Olde Canal Days

Canal Fulton is a small northeast Ohio town with a vintage toy store, two ice cream shops, and a towpath trail. Originally named Fulton, “Canal” was later added to its name to “convey a more dynamic quality.” The name change may have helped while the canal was prosperous, but alas, the coming of the railroad dealt Canal Fulton’s prosperity a serious blow. 

 

I was excited when a notification for Lerch’s donuts appeared on my Facebook feed announcing their presence at the Olde Canal Days Festival in Canal Fulton during the time I was caring for my grandkids. I’d never heard of the festival before, but it seemed a good diversion while their parents were away – and yes, Lerch’s donuts too. 

 

I gathered up the lovely Madelyn Simone, the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday, and the charming Henry Kyle, and off we went to Canal Fulton last Thursday night, with a pocketful of cash and our sturdy stroller, which I now know how to fold and unfold. We wandered down Main Street, ate our supper sitting on the curb, and bounced in the bounce houses manned by the high school band. As we headed to the car, Madelyn said, “Nana, there’s a Ferris wheel!” Apparently we’d missed a whole section of the festival – the midway by the canal. And I was out of cash.

 

The next night, with Henry safely in the care of his maternal grandmother, it was girls’ night out. As we strolled the midway, I had an aha! moment: this is what normal feels like. After the isolation and fear engendered by the pandemic, it felt good to be in the midst of people once again. Yes, there was some adherence to social distancing in the line for the Ferris wheel, and food vendors had hand sanitizer available, but the Corona seemed far from the festival, even if still lurking in the shadows.

 

Game barkers chattered endlessly, convincing the rubes to squander an Abe Lincoln ($5) for a chance to break a balloon and win a prize worth two quarters. Teen girls in the shortest of shorts (called hot pants when I was a teen) flirted with boys not even old enough to shave. Kids of all ages ate cotton candy (Lizzie), candy apples (Madelyn), and donuts (Nana). 

 

The Ferris wheel that Madelyn had seen shone in all its glory in the sultry night sky. Its original design was to be America’s answer to the Eiffel Tower of Paris, when architect David Burnham challenged a group of engineers to build something “novel, original, daring and unique” for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in the 1890s. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. designed its thirty-six cars to carry sixty people each, and the experience was reported to be as if “revolving through a vast orbit in a bird cage.” 

 

For our 2021 ride operator, his was a more quotidian experience, performing his every day, mundane tasks of advancing the wheel, cranking up a small ramp, opening the bar, shooing off the current occupants and lowering the bar on the new riders. More than a hundred years of operation should have found a more efficient way to operate the ride, but apparently not. However, there was steady rhythm to this repetitive task, and the slow-moving line boosted the anticipation of its riders.

 

Unlike Ferris’ first attempt, this Ferris wheel only held two people per car, and I was relieved that our petite six-year-old could ride with “a responsible person” (Madelyn, age 11), so I kept my feet on the ground and sent the sisters into the air together. For the girls, it was as Joni Mitchell sang, “Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel,” as they rocked in the night sky. 

 

As we wandered back to our car on that pitch black evening, I felt a lingering sense of gratitude for this celebration of the intrepid spirit of early settlers and the back-breaking labor of canal diggers. Because of the daring design of young Mr. Ferris, we had a wonder-filled night, with a box of donuts to take home besides. After a long, long Corona-tinged winter, cotton candy sure does taste good.