For decades, Greenwich has counted on N. Mianus School’s spring carnival
There are two schools of thought on the Pow Wow Goldfish; for some, these fish (given out as prizes at the annual North Mianus School Pow Wow Carnival) enjoy an unusually long lifespan.
“Mine lasted 11 years,” a friend told me. “I’m not kidding. If you look up ‘how long does a goldfish live’ on Google it says 10 years. Not 11.”
For others, the Pow Wow goldfish have seen a much shorter lifespan, keeping true to the carnival-goldfish-carried-home-in-aplastic-bag trope.
“Ours didn’t even make it home,” another friend said. “So we held a funeral for a goldfish we hadn’t even named. Try that with a 3-year-old.”
How one embraces either polarity varies, but one truth holds true: Pow Wow goldfish are unparalleled.
But then again, so is the Pow Wow itself.
The Pow Wow is not just a spring carnival, it is a Greenwich institution dating back to the 1940s. It is the kind of thing that makes you fall in love with Greenwich all over again — even if another Versailleslike domicile is under construction, making that the third house-with-moat in under four years on your road.
Nevertheless, every spring over 300 volunteers, from Boy Scouts to firefighters, work around the clock — in an example of community spirit at its best — to set up, run and dismantle North Mianus School’s annual fundraiser: The Pow Wow Carnival. Everyone shows up: the old, the young and the restless — riding rides, eating cotton candy and winning goldfish. Old friends are united, community spirit is in abundance and spring is suddenly here, powing your wow in ways big and small.
This year’s 74th Pow Wow took place last weekend, and although we may need to take out a second mortgage, the Haft family was out in full force. All three of my kids had friends from Darien, New Canaan and even far-flung Fairfield gather for the social event of the season. Kids reunited with longlost nursery school friends and stood in endless lines for the same old-fashioned rides they have been enjoying since kindergarten. And because the pandemic shut down the Pow Wow for the past two years, it’s reemergence was like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Which brings me to the The Guitar.
It’s important to understand that I have history with The Guitar, otherwise known as the “Rock Star Thrill Ride” — otherwise known as the 22-seat guitar head that spins on a giant spoke, plummeting 60 feet in all directions until it spins an entire 360-degree orbit of hell. It’s by far the most terrifying ride at the Pow Wow.
I have spent years sitting at the base of The Guitar, watching my children scream as an unusually nonemotive ride operator looks by passively. I‘ve spent years forbidding children from riding The Guitar altogether. And as if mimicking the terrifying trajectory of The Guitar itself, I came full circle this year and decided to ride The Guitar myself. I just turned 50, I ran into two old friends and I was reemerging from a global pandemic: What did I have to lose?
“Mom, don’t do it,” my 10-year-old warned me. “You couldn’t handle the pirate ship and that just swung back and forth.”
But I was determined, and as I persuaded my long-lost friends to face The Guitar with me, I conferred with the (still nonemotive) carnival operator about the “safest” seating positions, which didn’t seem to register as a palatable question. We ended up sitting on the outer most seats on the bottom row, which was fine until the ride started.
“What if there is an adult on one end that is too heavy for The Guitar to oscillate evenly?” I asked the operator, but my friend was quick to answer.
“There’s a warning sign about that,” she told me.
Apparently, adjacent to the height requirement chart, there was a sign that said “Exceptionally Large People” might be unable to ride The Guitar.
Exceptionally Large People?
It was unfortunate that all of this surfaced to my consciousness just after we had been strapped into The Guitar, and as the ride got going, all I could think about was, “What if the center does not hold?” Images of a 60-foot electric guitar, with 22 Pow Wow patrons strapped to its base, spinning off into the North Mainus stratosphere flooded my mind, as our real-time Guitar whirled with increasing velocity at each centrifugal rotation from hell.
“How was it?” my husband Ian asked when I got home.
But I couldn’t answer — I was on a Google mission. It didn’t take long to find exactly what I was looking for: In July 2021 at Michigan’s annual Cherry Festival, a similar ride detached from its main spoke creating a ride that was something “straight out of a horror movie.” I KNEW IT.
“Yes, but these things don’t happen in Greenwich,” Ian told me calmly.
And so it is: Even if you end up feeding the Goldfish when your kids head off to college or The Guitar has you reconsidering the Depends aisle at Costco, one thing is clear: The Pow Wow will always be there. You can count on it — kind of like Greenwich.