The Carnival and the Yellow Jacket

As you know, I was raised by my paternal grandparents in the small town of Muldrow, Oklahoma, which lies on State Highway 64B and adjacent to U.S. Highway 64, north of Interstate 40, approximately ten miles southeast of Sallisaw. We had a celebrity--in 1995 Muldrow native Shawntel Smith was selected as Miss America.  In 2000 the U.S. census registered 3,014 inhabitants, and the public school system enrolled 1,600 students from pre-kindergarten through high school.  My granddaughter, Tristen, is senior this year at Broken Arrow (BA) High School and BA's senior class alone has 1,065 students.  Around 1952 to 1954 there were probably around 1,200 residents in my small town, and a year after I left in 1960, the population expanded to around 1,500.

Because we were a small town, we couldn't support big events such as a circus, but we had a carnival or two that came through every year.  My Grandmother dearly loved the carnivals and I remember that we would walk across town (three to four city blocks) to the carnival site usually on the "other side of the tracks".   There was always a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round but I don't remember other rides, if any.  The best part was the smell of freshly popped corn and delicious cotton candy--not the kind you buy prepackaged these days in cellophane wrap at the county fair, but actually made by a real person with a paper cone dipped into the spinning aluminum container using real sugar! I loved that fresh cotton candy.

Grandma loved to get our pictures made every time we went the the carnivals.  On this particular day, however, I had met up with a yellow jacket on our neighbor's porch.  I was a curious child and we had such interesting elderly neighbors, who had some interesting things around their old house.  One of these things was a barometer over the door of their front porch that looked like a little house.  When the weather was nice and sunny, a little man and woman would come out  but when the weather was bad, a witch would come out on the opposite side.  You probably see where I'm going with this.  As I said, I was curious and I wanted to know where the man and woman went when the witch came out, so I found a little stool, climbed upon it, and as I peered inside, a big ole' yellow jacket flew out and stung me right between the eyes.  My poor nose swelled up twice its size and my eyes practically swelled shut, but by the time we went to the carnival it was a little better, but not that great.  I was so afraid I would see kids from school and they'd laugh at me so I tried to avoid  people as much as possible, but my cousin, Brenda, saw me and she never did let me live it down. 

I have the picture made by the carney man in my scrapbook which I promise to find and put on this blog site soon.   And yes, Brenda, I did look like "that woman" you alluded to on the "other side of town".

1950 at the Carnival with Grandma