As in so many small towns across America, there is usually at least one community event that the entire town rallies behind and eagerly awaits. Since its inception in 1923, that event has been the Easton Volunteer Fire Company’s annual carnival.
With only two extended interruptions since 1923, the Easton Volunteer Fire Company has held its carnival in either July or August. This has been a family affair, not only for the patrons, but for the volunteers who put it together.
For just over 100 years, Carnival Week has been a highly anticipated event that the entire community always looks forward to.
Those of us who grew up here in the 1950’s and 60’s fondly remember the one week every year when there was a place in Easton for teens to gather and have fun. We’d save up our allowances or the money we made from cutting grass or baby-sitting the neighbors’ kids and head over to the green right after dinner. Two or three dollars would buy an entire evening of fun. There were no mechanical rides in those days, so we spent our cash on games of chance and skill, played bingo in the big tent, drooled over the Mustang we thought our $5.00 ticket would win us on Saturday night, and always made sure we had enough cash left for the peach shortcake.
Practically every face in the crowd was someone we knew. Oscar and his auxiliary police force knew practically each and every one of us by name, so we watched our step and our behavior. Cross the line with Oscar and he’d pay a visit to your parents the following day – enough of an incentive to keep most of us under control.
The carnival held in the year you graduated was the place that many of us said our good-byes prior to leaving for university or the military a week or two later. It was often the last big hurrah before we entered the real world.
But today’s version of the company’s largest annual fundraiser is vastly different from what many of us “old timers” remember from our youth.
Modern fire trucks cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and the safety equipment needed to protect the volunteers who fight our fires or help rescue accident victims is incredibly expensive. The small, old fashioned style of carnival we grew up with simply can’t generate the kind of funds the volunteers need to raise in the 21st century.
While today’s local volunteers work tirelessly to pull off a fun event for Easton and its surrounding towns, there are many unfamiliar faces among the vendors and multitude of ride operators. The carnival of 2024 more closely resembles a full-scale mobile amusement park. There are bright lights, loud music, miles of power lines, and short of an old-fashioned roller coaster, nearly every type of ride imaginable. There are electronic games of skill, games of chance, and enough stuffed animal prizes to fill the back of the family SUV.
While the Siren Aide still prepares hundreds of peach cobbler treats, there are also pizza stands, fried dough vendors, cotton candy sellers, and plenty of other fast-food items.
The Bingo tent still attracts a large crowd of folks looking for a real old fashioned fun activity that they can enjoy with their friends and neighbors. It’s run entirely by members of the volunteer fire company and evokes great memories of times gone by.
But for those of us who fondly recall those times when we gathered on multiple nights to enjoy some fantastic home-made dishes, pay a dime or a quarter for a chance to win a Kodak Brownie camera or an Emerson transistor radio, here is some history of the carnival over the past 100 years.
From its inception in 1921, the Easton Volunteer Fire Company has been an all-volunteer, self-funded fire department. Beginning with fourteen community minded men, the company grew its ranks rapidly during its first few years. But those men would soon find out that the town government had little appetite for offering their group any financial support. The Easton volunteers were on their own when it came to raising the funds to cover absolutely everything from building a firehouse to purchasing fire-fighting equipment and trucks.
Luckily for the town, those men were up to the challenge.
The very first Easton Volunteer Fire Company carnival took place on the 6th, 7th, & 8th of September 1923. The company didn’t yet own a fire truck, much less have a firehouse. That first carnival was held at the Yellow Bowl Tea Room on the eastern side of Sport Hill Road. There was food and dancing, and the games of chance had hand-crafted blankets and linens as prizes. It was deemed a great success, clearing the recently formed volunteer company close to $1,000. Those funds were soon put to good use when the fire company purchased its first “fire truck”, an aging Oldsmobile roadster that had been converted into a chemical car with twin 35-gallon soda and acid tanks used to fight fires.
The 1925 carnival more than doubled the cash intake with over $2,000 in net revenue, and with a last-minute decision, the event has held over for an additional day on Monday. The grand prize in the raffle was a “Complete Radio Set.” While that may not sound like much in today’s world, in the mid-1920’s a premium radio would have been the equivalent of a total home entertainment system. Very few middle-class families would have been able to afford such a luxury. The revenue from that year’s carnival was used to install a central heating system in the new firehouse.
In 1927, the event began on Saturday, July 16 and then continued Wednesday through Saturday the following week. By then the carnival was being held at Ed Tammany’s field across the street from the new firehouse on Sport Hill Road. Bingo was the main game of chance, with a candy wheel and blanket booth providing additional revenue. Food offerings consisted of hot dogs, soft drinks, and ice cream. There was even an orchestra to provide music for dancing.
In 1933, the Siren Aide Club was officially organized, and with the help of the ladies, food sales soared at the carnival with the addition of freshly cooked dishes and desserts. During the Depression, the carnival became an important diversion for the residents of Easton, and it grew into a weeklong celebration that included events outside of the nightly games of chance. One of those new events was Donkey Baseball, where the players had to ride donkeys to round the bases. It was good fun that brought out half of the town to view their volunteer firemen attempting to coerce the rented animals to follow their commands.
In 1937, the fire company secured the ½ acre field for the carnival when it paid the Tammany family $3,000 to complete the purchase. After 13 years, the carnival finally had a permanent venue.
With most of the younger members away serving in the military, the carnival grounds sat dark during World War II.
Following WWII, the carnival resumed. It was bigger and better than ever, and the grand prize to be raffled-off on the final night had been upgraded to a brand-new automobile! In 1948, the lucky winner drove home a new 1949 Ford. The excitement generated by the possibility of winning a new car made the “Car Tent” a regular feature that has endured for the past 75 years.
By the time the 1948 carnival’s lights were turned off and the tents taken down for another year, the company had cleared a whopping $12,000. Things were looking good, and the volunteers had a rather impressive bank account. But not everyone in Easton was quite so pleased. Some were concerned the firemen were taking in too much money and not spending enough of it for new equipment. Some others were not happy with all those games of chance. Gambling, after all, was generally frowned upon 75 years ago.
By early 1949, Connecticut had enacted several new laws that gave the State’s Attorney General the power to regulate, and even ban, games of chance. Ridgefield’s annual fireman’s carnival was held in June, a month before Easton’s. The State Police there staged a raid and shut it down. Those spinning wheels of chance and the raffle tickets nearly every resident had cheerfully purchased for a chance to win that shiny new automobile were then deemed illegal. As a result, the men of the Easton fire company reluctantly called off their own carnival and returned the car they had hoped to award to some lucky winner back to the dealer who had supplied it.
With the carnival grounds dark and deserted, the annual revenue fell. It was the women of the company’s Siren Aide who helped the company survive through the lean years of the early 1950’s. They held bake sales and hosted dinners to raise money. The fire company held on, but barely.
And then came 1956. The State of Connecticut finally repealed its ban on games of chance for volunteer and charitable organizations. After eight long and extremely difficult years, the fire company could finally resume its annual carnival.
The 1957 carnival generated income from the Car Tent, the Bicycle Tent, and always popular Bingo Tent. The prizes available in the other tents had increased in value as many of Easton’s residents were owners of businesses in nearby Bridgeport, Fairfield, and Westport. Many of those business owners simply donated prizes in the spirit of support for the fire company that was almost 100% self-sufficient in every aspect except for covering the salaries of the two paid firefighters who manned the station and drove the trucks. In 1957, there were games of chance at booths where electrical appliances, dolls, toys, picnic sets & dishes, groceries, and luggage & cameras could be won.
In 1960, the ladies of the Siren Aide gathered every morning at 9:00 AM for seven days running to put on an incredible dinner each and every night the event ran. We’re not talking about just hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries. We’re talking about a different, full-blown dinner each night!
Below is a synopsis of Catherine Ellison Merillat’s August 7th article in the Bridgeport Sunday Post:
One week’s worth of groceries: 907 pounds of meat; 10 crates of lettuce; 8 bushels of tomatoes; 1,000 hand-made meatballs; 80 pounds of spaghetti. And of course, 35 bushels of fresh peaches destined for consumption as part of the best darn peach shortcake this side of heaven!
There was always a baked ham night. Another evening saw a corned beef and cabbage dinner. Open-faced hot roast beef sandwiches smothered in home-made gravy were served mid-week. Spaghetti and meatballs were so popular on the night they were served that they usually ran out. Friday night saw 140 quarts of hand-made Manhattan clam chowder consumed by closing, and as had become the custom, the grand finale on Saturday evening was a full roast beef dinner. Dinner was a sell-out every night as the people of Easton came together to support their volunteer fire department and visit with their friends and neighbors.
But the pièce de résistance of every evening was the peach shortcake! It sold out every single night. Light homemade buttery biscuits piled high with freshly cut peaches smothered in juice and then topped with hand-made whipped cream. If you ever ate it, you remember it like it was yesterday.
Every single dish was made by the women of the Siren Aide. Except for the meat served each night, their organization bought and paid for every ingredient used. The volunteer firefighters covered the cost of the meat in exchange for a free dinner every night of the carnival.
One very special lady, Mrs. Ethel Sondergaard, purchased and brewed 144 pounds of coffee all by herself. She did it every year for as long as most people could remember. Two urns went non-stop for about seven hours every night for the entire seven day run of the carnival.
And the proceeds from all this hard work? Where did they go? The Siren Aide outfitted the entire kitchen at the firehouse. A professional grade stove, a giant refrigerator, and a large freezer. They purchased tables and chairs, made the drapes, and cleaned the firehouse recreation area regularly. And with the monies left over, they made a generous annual contribution towards the building of a new firehouse. The department would have had a difficult time surviving without that tireless support of the Siren Aide.
The 1960’s and 1970’s saw the introduction of motorized rides and more booths full of prizes. The 1977 carnival had 4 rides – 2 for kids and 2 for adults. The bicycle booth remained popular, as did the candy wheel. The radio and television booth offered the chance to spin for a color television as its top attraction. There was even a Jersey cigarette wheel, where winners received cigarettes as prizes!
During those years, there was a move away from the nightly dinners to a more casual approach to feeding the patrons of the carnival – a larger food tent that provided the now traditional fast-food fare. The Siren Aides continued their money-raising efforts by concentrating more on desserts. They had over 150 frozen pies ready to bake fresh daily and serve each of the nights during the event. The carnival’s famous peach shortcake was served to hungry patrons every evening. The carnival concluded on Saturday night, when some lucky ticket holder was awarded the top prize of a new Buick Century.
We hope everyone enjoys this year’s carnival. But in addition, won’t you please consider writing a check as a donation? Checks can made out to the Easton Volunteer Fire Company and sent to 1 Center Road, Easton, CT 06612. Thanks to the entire community for your support, and thank you Easton volunteer firefighters for keeping our homes and family safe!
