I don’t know, but in the 1950’s people were naïve enough to think they could beat the odds, win whatever game it was and walk off with one of the good prizes, all for 25 cents.
As I strolled along past the gaming stalls I caught it out of the corner of my eye---a stuffed animal, a pink poodle with tufts of fluffy white fur in all the places you’d find fluffy fur on a professionally-groomed poodle. It was about fourteen inches long and had articulated legs so you could pose it as if it were standing, sitting, running---whatever. It was beautiful, the best prize on display at any of the stalls, something I was sure my sister would like if only I could win it for her.
The contest at the pink poodle stall involved throwing five balls into five wicker bushel baskets, the kind apple pickers used in apple orchards in those days. The balls had to stay in the baskets. If so---bingo!---you got your pick of the best prizes. Three out of five balls in the baskets and you got a cheap prize.
It didn’t seem like it would be too hard to win the ball toss. Although the baskets were angled towards whoever was tossing the balls, the baskets seemed large and they seemed pretty close. What’s more, the carnie would demonstrate how easy it was to get a ball in a basket by throwing some himself. I stepped up and handed him my 25 cents.
The first toss stayed in the basket. So did the second. This is easy, I thought. The next three, however, seemed to bounce back out of the baskets, ricocheting like tennis balls off a brick wall.
“Gimme five more balls”, I said, handing the guy another 25 cents. Same deal---two in, three out. Again---same deal. This went on until the four dollars my father had given me for the festival weekend was gone, disappearing into the leather change pouch that creep had around his waist. In less than ten minutes I had no cheap prize and no pink poodle.
Dejected, I trudged home, but not before noticing a price tag on the pink poodle---five dollars. So, you could win it or you could buy it. Actually you couldn’t win it. There was no way to win it.
I passed by my sister’s room and gave her a wave and a wink. Then I sat in my room for a long time staring at what passed for a piggy bank on my desk. It was a metal bank in the shape of a pirate’s treasure chest. There was a pirate’s face painted on the front of it wearing a patch over his eye and a pirate’s hat on his head. I put my allowance in there every week as well as birthday money from grandparents, etc. At my age that was the only way to get any money.
I opened it and dumped the contents on the desk. Then, like a miniature Midas, I put the coins in stacks and counted how much I had---$7.25.
I scooped up five dollars, stuffed it in my pocket and headed back to the lake. There I walked back to the ball toss stall, laid the five dollars out on the counter and bought the pink poodle.
On one hand I was chagrinned at having lost at that “fixed” carnie game---later I learned that there were springs under the bottom of the baskets, and the carnie tensed different ones with a foot pedal hidden under the counter. On the other hand, I felt triumphant that I had succeeded in obtaining the gift I gave Gerry later that day.
“Thank you, thanks for being so thoughtful,” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“At the ball toss game at the festival.”
© Kent Jones 2016
Every summer Silver Lake Village hosted a summer festival called, appropriately, the Silver Lake Festival. It was held at the lake itself and ran from a Friday night to Sunday night in July.
The weather was always good at that time of year and the festival itself featured swimming, canoeing and sailing races, a parade with home made floats, a marching band, concession stands, areas set up for assorted games and contests, and an arcade with typical fairground games like “ring toss” and “go fish”. It all culminated with a street dance featuring a live band on Sunday night. Although the lake was a private lake, supposedly accessible only to residents of Silver Lake Village, friends of friends came from other local communities and no one seemed to care. It was the highlight of the summer for Village kids.
I played trumpet in the marching band that led the Festival parades different years, built floats with friends, raced sailboats---and once won a race that included a total eclipse of the sun. It darkened the sky and summoned a wind that put whitecaps on the small, 200-acre lake. I took part in swimming races and played the games and visited the various tables displaying homemade crafts, jams and pickles made by Village women every year.
Although we lived two blocks from the lake my sister never made it to the Festival. She was stricken with cancer when I was six and died at twenty-eight when I was eleven. The years she was ill, the operations she endured, her off-and-on housebound state, and the stress our family experienced over the five-year period took a toll on all of us. She was a teenager when I was born, attractive, fun, smart---top student at the University of Akron in the early 1950’s. She was listed in Who’s Who in the American Colleges and Universities publication of 1952, graduated with a degree in medical technology, bought an MG sports car and seemed to have the whole world at her feet before her initial diagnosis. At Christmas time and birthdays she gave me books. She took me to the Cleveland Museum of Art and to see the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall when the great George Szell conducted what many critics consider to be the top orchestra interpreting the classics in the 20th century. I adored her. Her name was Geraldine but we called her “Gerry.”
While Village volunteers handled virtually the whole festival the arcade section was manned by carnival operators---“carnies”. I don’t know where they came from or who found them but they had the authentic gear and pitch lines to match, tons of lousy prizes and a few enticing ones to get you to spend your money for a chance to win. I never was attracted much to carnival games and mostly avoided that area every year. And maybe it’s still the case, I don’t know, but in the 1950’s people were naïve enough to think they could beat the odds, win whatever game it was and walk off with one of the good prizes, all for 25 cents.
As I strolled along past the gaming stalls I caught it out of the corner of my eye---a stuffed animal, a pink poodle with tufts of fluffy white fur in all the places you’d find fluffy fur on a professionally-groomed poodle. It was about fourteen inches long and had articulated legs so you could pose it as if it were standing, sitting, running---whatever. It was beautiful, the best prize on display at any of the stalls, something I was sure my sister would like if only I could win it for her.
The contest at the pink poodle stall involved throwing five balls into five wicker bushel baskets, the kind apple pickers used in apple orchards in those days. The balls had to stay in the baskets. If so---bingo!---you got your pick of the best prizes. Three out of five balls in the baskets and you got a cheap prize.
It didn’t seem like it would be too hard to win the ball toss. Although the baskets were angled towards whoever was tossing the balls, the baskets seemed large and they seemed pretty close. What’s more, the carnie would demonstrate how easy it was to get a ball in a basket by throwing some himself. I stepped up and handed him my 25 cents.
The first toss stayed in the basket. So did the second. This is easy, I thought. The next three, however, seemed to bounce back out of the baskets, ricocheting like tennis balls off a brick wall.
“Gimme five more balls”, I said, handing the guy another 25 cents. Same deal---two in, three out. Again---same deal. This went on until the four dollars my father had given me for the festival weekend was gone, disappearing into the leather change pouch that creep had around his waist. In less than ten minutes I had no cheap prize and no pink poodle.
Dejected, I trudged home, but not before noticing a price tag on the pink poodle---five dollars. So, you could win it or you could buy it. Actually you couldn’t win it. There was no way to win it.
I passed by my sister’s room and gave her a wave and a wink. Then I sat in my room for a long time staring at what passed for a piggy bank on my desk. It was a metal bank in the shape of a pirate’s treasure chest. There was a pirate’s face painted on the front of it wearing a patch over his eye and a pirate’s hat on his head. I put my allowance in there every week as well as birthday money from grandparents, etc. At my age that was the only way to get any money.
I opened it and dumped the contents on the desk. Then, like a miniature Midas, I put the coins in stacks and counted how much I had---$7.25.
I scooped up five dollars, stuffed it in my pocket and headed back to the lake. There I walked back to the ball toss stall, laid the five dollars out on the counter and bought the pink poodle.
On one hand I was chagrinned at having lost at that “fixed” carnie game---later I learned that there were springs under the bottom of the baskets, and the carnie tensed different ones with a foot pedal hidden under the counter. On the other hand, I felt triumphant that I had succeeded in obtaining the gift I gave Gerry later that day.
“Thank you, thanks for being so thoughtful,” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“At the ball toss game at the festival.”
© Kent Jones 2016