The Demolition Derby at the Essex County Fair

My wife and I went to the Essex County Fair. We couldn't coerce the kids into coming with us, so they went to the movies. I've always been a sucker for these kinds of things, but fortunately nobody else in my family is, so we rarely go. I don't know why I like them so much. I don't play the carnival games because I once read a book that explained in great detail how the odds are stacked against you. The rides are typically not that exciting and I always question the maintenance practices, and the carnies are not usually people you'd seek out for company. But it's always people watching beyond compare. Nobody dresses up for a county fair (except maybe the 4-H club baking contest types). Everyone's in their natural state and seem to be really there, as opposed to being one place and thinking about being somewhere else, as us metro area types are wont to do. It makes me feel like I'm really in the place I'm visiting, which makes me feel calm and grounded.

The attraction of this fair was a demolition derby. For those not familiar with these, a bunch of guys and gals drive a bunch of old junker cars with no windows or back seats into a contained area. On the count of 3 they begin to bash these cars into each other at whatever speed they can muster and continue until only one car can still move. These used to be on ABC's Wide World of Sports from time to time, back in the day, and they were always one of my favorites. Most so-called sports don't look like nearly so much fun.

My wife is a superb photographer, and she wanted to shoot the whole thing, from preparations through the event. We nixed buying a grandstand ticket as too limiting, and in all likelihood the grandstand was more pleasant to look at than to inhabit. It was whitewashed with a big fading red metal roof that oozed beaten down authenticity. But it was packed with a few hundred people, many of whom were eating french fries smothered in gravy. So we walked through the gate into the infield to where everyone was preparing their cars or heckling whoever was doing the preparations. An example of such preparations was the guy banging on the hood of his car with a sledge hammer to flatten out a bend. He then got up on it and started jumping up and down. There was an audience of about 10 guys for this, all offering advice, not all serious. It was clear that we did not belong in this area and equally clear that nobody could care less that we were there. I must say that this takes a bit of the fun out of sneaking in somewhere.

My wife went to do her photo thing. When she does this my main job is to not be in the photographs or in her way, so I steered away from her and just looked. As I was watching the Adirondack Trash Service Demo Team (they all had shirts) it occurred to me that I was sticking out like a sore thumb. It hadn't really occurred to me just who it was we were going to be hanging out with and I do not own the requisite outfit (trucker hat, t-shirt with either the name of a garage of a borderline obscene saying on it, loose, knee to calf-length denim shorts, hemmed or cut off and some kind of boots, shoes or sneakers the color of the dirt). Just so you can picture this, I was wearing a light blue and white horizontal striped Hugo Boss crew neck tee, stone J. Crew shorts, and bright white running shoes (brand new for the triathalon).

On one hand, these were not people I was really going to mingle with. I've been in a few places and can say that it's hard to find purer white trash than in upstate New York. On the other hand, I was there with them and they were fine and I was the one who looked stupid and out of place. This made me feel very alone and even to question my worth as a human being. Well, not really, but I did feel like a total outsider. I felt more at home in Paris where people ask me directions all the time and unless they speak English I just have to shrug.

I watched a pallet carrier picking up wrecked cars and loading them onto a flatbed (there'd been a round of this before we arrived). It was a little hard to tell the competitors from the aftermath, but finally a few of them lined up and it was time to start. We got a spot by the fence in with one of the "teams" and watched 12 cars drive into an area about 25 feet by 200 feet, closed off by movable concrete barriers. I always though it'd be fun to have a car that you could crash into a barrier and not care. The surface was soft dirt. The cars were all painted with numbers and company names and with shout outs to friends and family, living and dead, and snappy sayings like, "Hit me here." Then the countdown and a huge racket (so loud!) and off they went, smashing into each other left and right.

I remember from my viewing days that the strategy was to ram with your rear because the radiator was the weak spot, and once the radiator is smashed, the engine dies soon after. However, an alternate strategy uses the fact that the front end is heavier to so demolish the rear of the other car to the point where the wheels can no longer turn. It's fun to watch a car try to move (and on soft dirt it can) when the front wheels turn but the rear wheels do not.

One other guy had a car that ran fine but he was pushed at an angle so tightly into a corner that he couldn't move. He kept trying to go back and forth to extract himself, showering those of us close to him with dirt. A few of the others were disabled quickly, mostly by Bill, the guy in car 43, who was moving much faster and with more obvious glee than anyone else. Eventually #43 died too, but not without smashing his lone remaining competitor and claiming first prize for his aggression. It turned out that we were standing among Bill's buddies and he got cheers and backslaps when he came over holding a trophy and a check.

We then watched them drag all the wrecked cars out of the ring, after people had loaded all of the car parts in through where the windows had been. It was mostly bumpers and fenders, but there was a wheel attached to half an axle as well. And then they drove another dozen cars in and did it all over again. The highlight of this one was one car that pretty much had it's entire rear end knocked off, except for the wheels. We were a bit concerned for the driver. The safety equipment in these cars consists of a seat belt and a couple of bars inserted in key spots to keep the roof from collapsing if the car rolls (none of them did). To compensate, there were 4 fire engines and 3 ambulances waiting trackside. But everyone was okay and eventually someone won.

There was one more "heat," though heat implies that there's a final and of course all the competitors' cars were destroyed, so I'm not sure how that would work. Everyone in the grandstand stayed put, but we left.