Last weekend, I went to the Carolina Classic Fair. Though a Winston-Salem native, I hadn’t been since the controversial rebrand that changed the name from the Dixie Classic in 2019. I walked in and veered left, following a cobbled path, soon finding myself in a colonial village of sorts. Clangs rang out from a blacksmith’s workshop and a man smoked a pipe as he tanned a rack of leather. It felt as though I had stumbled right into the forgotten heart of 19th-century middle America. Nestled within this relic of an itinerant America was the carnival — it reeked crudely of snake oil, and I half-expected a salesman to mosey through at any moment.
In the distance, I spotted a weathered magician. His sleeves were rolled up and crinkled at the elbows, and he wore a smile that said his mind was fried from a week of performance. I sat at his show for a while, until he needed volunteers and called me “the one [he really wants in red].” I played along, hoping to assume the role of a worldly supernumerary for a moment. There I realized a small-town fame among a crowd of twelve somethings. He tried to hypnotize me a bit later, but told me I wasn’t hypnotizable. I wandered toward the games and rides, feeling a strange peace amidst the flashing lights and gimmicks. A sea of red clown hair gleamed before me in the sun. The breeze carried with it fryer grease laced with powdered sugar.
I threw a baseball at a wall of glass bottles and watched the glass shatter for a small fee at a game booth. The fair seemed to personify the city — characters meandered down avenues built for everyone, occupied by two kinds of elegant servants. At a certain point, I sat down for a caricature and wondered what kind of exaggeration I warranted. I quite enjoyed watching the lady draw; her face held a slightly mischievous but contagious smile that never wavered.
On my way out, I plopped into a psychic’s booth, and she read my fortune. I thought there would be no better place than a fair to have my future relayed to me by a last-minute mystic. She told me a lot of truths. Most significant to me, however, was that we had the same ring on. As I walked through the fluorescent arches that thanked me for coming and urged me to come back next year, I relaxed into a small smile of victory. I felt that at the beginning of that day, I was perhaps still disillusioned by everything without having done anything, but I think my carnivalesque outing reinstilled the kind of childish thrill we always cling to and never fully let go.
