With It: A Year on the Carnival Trail (Paperback)

by Barbara Bamberger Scott (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"…groundbreaking…stupendous. Step right up to the podium and have a good read, folks, the one, the only "carny" life." -- 2004 by Lucinda Tart for curledup.com

Product Description
With It is written from hard experience, neither memoir nor factual chronicle. I traveled with the carnival for over three years, with my then-husband and little girl. I've lifted the stories out of memory, put them on a time-line, highlighted the most colorful characters, and thrown in a murder loosely based on real events. Nearly everyone is fascinated by the possibilities inherent in the carnival subculture, and I was no exception. I learned the world - its language, its joys and its ugly secrets - and lived to tell the tale.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 179 pages
• Publisher: Behler Publications (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974896225
• ISBN-13: 978-0974896229
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #645,849 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secrets of carny life revealed by daring Mom, November 4, 2004

By	Barscoinc "Barscoinc" - See all my reviews

Review by Lucinda Tart
This review first appeared at www.curledup.com.

This groundbreaking work based on the author's time living the carnival life is stupendous. Step right up to the podium and have a good read, folks, the one the only thrilling tale of "carny" life. Make your acquaintance with a world filled with people and a language that until now has been carefully reserved for those "in the know."
Barbara Bamberger Scott reels out chapter after chapter with enticing titles - "Chapter 1: In Which We Shake Hands with the Crawfish Kid, Sell Tacos from a Mailbox, Learn Al Al's Balloon Gaff and Vow to Get With It" and "Chapter 5: Blanks, Wherein We Ponder the Question, "If You Do Free Engraving, Would You Help Me Bury My Pappy?" If the title doesn't get you hooked, read further and live for a time inside the carnival world where, with breath held, you too will be waiting to hit the "Big Spot" and wondering if the "joint" next to yours will be the next to "screw". Luckily for all of us who have never had a "gaff", the author informs the reader what each carnival slang word means. The words and their descriptions are almost as fascinating as the stories collected in this book.
With husband, wife and their young child all working and living together in a tiny trailer for a summer running a few game booths and engraving jewelry, life couldn't get much more lively. Not a day or night goes by without a new initiation into the carny world. Withstanding intense heat, freezing rain, long and curvy mountain roads with trailers and buses that are passable as automobiles at their best moments, food from the cookhouse, free to all the people who work the show, that seems to consist mainly of overcooked fast food and thick coffee, their unique coworkers and the nightly brawls interspersed with their daily desperation for making just another dime or two, this young family truly earns the right to call themselves "carnies".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful glimpse into an alternate world within ours, October 31, 2006

By	Suzanne Amara (MA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I love books that give me a view of a way of life totally different than my own, and especially when that world coexists with ours, but intersects very little! That is the case with the carnival world, which the author joined for a year in the 1970s. She found a life with its own rules, traditions and even to some extent language. She viewed it with love but also with enough detachment to write a great book. She is a skilled writer, and she really evoked the time and place--not just the carnival world, but the USA in its Bicentennial year. I loved the end of the book, where she looked to the future. If you have ever been curious about the lives of carnival workers, or just how those carnival games really work, this is a book for you to read. I was truly surprised at how much it affected me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Savvy Look at a Unique World, March 13, 2008

By	busmun (Carrboro, NC United States) - See all my reviews

Some books stick in your memory. This is one, I read it over a year ago and remember some of the slang: hanky-pank, for a game that's run straight, the booth earns money cos the prize is less valuable than what the mark pays to play. Living with a carnival for a season you see the street theater that's played all around. To make it you have to be a talented actor. The inside knowledge is great, the reader can really get a taste of being "with it" (a seasoned carny) from reading this memoir.
Hey, get With It!