Seeing those words, we did, indeed, believe in magic, despite the hell of the day we were in.  In a few short days, the has-been remnants of a bona fide Two-Hit Wonder were going to be playing on the very Marshfield Fair grounds where we were setting up a bunch of crappy "fair tents," suitable for goats, pigs and local schoolkids proudly displaying sunflowers raised in coffee cans. 

 

In between sledgehammer swings, the plan came together.  Like all great plans, this one was simple--Willy and I would create some excuse to return to the fairgrounds on Thursday for "tent maintenance," roll up a sad-looking joint in one of the trucks and drink vodka and Mountain Dew from plastic bottles while rocking out to the strains of (Hot Town) Summer in the City.

 

From simple plans, greatness is made, and as we left the fairgrounds, we just knew we'd be back soon...

 

---

 

Thursday dawned hot and hazy.  By showtime, the backs of our neck would, indeed, be dirty and gritty.  Perfect.

 

Thanks to a few forgotten ropes and a sledgehammer that had somehow gotten left at the fairground, our marching orders for the day pretty much made themselves.

 

"Ah, Matt and Willy, you guys need to swing by the fucking fairgrounds today to pick up a fucking hammer...  Some shithead left one there."  Carlos was visibly peeved, fortunately we had our scapegoat.

 

"I bet it was Steve."  Steve looked up incredulously as he double-knotted his shoes "for safety," but I didn't so much as bat an eyelash.  Carlos just shook his head and waved his hand spastically.

 

"Fuckin' idiot."

 

We dodged a bullet that morning, too--the rest of the guys were heading to some shit job in some shit part of the state with a bunch of shit on the trucks.  Carlos made Steve drive by himself for being an idiot.  All in all, the plan was running on rails.

 

The whole day was pretty much a piece of cake--we had to roll down to Cape Cod to take down a tent at some guy's beach house.  He was sitting there in the garage, finishing off the keg when we arrived at 10am.  Naturally, we weren't going to force the guy to go solo, so we walked around breaking down the tent while drinking stale Sam Adams from the least dirty plastic cups we could find.

 

By the afternoon, we had a nice buzz on, and it was time to head on over to the Marshfield Fair to grab the hammer that we had hidden behind a shed a few days before.  Tossing the hammer in the back of the truck, we had a pathetic-looking joint burning in a matter of minutes.

 

The shit was terrible, but the vodka and Mountain Dew combined nicely with it to add a delightful green fuzzy glow to the day, and we emerged from the truck ready for everything the Marshfield Fair had to offer.

 

The Marshfield Fair has a lot of shit going on, and in the world of Masshole Fairgrounds, it certainly beat the shit out of the Brockton fair which had come to resemble a jailbreak with cotton candy machines nearby.  If it tells you anything, we had set up our last tents at the Brockton fair two years before, as the fair could not afford them anymore.

 

Friends, a fair without tents is nothing more than a dressed-up field.

 

Anyway, like I said, the Marshfield Fair was still the sort of place the family could enjoy without fear that the young'ns would end up sold into white slavery.  They had it all.  Tilt-a-whirls, sketchy rollercoasters, ring toss games with blatantly pinched rings that would never again fit on a bottle... 

 

We, of course, made a bee-line for what was historically the best part of the fair.  The Freak Show.

 

---

 

The Freak Show was the fair's dirty little secret, tucked into a forgotten space by the port-a-johns and the 1930's era generators that ran the cotton candy trailers.  As we walked, we exchanged knowing winks with fair-goers headed in the other direction.  Well, they didn't realize that we shared that moment because we were not-so-subtly wearing oversize sunglasses purchased just that afternoon at a local gas station to hide our bloodshot eyes of shame.  Still, we winked and I firmly believe passers-by must've felt something deep down inside.

 

The Freak Show was manned by a pudgy Masshole who had obviously been plucked out of a local vo-tech for a few weeks.  He lacked that carnie enthusiasm we were hoping for, but Willy optimistically pointed out, "maybe that's because the freaks speak for themselves!"

 

Nothing could have been further from the truth. 

 

We paid the kid $5 each to enter the freak tent and found one exhibit--a cracked 10 gallon fishtank with a bunch of dried-out hay inside.  There, nooked into the hay, was a little garter snake--and two obvious fakes.  One was rubber--and upside down.  The other was stuffed, but the sawdust was starting to come out its tail. 

 

We stared at the tank for five minutes before Willy broke the hot, hazy silence.

 

"Holy shit.  This fucking blows."

 

He took the words right out of my mouth.  We looked around the tent, expectantly, hoping that somewhere we'd missed Lion Man or the Walrus Lady, or that any moment a pair of Siamese twins would come out and eat swords or something.  Nothing.  To make matters worse, the fake snakes had more life in 'em than the real one, as he'd been fed recently and was in no hurry to entertain on a full stomach.

 

Annoyed, hot and stoned, we sauntered back to the kid at the Freak Show entrance.  He was suddenly enthused, as if he wanted nothing more than to share this moment with us.

 

"So what did you think of the amazing snakes?"

 

"Are you serious, dude?"

 

"Yeah, what did you think?"

 

"I'll tell you what we were thinking--what the fuck was that?"

 

"Snakes."

 

"Just snakes?  What about the freaks?"

 

"Those were some pretty freaky snakes, you have to admit..."

 

"We don't have to admit anything!  What the fuck?!?  What happened to real freaks--you know, like Lobster Boy?"

 

Suddenly, the kid got really serious on us, and he leaned in to whisper... 

 

"You didn't hear?"

 

We stared at him, hot, stoned and stupefied.

 

"He got whacked, dude..."  As he said this, he made a dramatic cutting motion across his neck from ear to ear.  "Murdered.  His wife hired a hit man to take him out.  He was an evil, evil man."

 

"Are you shitting us?  Lobster Boy?  Grady Stiles, Junior?!?"  Willy was visibly shaken. 

 

I was still thinking back to the evil motherfucker who had wheeled by our tent crew years before at the Brockton Fair with his Lobster Boy entourage.  He certainly wasn't sunshine and lollipops, but it was amazing to know that someone had gone through the trouble of taking out a contract on his life when all you'd really need to do to kill him would be to push him in a swimming pool...

 

"Yeah, dude.  He was a bad, bad man.  King of the Carnival Freaks, and all--I mean, he helped the freaks to band together to become powerful and shit.  But his power corrupted him and shit.  And he used to beat the fuck out of his wife and kids, too..."

 

"With his claw arms?"  I couldn't tell if Willy was outraged or just trying to imagine Lobster Boy's fucked up arms being used as weapons.

 

"Seriously, dude.  He was wicked brutal with those fucking claw arms.  So his wife had him killed..."

 

"Holy shit."

 

We all paused for a moment of silence before the obvious question occurred to us.

 

"OK, so Lobster Boy's dead--where the fuck are the rest of the freaks?  Like that snake guy who rolls cigarettes and lights 'em with his mouth and shit?"

 

The kid had obviously gotten this question before.  "Well, the Fair decided to stop using people as freaks a few years ago.  They say it's degrading..."

 

"So Snake Guy is an accountant or something now?"

 

This question, he hadn't gotten, and he just scratched his chin.

 

"And what about the world's ugliest lady?  What the fuck is she going to do?"

 

"Dude, I have no idea...  All I know is that this year the freak show is just those snakes."

 

"Well we think the snakes suck--two of them aren't even real."

 

The guy suddenly snapped into the "party line," pointing out, "I cannot confirm or deny whether the snakes are, indeed alive.  I can tell you, with certainty, that 'snakes are real.  Snakes are alive.'"

 

"What?!?"

 

"Snakes are real.  Snakes are alive."

 

Willy and I stared at each other, repeating it slowly, to make sure it set in, "Snakes are real?  Snakes are alive?"

 

"Exactly."  Suddenly, without warning, he leaned in again, "although personally, I think the small one's the real one and the other two are fakes."

 

"You mean the rubber one and the stuffed one are fakes?" 

 

"Yep."

 

And that was all there was to say about that.  The three of us stared at each other for a moment, before we simply turned and left him to his snakes.  After all, we had a concert to attend.

 

---

 

The show was everything we hoped for and more--while the Lovin Spoonful have certainly gone through some changes since the band first made their beautiful music in early 1965, we were fortunate that one of the band's many keyboardists was still in the band, now as lead singer.  Joining him were a band full of good time music-makers, including his daughter and two really stoned old guys who looked somewhat surprised to find themselves playing Do You Belive in Magic for the fourth time in five songs...

 

Still, long after the haunting notes from Summer in the City's keyboard solo had faded into the summer night, we left the fair with an immutable truth:  no matter what happens in life, snakes are real, snakes are alive.