Learning to Manage Chaos

A summer job at the county fair taught me the life skill I didn't know I needed

I worked summers at the Flemington Fair in Flemington NJ where I grew up. I was maybe 15 years old when I started. Worked 10 days at a food stand, slinging sausages, setting up and tearing down what the owner affectionately called the “joint”. I remember peeling onions for hours, sitting on a flimsy chair in the center of the joint. We needed about 100 lbs of onions per day to keep up with demand.

Flemington Fair in Flemington, New Jersey. Circa 1973. Photo by the author.

Paul was the owner of the joint, and this was his summer gig too. He sold hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages. Their claim to fame was griddled German sausage smothered in onions. He was a gym teacher during the year, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Short of stature with bulging biceps in his overly small white t-shirt, Paul kept a tight ship. No details escaped Paul’s gaze, easy to feel his glare piercing your brain as he eked every possible dollar out of the fairgoers. Paul was always good to me, and in an odd way, he was a mentor, even though we only spent 10 days together once a year. I learned discipline, hard work, that customers came first, and how to take orders from the boss.

We would set up the joint a few days ahead of time, pulling equipment out of the back of a tractor trailer where everything had been stacked neatly and the assembly was in Paul’s head. He knew where every post and every bolt went. He yelled at us like a drill sergeant. We put the joint together in a day and were ready to serve customers on the second day. Taking it down, we were serving customers in the front of the food stand, and he was already taking things apart at the back. The gas grills were still hot. I remember moving them into the truck, trying not to burn ourselves, but we had to get it done and get it out of there. Paul had a schedule.

Ferris wheel at the Flemington Fair arcade.

Serving customers, I wore an apron and a white T-shirt and one of those little white paper hats that people wore when they worked at those kinds of restaurants. I looked, and felt goofy, especially serving up friends, but the embarrassment was well worth the extra money in my pocket and the experiences I remember to this day.

The joint was right up against the second turn of the dirt track with stock car races. We were 10 feet from the track, separated by an old rusty fence. On race day, when those cars came around, it was dust and noise and mayhem, and you were living in the midst, trying to cook, serve food, hoping that wreckage of a stock car would not breach the fence. I loved every minute, addicted to the chaos. My life otherwise was always busy, but not chaotic. My schedule was Boy Scouts on Tuesday, soccer practice every day after school in the fall, family trips. Either my mother or father, or both, were good at planning. Life during those 10 days at the joint was different. The chaos, a new variable every minute, a new customer, an errant tire banging up against the fence was addictive. Learning how to manage a thousand variables would become a life skill. It wasn’t the circus, but it was as close to a circus as I was going to get as a high school kid.

Stebbing Royal European Circus in Davidson North Carolina, 1978.

Then, a few years later, at Davidson College, a real circus came to town, the Stebbing Royal European Circus. Just the name was tantalizing. I don’t remember the details, but somehow I got to know the circus people and told them I was a photographer and asked if I could take backstage pictures. They were very gracious, a family of performers plus extra carnies that would help them set up and tear down and feed the animals.

Stebbing Royal European Circus in Davidson North Carolina, Fall 1978.

While the circus was just a weekend affair, the set up, the organized chaos, reminded me of the Flemington Fair. Only this time I was no longer a participant, I was an engaged observer, chronicling their activity and personalities, photographing the symphony of movement on Kodak Tri-X black & white film, even setting up an impromptu studio for portarits. I spent the next several days at the circus, every waking moment even though I had a ton of homework. I willfully traded grades for life experience. But that was okay, I knew I was making a deliberate choice, paying the academic devil on the next exam.

Stebbing Royal European Circus in Davidson North Carolina, Fall 1978. Impromptu studio set-up behind one of the circus trucks.

Photographing the circus immersed all my senses, auditory, olfactory, visual. The smell of the elephant dung juxtaposed against the sweetness of cotton candy, the sound of the crowds, children laughing and giggling, little kids tugging on their mother’s dress for permission to pet the animals, the music playing over the scratchy loudspeakers. In the distance, I could hear the ringmaster barking orders to the cast, lions and trapeze artists ready to perform. The proverbial “running away with the circus” was about to become a metaphorical reality, if only for a few days. Managing chaos was quickly becoming my new life goal.