Fair Haven Fireman’s Fair

Labor Day

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It feels like I just posted our arrival in New Jersey – and we do have at least another week here, but I can’t argue with the Fair Haven Fireman’s Fair which is a true harbinger of the end of summer here in Monmouth County. I like to remind Kim that I have been coming to the Fair since I was a tiny tot – winning goldfish was a great thrill but they did not have extreme longevity and Mom vetoed them in favor of a tank of tropical fish. (For more on that adventure of my childhood find a post here.)

We perched at some picnic tables to scarf down a soft serve.

I think there was a hiatus with my folks ignoring it and then I resumed in high school and college. By that time I was able to embrace all the rides, although I have no memory of any except maybe the Ferris Wheel. As Kim pointed out though, even from last year to this one there was an upgrade to the rides.

This one was Kim’s favorite!

This year Kim and I kicked off the evening with dinner a rather super Mexican restaurant and carrying our leftovers (food and drinks) made some of the more adventurous rides a bit hard to figure out. Also, long lines to buy digital tickets and then for the ride made it more of a commitment than I was ready to make. However, I did get ice cream (the recent oral surgery fiesta made cotton candy seem ill advised somehow) and we even ran into Mike, the guy who works on our garden – and worked on my mom’s for many years.

Dinner at Dos Banditos here in Fair Haven and just steps from the fair.

We enjoyed the wildly flashing and multi-colored lights and watched as youngsters and their parents tried to flip floppy frogs of rubber onto faux lily pads, or raced to squirt water or roll balls faster than their comrades. Participants strapped into to rise slowly in the air and then be spun around.

We especially liked watching this one slowly raise the people up before starting to turn.
A kiddie ride but we liked being under it.

Sadly, the prizes leave a lot to be desired. (Shown above – if they wanted to give me the knockdown doll I might have gone for that!) As someone who collects carnival prizes from the early 20th century these are a bit of an effrontery. Think of winning a Felix like the one below which I believe were prizes – or the chalkware we collect today – Felix, Mickey and others. I doubt that fake ET stuffed animals will be collectible in 2040, but we’ll see I guess.

Meanwhile, back at the house the dahlias are delightful. A storm the other night damaged some of them but luckily some quick staking and taping seems to have rescued them. (The second photo in the rotation is of a dahlia a friend gave me in memory of my mom and this first year it has bloomed beautifully!)

Bumper crop of cukes will likely really hit after we leave I am sorry to say.

The cucumbers were growing so aggressively that I added yet another trellis to see if I could keep them from choking everything around them with their little tentacles. As I pointed out in an earlier post (here) the bees adore the yellow flowers and buzz angrily at me when I try to work out there. I do wonder if the fall will bring cucumber galore for each of the flowers out right now.

A successful evening of bbq shown here.

As I write, I have cleaned off the grill in order to make some veggie burgers and maybe a few ears of corn tonight. Kim and I will take a walk to the grocery store – much more Manhattan than Monmouth County.

Cookie and Blackie adjusted more quickly this year. We put Cookie in Kim’s studio upstairs and kept Blackie’s base as our downstairs bedroom. I won’t say the New Jersey cats are thrilled with Blackie’s efforts to roam the entire house. He goes upstairs to bug Cookie periodically. Sometimes Beau follows and an explosion ensues.

Blackie visits the kitchen – cautiously!

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A hummingbird graces us with a long, slow drink at the flowers. Thanks to the flowers and flowering trees we are treated to them in numbers I have never seen locally. Another summer drawing to a close here in Jersey.

Backyard post grilling, about the hour the bats show up.

The Fair

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Our beach town summer idyll continues and tonight Kim and I enjoyed one of the pinnacles of a Jersey shore summer and attended the local fireman’s fair a few blocks away here in Fair Haven. After dinner on the deck Kim and I wandered out as the sun sank in the west, an increasing number of people as we got closer and could hear the shrieking of the ride participants.

I want the cat knockdown dolls rather than the prizes offered but they weren’t an option!

Early in this blog I wrote a bit about this fair which I researched and discovered that it is one of the oldest and longest running fireman’s fairs in the country dating back to a more carnival form in 1906. (That post can be found here.)

Kim was very entertained by the colors of this one.

Tonight, night two in a week long run, it was jam packed with families and teens. We got there too early for the full brunt of couples on date night and instead caught a lot of young parents of toddlers. Without really knowing (tickets have gone digital and you use a quasi-ATM machine to get “Magic Money” and the lines for that and the rides were long) it seems like an expensive proposition with kids between food, rides and games.

This fireman didn’t have any takers for this rather traditional display of strength.

The fair raises enough money to pay for our volunteer First Aide force annually and is populated by volunteers. It seems like the rides and games are a set package that must just move around with some nominal personalization for the town it is in. The food concessions seem to be part of this, with the exception of clam chowder which was being sold at its own booth and I think made locally.

While I was tempted by the Ferris Wheel – I wondered if we could possibly see our house about a mile away – I was daunted by the rigamarole. Instead, Kim and I decided to buy tickets for a ride through the neighborhood on a fire truck. I don’t remember this as an option as a kid or a teen so maybe this is a latter addition. Like the chowder, the rides on the fire truck had its own ticket counter and took cash and handed back real tickets. We handed over our six dollars and got into what turned out to be a slow moving line of very small children and parents. An extended family was together in front of us.

The truck seats around 10 but there is much lap sitting among children. We were the fourth load of folks after getting in line. You bounce hard in the back of a fire truck and really you have to hold on. We of course weren’t going especially fast but it made me wonder about the art of holding on if you are racing to a fire. (Very short videos above – fun to turn the sound up!)

Kim was very enamored of this one and the possibilities for painting the sides as a job!

We transversed a very residential neighborhood and I wondered how they felt about the endless fire trucks passing all night for a week. Of course the siren and lights were an important part of the ride. The group was offered lollipops upon entry but the kids were already feted on sugar so the parents declined. (Kim and I had even just finished soft serve ice cream cones ourselves.) I don’t tend to run through this area but I think I will make a trip over there and see these homes over by the Navesink River.

Even the crankiest kids became enchanted with the few block drive through the dark of the night. Eventually we took a turn back onto the main drag and then back to our starting point and Kim and I headed home through the dark suburban streets.