Traveling Carnival News,Pictures and Videos.

By DEENA WINTER – Lincoln Journal Star

When your parents own a carnival, you can ask for bigger-than-usual presents.

Like a Sky Wheel – a sort of double Ferris wheel.

Mary Panacek’s son, Charles Jr., wanted one when he was a teenager, so she and her husband bought it. Which worked out well because they owned an amusement ride company and could put it on the midway.

That very Sky Wheel will be spinning passengers and churning tummies when the Nebraska State Fair fires up for the 140th year today.

Mary will survey the scene from her lawn chair perched between two huge tractor trailers that contain the offices of the midway operator, Belle City Amusements.

And Charles Jr. will be running around making sure the carnival operates smoothly.

“He’s the boss,” Mary explains. “I do the PR.”

She’s 84 now, and her husband died years ago, so now mother and son continue the company Charles Sr. started at age 18 after he visited a county fair in Wisconsin and saw the pony rides. His family had ponies, so he started giving pony rides at fairs in the 1930s.

He added more rides, and by 1948 he’d incorporated the company.

Which is why Charles Jr. has lived in a carnival all his life.

On Thursday, his T-shirt was covered in dirt as the midway came to life. Workers were attaching gondolas to the Giant Wheel, washing seats on the Sky Wheel, mopping the floor of the Tilt-A-Whirl and testing lights on the Typhoon.

Every summer, Mary, Charles Jr. and his family leave their homes in Florida and travel the country with a crew of about 60 to about 28 fairs.

They finished the Iowa State Fair on Sunday and headed to Nebraska for the first time. They have more than 100 semi-loads of equipment, but they can set up the whole carnival in a day and a half and take it apart in 10 hours.

Charles Jr. says running a midway is getting tougher, with high diesel prices and increasing insurance, parts and maintenance costs.

Although Mary is hesitant to talk about how expensive the rides are, she lets slip that the “glass house” cost a quarter-million dollars and the Himalaya $750,000.

She is on a one-woman crusade to erase the image of carnies as people with “nasty teeth” and long, dirty hair.

Belle City employees undergo drug testing and background checks; are required to wear uniforms; and are banned from having hair below the collar or facial hair beyond a trimmed mustache.

As if to illustrate her point, a woman in a tie-dyed Sturgis T-shirt and a scraggly-haired man hugging a Big Gulp wandered by, asking to see the boss about a job manning “the kiddie rides.”

Mary pointed them toward her son, but whispered that they’d never get a job there, then asked the Lord to forgive her for saying so.

Every time they set up the midway in a new city, they clean all the equipment and replace burned-out light bulbs.

They analyze which rides are most popular by weighing tickets every night. In Des Moines, the Giant Wheel was the most popular.

This year, Mary was going to sit out the season, but ultimately, she couldn’t resist joining the carnival again.

“It was boring,” the matriarch said. “You just miss it. You miss your friends along the route.”

But she never rides the Scorpion or takes a spin on the Yo Yo.

“I would love to,” she said. “I get motion sickness.”

By Dennis Yohnka – The Daily Journal correspondent

Michael Snow is hooked on his brand of show business. At 54, he’s still playing the same circuit he joined 37 years ago, but he loves what he does.

“I couldn’t imagine any other life,” said Snow as he prepared to bring his “Century Wheel” to the midway at the Will County Fair. “I started as the third man on the bumper cars. Now, I drive the semi and I’m mostly a teacher, showing the other folks how to put these rides together and keep them safe.

“I never dreamed I would have been in this so long, but I guess I’m like those people that visit Florida and once they get that sand in their shoes, they just keep going back for more.”

So, for 37 years, Snow has spent seven months of each year on the road. He learned how to cope with a sense of homelessness that others couldn’t endure.

“The movin’ every week … you get used to it,” he said. “It’s like people who live by the airport. They don’t notice the planes. But the visitors are duckin’ under the table. It’s all what you get used to.”

Snow is also used to the six-hour ordeal of erecting a Ferris wheel; the five-hour process of taking it down; and working with five to eight guys they call “green help” (noncarnival workers) to get the jobs done.

“My whole family was teachers, and I guess that’s what I wound up doin’,” he said. “But I never got married so I can do this. It’s not a good thing for a family. You gotta be all in to do this.”

The work has kept Snow in pretty good shape. He stands 5-foot, 10-inches and weighs in under 200 pounds. That’s pretty amazing for a guy who could have eaten like a “carni-vore” — with elephant ears, corndogs and lemon shake-ups daily — since he was 17 and convinced his parents that he would be OK on the road with the carnival.

“I did eat like that for a while, but I started developing high blood pressure when I turned 50,” he said. “The doctor told me to go with more chicken and turkey and I eat cantaloupe or watermelon just about every day.”

Snow said the road crew for the Luehrs Family Amusement Company feels like family to him. He still has his parents, four sisters and a brother back in O’Fallon (near St. Louis), but many more hours are spent with co-workers.

“Some of us bunk together in the crew trailers,” he said. “They’re like little hotel rooms really. Restrooms. Icebox. TV. Bed. Shower. They’re comfortable enough, but I have a camper now.”

And what about your treatment on the road?

“I love some of these towns, especially Peotone,” Snow said. “I enjoy the people. I like the food and the fairgrounds. I even like the folks at the little hardware store I go to.”

And a little farther down the road?

“I really don’t think about retirement,” he said. “It may sound unusual, but I’d like to do this right up to the end. I get to work with hydraulics and plumbing and electrical. Heck, I was once even asked to be like a groupie. Sawyer Brown was playing at the event where we were set up and the boss paid me to go to the show and buy some CDs and get them autographed.”

One more thing: Do you still get a sense of job satisfaction, even after all these years?

“Yes, there is a satisfaction of setting up a ride; washing it; replacing some light bulbs; and then giving the people an enjoyable ride,” he said. “And then when you teach someone else how to do all that … well, it’s like they kind of become a man when they learn how to do it by themselves.”

The annual Will County Fair opens its five-day run in Peotone on Wednesday. Snow arrived on Monday to set up his ride.

Will County Fair

WHEN: Aug. 26-30

WHERE: Peotone-Wilmington Road, Peotone

COST: General admission $3; children under 10 free. Grandstand admission is listed with every event. Must have a ticket if you are occupying a seat.

ENTERTAINMENT: Demolition Derby Aug. 28; carnival rides $1.50 or 16 for $20 daily, Aug. 28 Dollar Day when all rides are just a buck until 5 p.m.

FUN: Baby show 1:30 p.m. Aug. 30.

YUM: Carnival food; beer tent, air-conditioned restaurant.

DON’T MISS: WVLI “The Valley” 95.1 sock hop at the entertainment tent 3-4:30 p.m. Aug. 28.

INFO: (708) 258-9359, www.willcountyfair.org

WCCO-TV

Shanghaied Henri’s at the Minnesota State Fair wants everyone to know about their latest offering: Summit on a Stick.

The company said it’s the first time there will be beer on a stick at the Fair. The treat will be sold at the Summit booth at the Summit stage in the International Bazaar at the Fairgrounds.

They add that the stage features daily shows, including “Bazaar After Dark” bands performing evenings.

By Zac Taylor, Observer-Reporter.Com

Mark McGrath watches attentively from his control panel as the cylindrical carnival ride he is operating rapidly spins several giggling, screaming children at a 45-degree angle some 15 feet in the air.

“They don’t put nobody on this machine that don’t know how to operate it,” McGrath says as he slowly brings the ride to a stop and watches as the children dizzily stagger off, shoving and laughing as they go.

McGrath, a 20-plus year veteran of the carnival business who is working this week at the Washington County Fair, said the commonly held belief that carnival rides are hastily erected, poorly maintained, dangerous contraptions operated by unqualified workers is largely unfounded.

Complicated, fast rides that leave the ground like McGrath’s “Round-Up” – a merry-go-round on steroids that spins fast enough to generate the G-forces needed to keep the occupants standing at its sides from flying out – require at least 18 months of operator training, said McGrath.

Some parents remain fearful of carnival rides.

“I don’t feel they’re safe,” said Robin Dunley of Washington, who was attending the fair Wednesday. “I’m a nervous wreck when I come down here.”

Dunley said that despite her worries, she still allows her children to ride some of the rides. She’s skeptical that the rides can be safe when it seems they are “put up and torn down too fast.”

According to the state Department of Agriculture, the governing body that regulates carnival ride inspections, carnival rides must be inspected by a state-certified inspector each time they are erected, and each time they are deconstructed for storage and transportation.

Companies such as J&J Amusements, the company that is operating the rides at the fair, keep state-certified inspectors on staff who inspect the rides both on erection and deconstruction, and also every morning before operation.

“You’re in more danger in a car,” said J&J ride inspector Matt Pierce.

Pierce said he inspects the rides thoroughly every morning before opening to the general public. Any problems he finds, even minor ones, are reported and fixed immediately.

“The only people I’ve ever seen get hurt on a ride was through their own stupidity,” Pierce said, recalling instances of riders jumping out of their seats before the ride was over, sustaining minor injuries.

McGrath has seen worse.

A man riding a Round-Up at a major theme park at which McGrath was working tried to climb out mid-flight. The man fell into the center area of the ride, snapped his neck on the support bars and died. The man was later found to have been suicidal.

McGrath said such serious accidents are rare, and can be avoided if riders simply heed the instructions of the operators.

“As long as they listen, it’s safe,” he said. “If they don’t listen, they’re going to get hurt.”

Bobby Moran runs the game stand “Tubs,” which involves throwing a softball-sized rubber ball into a plastic tub four feet away.

Moran used to be a ride supervisor, but asked for the change because the job was too intense.

“There is a lot more to it than you would expect,” Moran said, adding that the yearly inspection school, near-encyclopedic knowledge required of the complicated rides and rigorous inspections wore on him over the years.

For McGrath, the training and constant inspections are worth the enjoyment he gets from the carnival life.

“I’ll be honest, I Iove this job,” McGrath said as he pulled the lever to the Round-Up, and sent another gaggle of giggling kids spinning through the air.

The P.T. Barnum of our time: Mr. Ward Hall, retired president of The International Independent Showmans Association, shares his thoughts on the heydays of The Ohio State Fair

by Liz Reyna – Lansing City Pulse

At the Ingham County Fair, it´s easy to be intimidated.

With the array of faces behind booths beckoning you to throw this, or fish for this or take a shot at that, it’s like walking through a foreign bazaar.

And, it’s easy to envision the hawkers behind the booths as a stereotype: the modern American gypsy, the “carnie,” who is portrayed in movies, TV and folklore as freakish and scary. But talking to carnival workers at the fairgrounds in Mason last Saturday, those stereotypes were knocked down like a stack of vintage pop bottles with an air gun.

Carnival workers, like Joseph Bray of Jackson, are just doing their job.

Tossing a softball in front of the “Ball Buster” game, Bray, 18, plans to travel on the road with the carnival. He had only four days on the job.

“I was searching for a job,” he said. “I needed money to try to pay for college, so I decided to just call up and give it a shot. I love this job. It’s more fun than any other job I’ve had and it’s definitely made me want to go to a lot more fairs, too.”

As a newcomer, Bray was assigned a game. But 20-year carnival veteran Dennis Hamm got first pick. Watching him in front of the “1-in-you-win” basketball game, it’s clear why.

“Basketball! Come on in! Everybody wins today!” he yells at passersby. “Take your time aim right for it, get it on this wall, and you get any one of these prizes, honey. Bears, pigs, balls, cats, pandas!”

Hamm got his start in 1989 in Reno, Nev. When the carnival came to town, he jumped on and never looked back.

“It’s part of my lifestyle. I enjoy the kids, I enjoy the crowds and I like smiles,” he said. “It’s all family and it’s business.”

“When I started, I started out on the rides,” Hamm said, who is also a pastor in Byron Center. “You slept in your own rides. I was in a Gravitron. You could shut the door down on it. (We had) our stuff on the back deck, we’d fill up water buckets with hot water and got washed up. It was just like I thought it would be.”

These days, Hamm has a lot of stories to tell. He recalled an incident at the New York State Fair in the late 1990s when a tornado devastated the carnival, killing two.

“I could write a book, honey, I’ve seen almost everything you could imagine,” he said.

Pedaling down the fairway through a crowd, “Mike” and his giant yellow tricycle speaks in rhyme to children passing by.

“You’re as smart as can be and you’re going to make straight A’s at the university,” he rhymed.

Mike’s real name is Jim Herrington, and has been fair performer since 1981.

“I actually started performing to get over the bad vibes of Vietnam,” Herrington, 60, said. “I started singing in the streets waiting for my college G.I. bill money to come through. And so I performed in the streets until I joined with the fair.”

After a stint at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, he came back to Michigan, where his family is from.

Herrington also performs as “Pa Caboodle” in his show, the Caboodlestoppers, with his family, often on stilts. Traveling around sky-high, Herrington is far from the carnival stereotype.

“I like to relate positively with people, make rhymes about the kids, and make jokes,” he said. “We have enough in life that’s tearing people down. I like to be the person who builds them up.”

By CHRISTINA GUENTHNER – Argus-Press

The family behind the carnival rides at the Shiawassee County Fair knows the business well – they have been involved with it for more than 150 years.

Now owned by the fifth generation, Skerbeck Brothers Shows has roots all the way back to 1857 when the Frank Skerbeck family decided to trade their linen factory for a circus in Aussig, Bohemia.

After some time, Frank’s son – also named Frank – ended up touring as a circus performer in America during the 1870s with P.T. Barnum’s show before immigrating in 1880 and settling in Wisconsin. He started a circus with his family there in 1882, touring the Midwest in the 1880-90s.

Frank Skerbeck attended the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he saw a new innovation, the Ferris Wheel.

“This tremendous mechanical invention directly led to the birth of the American carnival,” according to family history.

Because of what he saw, Frank bought his first merry-go-round in 1897 and began to transition his business from the traditional circus to a carnival.

Frank’s son Joe Skerbeck operated wild west shows, medicine shows and traveling attractions of all types. By 1908, he joined his father in the carnival business.

Joe’s children, Eugene and Pauline Skerbeck, took over the ownership of the show in 1952, and operated it as Skerbeck Amusement Company until 1971.

Eugene’s sons, Joe and Bill Skerbeck, took over ownership in 1972 and have operated it as Skerbeck Brothers Shows since that time.

“Since 1972, the show has more than doubled in size through acquisition and growth,” family history says.

Today, the carnival has two units that travel mostly across Michigan, sometimes venturing into northern Indiana. Joe Skerbeck heads one up, and Bill Skerbeck and his wife C.J. are in charge of the other, which will be traveling to the Shiawassee County Fairgrounds.

The sixth generation is already involved in the show and on the road. Bill’s son Dustin Skerbeck, 23, graduated from Northern Michigan University and is now the maintenance and rides supervisor. Dustin’s wife, Cindy, is the food concessions manager. Bill’s daughter, Carly Skerbeck, 21, attends NMU but works in game concessions during the summer.

Bill’s mother, Arlene Altenburg, and her sister-in-law, Cheryl Kedrowicz, both work in the office at the carnival. Arlene, now 80, has been on the road with the show since she was 14 years old.

Arlene’s brother Norb Kedrowicz also is the safety manager for the carnival group traveling to Shiawassee County.

Between both touring units, the family has at least 16 members involved in the business at this time.

Most of the family involved in the show spends about six months of the year on the road and the other six months in the Escanaba area, performing maintenance and preparing for the next carnival season.

Joe Skerbeck’s daughter-in-law, Sonja Skerbeck, said it has been interesting to see the business grow and develop over the years.

“We’ve seen the organization increase substantially in terms of the events that we do each year,” she said.

Weather plays a big role in how successful each event is.

“It’s show business,” she said. “You hope for the best, that’s not always how it goes. … But, we’ve been managing to pull it off for the last 150 years.”

And the constant change in scenery keeps things going.

“We throw a party for a lot of people every week,” Sonja said.

KAHRIN DEINES Of The Gazette Staff

Some of the carnies visiting town for the Montana Fair have a new hobby: knitting hats for babies and neck-warmers for soldiers.

Self-titled the Itty Bitty Knitting Committee, the group gathers to share stitching knowledge and enjoy each others’ company in the months they are away from home.

“The carnival is pretty much a melting pot, but I would not normally be sitting down socially with most of these girls, so this brings us together,” said Margaret Atkins, one of the third-generation owners of The Mighty Thomas Carnival.

At Atkins’ urging, the group of about 15 food vendors, game operators and others began meeting to learn how to knit in May.

“It’s a difficult thing to learn because you drop stitches and make mistakes and so this gives them a support group,” said Atkins, who picked up knitting needles again when her first grandchild was on the way five years ago.

It wasn’t until she had lost two grandchildren, though, that she decided to start sharing the craft with carnival employees.

Atkins, 62, spent last winter knitting miniature booties for premature babies. The work offered therapy after her daughter’s premature twins died about 15 months ago. An anonymous knitter had left little booties for them when they were still alive.

“I’ve found that when you make things for people, you think about them,” Atkins said.

Despite days that often run 12 hours or more, the new carnival knitters have managed since May to knit 65 miniature hats for premature babies that they are now donating to Billings Clinic. And for their next group project, they are knitting wool neck-warmers for soldiers in Afghanistan.

“It’s very relaxing and after a stressful day it’s really nice,” said Laura Miller, a 31-year-old Billings native who joined the carnival 13 years ago.

Through the knitting group, Miller has also made her 3-year-old son a scarf and a blanket, and she has quit smoking cigarettes.

“It’s helped me,” Miller said. “It gives me something to do with my hands.”

While the meditative repetition of stitching row upon row can be a welcome release from the hard work of carnival life, the projects are also a chance to learn how to keep going when things don’t go well, Atkins said.

“Sometimes in your life you can’t fix your mistakes, but this is a process where you can,” she said. “I think that’s been good for some of them. Maybe they’ve never been challenged to make it as good as they can.”

By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ – ABC NEWS Business Unit

State fair season is beginning and, for many, that means one thing: food. Lots and lots of food, often deep fried, on a stick or deep fried and on a stick.

Can you say fried pineapple on a stick? Or pork chop on a stick? Or, even more perplexing, salad on a stick? Then there’s deep-fried Milky Way bar on a stick, meatball on a stick, cheesecake on a stick, fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick and don’t forget about the fried pickle on a stick.

It seems like everything at the fair just tastes better on a stick.

Click Here for Photos of State Fair Food Favorites

Fair-goers from Iowa to Texas to Minnesota marvel each year at the various concoctions, returning to old favorites and trying new treats.

This year at the 158th Wisconsin State Fair, for instance, all the hype is about chocolate-covered bacon.

It has been a runaway hit, selling 7,000 slices — unexpectedly — in the first day of the fair Thursday. Teams now are working through the night to ensure that there is enough bacon for the fair with nearly 100,000 slices expected to be sold by the end of the 10-day event.

“You get a little bit of the sweet and you get a little bit of the saltiness. So you mix those two loves together and that’s where chocolate bacon came from,” said Jessica Deeg of The Machine Shed restaurant in Pewaukee, Wis., the maker of the treat. “It’s a craze around here and it’s awesome.”

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, it is served on a stick.

So what are the top foods at this year’s fairs? ABC News scoured the country and came up with our own list of top favorites. Feel free to add your favorites to the comment section below.

1. Caramel Apples

2. Belgian Waffle on a stick

3. Deep-Fried Oreo Cookies

4. Corn Dogs

5. Frozen Coffee On a Stick

6. Cotton Candy

7. Funnel Cake

8. Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

9. Deep-Fried Norwegian Banana Split

10. Open-Faced Grilled Spam Sandwich

Read More >>

Elizabeth Ayres – Herald-Citizen Staff

COOKEVILLE — People are more likely to remember the carnival rides or the candied apples over any people they may meet at the fair. The faces change every so often, as do the rides, but some things are constant: the husband-and-wife team of Jerry and Joanna Geren, who bring the fair to town every year; their adorable Dashchund Minnie, with her sparkly, monogrammed collar; and Joanna’s “traveling garden,” pots of flowers and vegetables that line the walkway to the Gerens’ office trailer in the middle of the Putnam County Fairgrounds.

Geren Rides is a family business in every way. The family’s affiliation with the midway began when Jerry’s father ran away from home many years ago. “He joined the carnival,” Jerry said. “A lady that had a food booth more or less took him in, fed him and gave him a place to sleep, and he did whatever it took to make ends meet.”

For years, the business has been run by Jerry and his wife, who was a dental assistant before she married her husband more than 50 years ago. “My parents said, ‘Uh-oh!’” said Joanna when asked of her parents’ reaction to marrying a midway man. “Really, they just wanted me to be happy.” “I told her, ‘We aren’t going to be like normal people, where I go one way and you go the other and we meet up later. We are going to be around each other 24 hours a day,’” Jerry said.

“He’s 75 and he’s never had another job but this, so we’ve been around for a long time,” Joanna said. “I’ve looked at him for over 50 years, and I still enjoy looking at him.” The Gerens pride themselves on running a family-friendly business, which she explained is par for the course when your own family is on the road with you the majority of the year. “Midway families tend to be real close. You’re family is right here with you,” Joanna said. “As soon as they’re old enough, they start having responsibilities. They’re taught to work. And traveling from town to town, they tend to learn real quick.”

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