Annual Summer Fair Is Foul

When wholesome family fun isn't, particularly.

Fanny Wood Day in Fanwood, N.J., Exit 135.

There was a McDonald’s ad campaign when I was a young teenager. It was about taking your family of four to dinner and getting change for your $5 bill.

Hahahaha. Who doesn’t love science fiction?

I spent Sunday with my kids and grandkids at Fanny Wood Day, a community fair in the Borough of Fanwood, NJ. That’s a modest town in either northern central Jersey or southern north Jersey, 47 miles from New York City. Its two biggest industries are mani-pedis and road repair. You may know Fanwood by its charming slogan, “Garden State Parkway Exit 135.”

Point being, Monte Carlo it isn’t.

But the Fanny Wood fest — artisans, tricked out cars, face painting, balloon animals, bounce house, petting zoo, carny games, food trucks, live rock music courtesy of a local music school — has a cost structure that makes airports and movie theaters seem like Dollar Stores. Next to Fanny Wood, and presumably the entire Fest Economy, military procurement is a garage sale. You can afford an aircraft carrier or cotton candy, but not both. The only advantage to the cotton candy is you don’t have to bribe anyone in Congress (now that N.J. Sen. Bob Menendez has been forced to resign).

But you have to eat, right?

No! Wrong! You have to stand in line for 25 minutes, then you eat. It’s like queuing up to see a loan shark.

I myself had a gyro and French fries. It wasn’t too bad. I used a small home equity loan. But I watched as my son-in-law stood endlessly nearby to get burgers and chicken for his family of four. He handed them a 1 million-dollar bill. As he waited for his change, McDonald’s style, the vendor just stared at him.

He said, “Too large a bill?” She said, “No, the food is $1,000,009.45.”

It’s already a disgrace that this society does not subsidize childcare. But why must young families bankrupt themselves over hastily applied greasepaint and junk food? My offoffspring wanted to play a bull’s-eye game and they won! An inflatable shark and an inflatable guitar! Retail value $1.98.

The parents’ investment in game tickets was significantly more than that. I couldn't keep track of the exact cost because they paid with bricks of gold. I asked my daughter, “How can you afford all this?” She said, “Not a problem. We’ll just cancel health insurance.”

The boys wanted balloon animals. This required a parental consultation. They said yes, then on Monday they pulled the kids out of school to work at the new Temu distribution center.

I will say this: the boys’ eyes lit up at the pro wrestling exhibition, where men in tights did absolutely all the things children are prohibited from doing except play with matches and run on the pool deck. And only because nobody remembered to bring matches. The spectacle began with a wrestler called Loverboy twerking his pelvis in faux coitus for 90 seconds east, west and south. So instructive for the kiddies!

They’re banning books about slavery at schools, but simulating sex acts on Martine Avenue. Then the wrestlers began whaling on one another. Wide eyes eyed this behavior widely. That evening, my impressionable and rambunctious grandsons ended up fastened to the sofa, restrained by nine bungee cords. I mean, once the National Guard left.

I actually couldn’t watch much wrestling, as I felt my brain losing IQ points, so I wandered off to find a booth with no waiting line. Too big a crowd at the replacement window and siding attraction, so I hit the booth for Temple Shalom. (No games, sadly, but I walked away with some flyers and an armload of free guilt and shame.) Then I traded in my car for a slushie and walked home.

My question is, why do we accept this shakedown racket as wholesome family fun? It’s not all that wholesome, it’s economically onerous for the families, and not really that much fun. If you want to see little kids have fun fun, send them outside with an empty cardboard box and a garden hose. Then you will hear what I heard on Sunday not once: squeals of delight.

OK, OK, I’m a hardliner on this stuff. With some embarrassment, I must confess that this is not the first time I’ve gone public whinging about the price tag for entertaining the little ones. Many years ago, when my daughters were small, after our family of four’s hajj to Orlando, I did a cost accounting of three days at Disney World. That vacay also involved a lot of standing in line and price gouging, and so in a Washington Post op-ed I calculated the CPFH: cost per fun hour. That exercise is how in our household I earned the pet nickname “What a dick.”

But, really, what’s with America’s fixation on commercial amusement? Mind you, I’m not faulting anyone’s parenting. We all want to make our children happy. God knows my own would have gotten much better college educations and weddings but for our investments in Disney and Chuck E. Cheese. (On the plus side, we accumulated an astonishing collection of holographic stickers and other fine merchandise. Send me your address. I’ll mail you 600 plastic kazoos.)

Such is the power of the Carnival Industrial Complex, (cheap)-toying with us for several generations. Like most of the American middle class, as a father and Grampa I’ve succumbed to 1) the compulsion to provide the kids with peak experiences, and 2) the myth of quick-serve family togetherness. Endless work hours have us all afraid we’re shortchanging the children, and the ongoing moral panic has fed Big Fest.

Did I say “peak experiences”? I meant pique experiences. Oh, the little ones enjoyed themselves. Just. Not. Nearly. Enough. And that brings out the curmudgeon in me.

Look, if squealing took place, if memories were created, if we got to see joy in the kids’ eyes, I’d gladly recalibrate the CPFH. But there’s not much joy in the perfunctory. What special experiences were had Sunday in Fanwood, NJ? (Rhetorical question. If Loverboy had been arrested for public lewdness, we might have had something to remember.) What we have instead is a reason to look inward. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that in American society, “We have defined deviancy down.”

Alas, festivity, too.