It’s that time of year again — and the Easton Fireman’s Carnival is now in the books.
The parking lot at Silverman’s Farm was packed on Tuesday for opening night. Walking across Sport Hill Road toward the firehouse green, I caught the scent of the grills mixed with cotton candy and popcorn. You didn’t have to walk far before seeing kids of all ages having a blast on the rides.
Going on opening night is a veteran move. The lines are shorter than over the weekend, and the crowd is more, well, Easton. I arrived not long after my wife and kids, and bumped into friends and acquaintances on my way to find my family among the rides. The kids, each with an all-important wristband on their arm, were exultant. Maddie, nine, JJ, eight, and Kayleigh, five, ran from ride to ride, sometimes right back to the line for the one they’d only just finished. At one point, they rode Zero Gravity four times in a row. My stomach could never have handled that, not even when I was younger.
Over dinner on Friday, we discussed the carnival, and each kid picked out their top three rides. Unsurprisingly, Zero Gravity made it onto all three lists. Here’s how the young judges voted:
- Kayleigh: Zero Gravity, Rock Star, Wacky Shack
- JJ: Rock-O-Plane (which he called “monkey cages”), Zero Gravity, Scrambler
- Maddie: Sky Hawk, Zero Gravity, Scrambler
Kayleigh liked the way the forces on Zero Gravity allowed her to “lay down in the air.” JJ most enjoyed turning upside down on the Rock-O-Plane. But Maddie best summed up the night with her reason for choosing the Scrambler, explaining that she enjoyed looking for her friends in the other cars as it flung them from one side to the other.
At its most basic level, the carnival is a celebration of Easton’s Bravest and an opportunity for our community to come together and support our volunteers. The tradition, now in its 85th year, is one of the town’s best-known attractions. I hope that you, dear reader, were able to attend and create some core memories, whether playing Bingo, riding the rides, or testing your basketball skills on those tricky rims. Whatever your reason for attending, the real point of the evening is finding each other.
The Cultural Easton 