Steele's Amusements

Carnival Life on the Midway

De: Kenneth Miller

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Four generations of Steeles dragged carnival rides, machinery, and unusual employees across the Midwest throughout the 1940’s to the 1970’s. They had created the archetypical traveling carnival with a combination of guts, fear, and entrepreneurial spirit. Their carnival started with a pony ride and developed into a corporation moving scores of trucks and employees to county fairs throughout the upper Midwest. The Steele family raised kids on the midway and produced lawyers, engineers, and most of all honest and interesting people. Fun people. Steele’s Amusements is meant to walk a reader through the carnival midway and see things from a carny perspective, reliving some of the more interesting events of life on the road. The carnival business is seen through the lens of mid and late 20th century popular culture. Changing attitudes in society about disability were profoundly felt at Steele’s and from the ‘60’s the operation downplayed sideshow freaks and oddities, but these facets of carnival life could not be eliminated entirely. People had certain expectations of what a carnival was and what they expected to see. Steele’s kept pace with the times by reworking themes and adding attractions to suit changing tastes, while always keeping one foot in the past. This was a business necessity and also homage to their eldest, L.E. Steele. Grandpa Steele, as L.E. was known to most, was a Great Depression entrepreneur, taking his humble photography business and making the adjustments necessary to survive in the cold, industrial Midwest. This is the carnival story of Steele's Amusements.