Flemington Fair

One of things that we, as kids, just found incredibly exciting was the funnel cake and root beer booth at the Flemington Fair. Not because we got to eat there, but because we got to work there. We were right on the speedway. It was incredibly noisy. It was hot. It was greasy. But we were enchanted by the opportunity to be behind the scenes at the fair.

The Princeton, NJ Ward was a young ward and had been meeting for sometime in a school. The members were eager to get a chapel built and the funnel cake booth at the fair was part of the plan to raise the funds needed. For two weeks ward members staffed the booth from the time the fair opened in the morning until it closed in the evening, except for Sundays when they turned off the fryers and let the missionaries offer eternal happiness instead. Manning the booth was a big commitment for a small ward. But what did we know, we were kids, to us it was just fun. The first couple of years we lived there we were deemed too young to be there so we were filled with quite a sense of privilege when we were allowed in to work.

Beginners got to work on root beer. There was sugar to measure. Extract to pour. Water to add. All that mixing with long wooden spoons in huge 5 gallon containers. And then there was the dry ice. Only under  strict adult supervision and only if you had already proved yourself to be responsible enough were you allowed to don gloves and help pull chunks of that smoking magical substance out of the coolers and add it to the sweet brown liquid. There it would start to bubble and froth like a witches brew with smoke pouring forth from under the lid and turn those simple ingredients into a sublime nectar. It was the best root beer at the fair. Just ask all those people standing in line or the Wood kid that had helped mix it up and had to taste it for quality control reasons. More than once. We were just that concerned.

Once we had proved ourselves on root beer, we could graduate to batter mixing and restocking. When the line got long and things were hopping at the front, someone had to be in the back mixing up more funnel cake batter. Lots of stirring and measuring. And the batter had to get into the funnels at the front of the booth where the frying was going on. It wouldn't do to have a fryer sitting idle because there wasn't batter  ready to go.

And then there was the job we all wanted. Fry Cook. Yes we were too young and there were vast amounts of hot oil and gas burners which is not necessarily a good mix with kids, but that was where the action took place. There was the funnel full of batter, and you got to pull up the stick and swirl the batter into the hot oil. We all wanted to try our skill at getting the cakes to that perfect golden brown. A chance to try and flip them over without breaking them, a test of your skill as a batter swirler. Ooh, the dusting of powdered sugar on top. Heavier for those who liked their cakes nice and sweet, just a smidgen for a customer that just wanted enough to make the cake pretty. The crowd watched the action and the banter between the crowd and the cooks was part of the fun. The peppier the banter between the cooks and the line, the more people got into line to wait their turn. And when traffic was slow you got to play barker and try to rein them in. If you couldn't entice them with a delectable cake, maybe they would like some ice cold homemade root beer. If not, maybe it was time to check the quality of the product once again. As kids, it was our strongest role.