Rockford, IL—As she walked through a fairground called Mayberry Town, she was in a hurry to make it to the portable toilet. She was on the run with the runs.
She observed the ramshackle condition of the entire operation. She's a local teen named Ginger Graham and she pointed out Friday that one of the workers was chained to his job site. Nobody seemed to care since chains and whips are a southern tradition along with the Confederate flag that was waving at the front entrance.
“It looks like that guy is only busy praying for his lunch break to sit on a chair,” the 19-year-old said of the derelict ride operator, noting that he “looked like he was from the 1930s,” was clearly missing his shoes and might crumble at any minute.
As she stood there watching the stressed out man, everything fell out. Nobody seemed to care because the ground was layered thick with horse cack and people didn't mind what they stepped on.
"I can't afford knickers, nobody here can," said Ginger as she joked and continued walking unfazed, wearing a miniskirt.
Southern music can be heard throughout the fairgrounds. Music by southern beauty Ellie King was playing, "Well, I had me a boy, turned him into a man. I showed him all the things that he didn't understand. Whoa, and then I made my getaway. Ex's and the oh, oh, oh's they haunt me. Like ghosts they want me. They won't let go. Ex's and oh's."
Thousands of foreign tourists travel to Mayberry Town each year like a religious pilgrimage. Mayberry Town has all the 'Magic Mountain'-type rides and other odd amusements that are part of the local history.
"They love Mayberry Town cuz there ain't nothing like it around the world," proclaimed Ginger.
An amusement ride called "Carnage in Mayberry" takes tourists on a hayride pulled by a tractor through a large pond filled with enormous alligators. Tourists can be heard hysterically laughing as live hens are thrown in the pond. Like a scene from a Roman amphitheater, they are devoured as they cluck and struggle for their lives trying to escape the dreadful jaws of terrifying alligators. A chicken was seen hopping without a head on the backs of desperate alligators. "It's priceless, it can only happen in Mayberry," says a Chinese tourist who smiles with joy.
Ginger's favorite ride is Hillbilly Mountain, much of it built like Disney's Witch Mountain. While people travel through the mountain, there are places where a recorded hillbilly voice laughs and says "Howdy there, briar rabbits sitting in them seats." Then, a vibrating ball is shoved out of the seat and rolls forward. People on the ride start to laugh. A woman and her daughter couldn't stop laughing. The same experience occurs inside the Disney Insect Theater with their rigged seats.
The 'Cajun Eatery' restaurant is not bad. People can have a taste of opossum nuggets with honey mustard or orange dipping sauce. They serve alligator hamburgers that have a strange gamy chicken flavor, not a popular order. The waitress said they keep it on the menu for nostalgic purposes. Their house favorite is the venison burger. They serve sides of corn cakes, watermelon, or sweet baked beans. "If the food doesn't kill you, the mosquitoes will," says a Muslim man from Yemen who was with a girl he claims was his daughter.
The food stands serve fried animal parts, a resourceful wilderness tradition. They have beef tongue on a stick, fried turkey legs, deviled eggs which are fried bull testicles basted in sweet barbeque sauce, buffalo burger, bull knob corndogs, squirrel corndogs, and muskrat corndogs. But, what happened to the dog in corndogs? In China they most likely serve it.
There's an amusement stand called Bulls Eye, where a Bull is tied to a pole and he's covered with a wooden vest. Anyone that hits the vest with a large dart wins a teddy bear. One young man missed the target and hit the balls causing the bull to kick in rage. To the amazement of the crowd the young man got a stuffed bear with a 100.00 dollar bill taped to its head.
The worst event in Mayberry Town is the Square Dance. Again, it was Ginger's second-best entertainment attraction.
The owners of Mayberry Town, Orville Hatfield and Wilbur Hatfield, created the Square Dance. They regularly participate in the dance to the applause of visitors.
Everyone goes into a large tent with old-fashioned country music playing. Violin and banjos could be heard stringing in the southern music as the lights go off, then everyone starts groping each other in the dark for five minutes. When people walked out, some were laughing, some were smiling, and some had an expression of surprise.
