For generations, firemen’s carnivals have been as much a part of summer on the Chesapeake as crabs and beer. Eastern Shore folk could spend every summer’s night playing carny games and gorging on funnel cake somewhere on the peninsula. Yet rising expenses, liability concerns, high maintenance costs, and a shrinking pool of volunteers have forced many fire departments to shut down their fairs. Now, they’re as endangered as the Delmarva fox squirrel. But there are still a few places where these Bay country traditions survive.

A big crowd fills the fairgrounds on the last Friday of the firemen’s carnival in Hebron, Maryland, just outside of Salisbury. This was the site of many revival meetings before the local fire department purchased the grounds in the early 1940s. Tonight, the only hallelujahs come from the bingo stand, where corn kernels serve as markers, and players win prizes like a six-piece coffee mug set, a spice rack, a candy dish, and a checkerboard set.

The big prize, though, will go to the winner of the Chevy car raffle. The sales booth where raffle tickets are sold is also the community gossip clearinghouse. The ladies running the booth call to friends and cluster together, whipping out photos of grandkids. Ticket buyers and sellers trade information on local knowledge the way stockbrokers share hot tips with investors.

“Lorraine? Her health is not good at all. I see her in church, now and again. She’s just not the same old Lorraine,” one buyer confides to a woman in the booth, who clucks her tongue in sympathy as she hands over the tickets. “Now when you win this car, you remember who sold you the ticket, and give me a ride,” the seller jokes.

For the pre-driver’s license set, the prizes aren’t quite as grand, but coveted nonetheless. Kids work their way down the line of carny games, sodas spilling as they try to juggle drinks and snacks. The prizes are simple: small plush animals, a hula hoop, a watercolor paint set. Toss a Ping-Pong ball into a fishbowl and win a giant paper flower or Tootsie Pop—meager treasures, but each winner is as excited as a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

Alan Reed supervises Hebron’s wheel game with his wife and daughter. Players try for blankets and pillows, some of the more practical prizes anyone can win. He’s given away about fifteen blankets so far tonight, and the fair has a couple more hours to run. To him, the fairs are part of the way things are supposed to be. “You try to help out with the community. I’m scheduled just to work on Fridays, but I come down here other nights. You sit up here and a lot of the same faces walk through each year.”

While the games are a popular draw at Hebron’s fair, food is the other main attraction. Here the oyster sandwiches are nearly legendary. Aficionados line up early for their fritter fix. Even before the official opening, the line stretches halfway to Mardela Springs.

Inside the kitchen, Ethel Nutter and Geraldine Robinson are the oyster queens. Ethel is the fourth generation from her family to spend most of July frying oysters for the appreciative multitude. “My mother did it when I was born. Before that, my grandmother did it. I have a picture of my grandmother frying oysters here.”

There is, of course, a secret to her recipe. “You’ve got to have good oysters in the beginning. Salt, pepper, flour, and the right amount of milk. Then it’s how you fry it.”

The frying part is Geraldine Robinson’s specialty. After forty-five years of working the fair, she has it down pat. “You can’t let them lay. You have to continue to turn them, constantly test to see when they set.” She can’t even begin to guess how many oysters she’s fried in that time. But her quality control stretches only to the appearance of the oysters and the comments of her customers. “I don’t like to eat them.”

Meanwhile, further down the peninsula, another carnival is unfolding.

It’s a sultry summer night in Onancock on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The heat of the day has given up. A breeze drifts in from the Bay. Clouds are daubed against the sky, turning as pink as cotton candy in the sunset. Main street is quiet; the few cars and pickups amble lazily along the asphalt.

It’s day thirteen of the sixteen-day run of the annual firemen’s carnival in Onancock. There’s a laid-back anticipation in the air as early arrivals greet friends and watch the workers at the refreshment stands get ready for the night. Two herring gulls fly a reconnaissance mission overhead, marking the location of the trash cans. The lights strung above the fairgrounds turn on—the simple 60-watt strings of green, yellow, red, and orange barely show against the still-bright sky.

While the casual observer might not realize it, a veritable ballet of social phenomena is playing out at these fairgrounds. Carnival chairman Joe Colon grins as he explains: “We’ve got ourselves three places where people congregate,” he says, pointing across the fairgrounds. “The flirt zone is over by the pizza stand and the wooden benches. The older kids, they go to the Spider. That’s the macho ride, you know. The parents, they go by the feeding area.”

And these fairs mean food. At Onancock’s oyster burger stand, volunteers sing out the menu to the waiting line in a well-practiced cadence. “Hamburger, double hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, hot dog, clam burger, oyster burger, onions no extra charge.”

Usually, the hungry converge on the oyster burger stand, but this year, there is competition. The funnel cake stand introduced an innovation in sweet temptation—the Funnel-O, crumbled Oreo cookies deep-fried in funnel cake batter.

The rides are the center of the action at Onancock’s carnival. Volunteers and their children sport bright-green wristbands entitling them to unlimited goes on the Space Chaser, Swinging Rocket, Black Spider, Ferris wheel, Scrambler, and Tilt-a-Whirl. The rainbow colors of the rides’ lights spin and glitter like whirling neon sparklers against the night sky. Teams of kids stick close together, debating their plans to maximize the number of rides they may take in a single evening. Those without wristbands struggle with ways to maximize their allowance. Single rides cost $1 a ticket, but the premium rides, like the Black Spider and Scrambler, take two tickets. The best paying deal is $9 for unlimited rides all night.

Over by the Ferris wheel, Mike Truitt sweeps the dust off the seats, then pats his hand on the vinyl to summon the next group of riders. “The Ferris wheel is temperamental” he says, “but the thing about the rides that is unique is that as long as you maintain them, they will last forever. This wheel was built in 1927. The company that made it is still in business and still has parts. There aren’t a lot of businesses that you can call and get a part for something they built over fifty years ago.”

Truitt’s been with the fire department for twenty-five years. That’s a lot of time to get to know the personality of each machine. He’s as familiar with the innards of these machines as Julia Child is with the gullet of a chicken. He knows the swings and bumps and rhythm of most of them, too, but he stops short of personal involvement. “I don’t ride Ôem all. If it goes in a circle, I don’t go on it.”

Summer nights sink into darkness slowly. The crowds begin to thin a little after nine, when the sky is still light. By 10:30, almost everyone in Onancock has headed home. Small children fight sleep while riding on their parents’ shoulders, the magic of the night reflected in the eyes of their cotton- candy-stained faces. Teenagers hide in the shadows of the wall advertising the sponsors of the Fourth of July fireworks display—William’s Funeral Home, L&M Produce, Pepsi, Durbin’s Auto Body, The Corner Bakery, and three local radio stations.

In a few days, the rides will spring to a stop and the lights will flicker out for the last time.

Until next summer.

Fran Severn is a freelance writer based in Quantico, Maryland.