On Fried Dough and Kettle Corn

Loud and proud in familiar environs, hawking books in the Historical Building at the Erie County Fair on Saturday, August 10, 2024. Source: Author

It’s a ritual that takes place every August. For me, it started when I was too young to remember. It later intensified when I just turned old enough to learn. Then, after a long period of dormancy, it came back not just with gusto, but with the pleasant perfume of honeyed nostalgia.

We create routines that become habits that end up as traditions. They seem quite random at first, a series of oddly connected dots with no obvious meaning. Later, their regularity brings comfort. Finally, they emerge as rites of passage.

Think about your own life. If you’re like most of us, you can map this template onto certain memorable activities you and your family have repeated year in and year out. It could be the simplest thing, from always attending opening day to visiting the same restaurant on your long drive to visit the grandparents.

Because you’ve grown through the years, these events become like those annual height marks etched into the old walls of your parents’ home. They stood as evidence of your progress in life. To this day, they stand as a testament of time, your time, the personal journey you have taken.

How important is it to you?

It’s so important you go out of your way to make sure your kids enjoy the same experience. Even when it’s not.

As a teenager, my family had homemade pizza every Saturday night. Always the same process. Always at the same time (around 7pm). We all chipped in to make it. Someone would cut the pepperoni. Someone else would shred the cheese. Another would dice the onion and hot peppers. And the mushrooms, too. You can’t forget the mushrooms. They had to be cut and steamed before they could be placed on the pizza. Our parents taught us this tradition (which actually began on Friday nights when my brother and I were too young to help and before my sisters were born).

The Saturday night routine featured a happy happenstance. Star Trek ran in syndication at that time. As luck would have it, the show aired every Saturday at 7pm. We watched it as we ate our pizza. Very quickly, Saturday nights morphed from “Pizza Night” to “Star Trek and Pizza Night.” What becomes repetitive becomes ritual.

Maybe you did the same thing, only on a different night with a different food and a different TV show.

More important, it becomes instinctive to pass the tradition down to the next generation. Our kids often recall (sometimes not so fondly, but recall it nonetheless) Saturday night meant “Pizza and Star Trek.”

Funny, but I don’t remember watching Star Trek that much during our Saturday night pizza meals when the kids were growing up. Sure, we did it, only not as much as we did when I was a kid. Still, apparently the repetition reached some sort of critical mass. At least enough to burn into the memory of our children.

I’d label that as a success.

Of course, that wasn’t the only tradition passed on from one generation to the next.

It’s August. That means it’s that time of year when all good carnies congregate on the once vast fields (now a vast paved parking lot) surrounding Buffalo Raceway between South Park Avenue and McKinley Parkway in Hamburg, New York. Also known as the Hamburg Fairgrounds, for more than one hundred and fifty years, the site of the Erie County Fair.

And for well more than half a century, my family has participated in that popular show. I call it a “show” because that’s the basis of every vendor. It’s all about presentation. You need to do something to attract customers to your booth, stand, or attraction.

In the old days, it was all about carnival barking. My grandfather was a carnival barker. He taught me how to bark at carnivals.

But it’s not just about the voice. Sometimes it’s just the costume. Loud barking seems impolite nowadays, but loud costumes remain in vogue.

I haven’t worked at the family pizza stand since the early 1980s. I became nothing more than a “Fair attendee.” We’d bring the kids to the Fair. They ride the rides with their cousins. Of course, they ate pizza from the stand (now operated by my uncle).

On our way out, walking down the Avenue of Flags, we couldn’t help but stop and get some fried dough. And then, just before the entry/exit gate, that sweet aroma of kettle corn proved too enticing to pass up. Like clockwork, our annual trek to the Erie County Fair ended with a pause for fried dough, followed by a large bag of hot kettle corn we’d nearly finish on the hour-long drive back home.

For the longest time, my carny clothes remained shuddered in the “unworn” section of my closet. Until about ten years ago. That’s when my Fair role shifted from selling pizza to selling books. Positioned in the staid Historical Building, the location isn’t suited for carnival barking. It took me a couple of years before I became confident those in charge wouldn’t throw me out for wearing more appropriate attire (i.e., a loud costume).

A few years ago, the folks at the Fair actually allowed me to start barking again. Well, not quite barking, but at least talking loudly. I was initially asked to present the story of the hamburger in their live kitchen exhibit.

The first year was a bit disappointing. When I told them there would be no food, half the audience promptly left. The next year, I asked John Menches to come and serve his family’s original recipe hamburgers invented at the Fair in 1885. The delicious odor brought in more people than normal. Well, it was either that or seeing this strange man (me) dressed up in a Wimpy costume.

Then Covid shut the whole thing down. Even today, the old kitchen exhibit no longer exists.

But my show still does. It’s shifted to the Fair Museum in the Octagon Building. This proved a double win for me. First, the Octagon Building opened in 1885, the same year the Menches brothers sold the world’s first hamburger at the Erie County Fair. Second, people going there expect a history talk, not food.

I wrote a history book. I didn’t write a cookbook.

This year’s walk was the most successful to date. I didn’t even need to wear the Wimpy costume.

When it was over, I strolled along the Avenue of Flags to get some fried dough.

And, just before Gate 2, we stood in the long line for kettle corn.

Tradition. Is there nothing more comforting?