Traveling Carnivals With Michael Sean Comerford
Sometimes you don’t have to leave your own country to find a culture that is different from your own. Michael Sean Comerford talks about the unique language, lifestyle, and attitudes of the carnies, the people who work on the traveling carnivals. Michael Sean Comerford is an award-winning journalist and travel writer. His latest book is American OZ: An Astonishing Year Inside Traveling Carnivals. Show notes * The differences between carnivals in different countries * The unique languages of carnies * Attractions and difficulties of the carnival life * The sense of belonging — and how that’s hard to leave behind * Darker side of carnival life * Recommended travel books You can find Michael Sean Comerford at MichaelSeanComerford.com Transcript of the interview Jo: Michael Sean Comerford is an award-winning journalist and travel writer. His latest book is American OZ: An Astonishing Year Inside Traveling Carnivals. Welcome, Michael. Michael: Thank you very much. Jo: I’m really interested to talk about this topic. What drew you to carnivals in particular and where did the idea for the book come from? Michael: I had graduated from college here in the United States and I had no idea what I wanted to do and I did something completely nonsensical, which is I decided to bicycle ride to Seattle, which is about a couple thousand miles and from Chicago. On my way, I stopped to work at a carnival for a weekend on the Fourth of July in Cody, Wyoming, interestingly enough, founded by Buffalo Bill Cody, who was the first showman in the Showmen’s League, the official association of traveling carnivals. I stopped there. I worked the weekend in the carnival, and I met these incredible people that had their own language, their own history, they were living on the road, they were characters, and I go, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life but if I ever write books I think this is really where the stories are.’ So it was in my mind. I went off to become a journalist for almost 40 years, 30-some years and I decided I wanted to come back and write books. And I remembered that vow to myself all those years ago in the Cody, Wyoming Carnival, maybe this is where the stories are. Jo: That’s so interesting. So for 40 years, this idea lay dormant. What do you think brought the idea back? Michael: The newspaper industry is kind of drying up and I was looking for something else to do and I was, once again, at almost the same crossroads, ‘What do I want to do with the rest of my life?’ Because I wasn’t going to make a good living anymore as a newspaper reporter. So I thought of books and I thought, ‘Well, this is my first book. Why not start with American OZ and go to a lot of carnivals and tell a lot of stories?’ Jo: We have listeners from 177 countries on the show. So I actually wanted to start by asking about the carnivals in the USA because you’re in the USA, I’m in the UK, and our carnivals we really call them fairs, I guess. And they’re quite different, I think, to the USA. What are the carnivals like and what sets them apart from those other people might have seen in other countries? Michael: When you see a fair versus a traveling carnival, you will think they’re pretty similar because of the rides and so forth but they have very different histories. And I think one of the biggest things that sets them apart is language. There’s something called carny lingo on the internet by Wayne Kaiser, and he goes through the lingo of U.S. carnivals versus Canadian carnivals versus British fairs. And he doesn’t touch on Australia but Australia has its very own also traditions. And they have a different language.