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10. For Ronnie and Donnie
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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101 chapter ten For Ronnie and Donnie myra christopher When I was growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a special day each October. On that particular day children across the city were dismissed from school and given a free pass to attend the State Fair of Texas—the largest state fair in the country. My friends and I, unaccompanied by adults, went to Fair Park in Dallas, Texas, to enjoy the fair. It was usually the same week as the “Red River Shootout,” when the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma played football in the Cotton Bowl, but our presence had nothing to do with the game. We were supposed to go to the fair so that we could take advantage of the educational opportunities. There were wonderfully educational exhibits inside beautiful art deco halls that had originally been built for the Texas centennial in 1885. But the real attraction for me and my friends was the midway. The midway was our idea of heaven. There were dozens of great rides. The ones I remember most vividly are the giant wooden roller coaster, the tallest Ferris wheel in North America at 212.5 feet, the scrambler (where my best friend, Patricia Davis, broke her collar bone when we were in the eighth grade), and the “Super Himalaya,” where songs by Danny and the Juniors played endlessly. There were also games of chance to be played and huge stuffed animals to be won for those who had lots of money to venture. If you could knock down the right number of bowling pins with a baseball, toss three rings over a peg, or pick up the rubber duck with the right number 102 myra christopher on the bottom as dozens floated by, you could have your choice of a stuffed animal that was almost as big as you were. And the food—god, it was fabulous! Everything you ever wanted and your mother didn’t want you to have was right there: red hot dogs, greasy hamburgers, clouds of pink cotton candy on a paper cone, fried corn on the cob, blocks of ice cream on a stick dipped in chocolate and rolled in crushed peanuts, and the coldest Cokes and Dr Peppers imaginable. My favorite lunch was a Fletcher’s Corny Dog accompanied by a paper cup full of real French fries with lots of ketchup and a big glass of ice-cold lemonade. It wasn’t all heavenly.The midway had a dark side. Past the roller coaster, there were freak shows. There were tents where you could see a two-headed cow or a live headless chicken. Those were just gross. More troublesome to me was a show where you could meet Ronnie and Donnie (conjoined twins) and a huge tent that housed the Circus of Strange People and Freaks. The barker outside the Circus told the crowd that, for the price of admission, you could see a legless man walk on his hands and do pull-ups, the tattooed lady with paintings all over her body, a real giant—more than seven feet tall, the lobster boy with claws for hands, and the rubber woman—a contortionist who would amaze and excite you. Every year my friends would goad me into buying a ticket, and I would stand in line with them until it was time to climb the wooden stairs and enter the tent. Then I would chicken out. I just couldn’t do it. I never went inside. It just seemed wrong. I hadn’t thought of those shows for more than forty years. But I remembered them when the exhibit of plastinated bodies, Bodies Revealed, came to Kansas City last year. I was aware of these exhibits of plastinated bodies. I had been in other cities when they had been present. I had read about them and heard people talk about them. Now I was being asked by friends, family, and colleagues if I planned to attend. I was clear about my answer: I would not. I was not as clear about a response to their next question: “Why not?” Initially, I thought I might get off the hook by referring to the wisdom of repugnance, or, as Leon Kass referred to it, the “yuck [3.238.142.134] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:20 GMT) For Ronnie and Donnie 103 factor.” But I wasn’t sure that my colleagues would allow me to claim any...