Vintage Carnival Canes – When you can’t win it, BUY IT!
As autumn nears the arrival of various county fairs coming to towns happen across the south. When I used to live up north this was a late summer affair, but I’ve always assumed waiting for the southern heat to cool made more sense to push things back below the Mason-Dixon line. With schools back in session that also means upcoming Harvest and Halloween festivals for the kids. Growing up this was favorite time of the year! One of my favorite memories was going to these festivals and fairs and playing various carnival games. I wasn’t any good at it, but I can clearly remember my Dad playing vintage Digger machines (like a claw machine) and winning over-sized dice and lighters at the fair! Over the years I had few stuffed animals and prize mirrors with a rock and roll band printed across the front, feathered roach clips (those were for you hair, right?) – but one prize I never seemed to acquire as a kid was the coveted (to me at least) CARNIVAL CANE!
Carnival canes were basically cheap prizes that consisted of a brightly painted wooden dowel rod with a handle at the end. These were often won by throwing a ring around the canes as they were standing up vertically on a wooden table with holes drilled on top to hold them up. In the past these canes could be quite ornate with really cool looking ceramic handles shaped like Indian heads, baseballs, dogs, dice, and more! But by the time I came around in the late 70s and early 80s to play, these were just wooden handles that had been turned on a lathe – at least in my area!
In West Jefferson, just minutes west of Columbus, Ohio, our town had a fall festival that I only knew of as “The Expo”. It was held at the middle school, and I wasn’t old enough to attend there yet. But because of neighborhood kids I knew you could win these painted sticks of wood and I also knew that I WANTED ONE! This was the era of Star Wars and let me tell you, I was ALL IN! I knew that one of these blue or green sticks would make the perfect lightsaber to play with in the backyard. My buddy Ron that lived beside me already had one, and I was jealous!
Well, my family did go to “The Expo” and I would get to play several games – but I wasn’t allowed to play the ring toss game to try and win carnival canes. I guess my parent’s thought I would either go whacking my little brother with it, or impale myself while running with a colored stick in the back yard. They were probably right!
I got plenty of other goodies, candies, and other surprises from the various other games at those festivals. But the carnival cane eluded me… that is until a few years ago while visiting an antique store in Wapakoneta, Ohio! Down in the basement was a barrel full of them, and at that point I bet I had barely thought about them for 40-45 years! Here they were for $2 a pop! Mom and Dad won’t say anything now, so I bought one and it hangs in my garage above an old sign. And just this past weekend I was back at that same antique shop while visiting Ohio, and there they were again. I found one with a round handle that I liked and bought it, too! I jokingly told my Dad I should have bought them all as the dowel rods used to make them appear straighter and much better quality than that crap we get at the store today!
So now I and the proud owner of two of these carnival canes, and after researching the more ornate ones that came out before my time I have the feeling I will be on the lookout for those in the future! I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but it’s the hunt that is the fun part! Maybe I’ll just swing them around like a Jedi with a lightsaber!
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Beautiful downtown Wapakoneta, Ohio! Where I found these little treasures from my past!
