839: Meet Me at the Fair

Ira Glass

The state of Iowa has a little more than three million people. One million come to the State Fair. I'm strolling past the swine barn, and the kids' talent show stage, and the lemonade shake up stands, and the many, many corn dog stands, and the Central Iowa Railroad Club Exhibit building, and the chainsaw art, and the live snakes, and the vast, slowly moving rivers of people.

Every one of those million is here on their own personal quest for what they want out of the fair. Stuff they want to do, stuff they want to see, everybody has their own mission. Declan and Killian, for instance, seven and nine years old, brothers from a suburb of Des Moines. They want to see the giant bull. Killian, the big brother, talked to my co-worker, Diane Wu.

Ira Glass

His little brother Declan with a fact check about Killian's favorite color being black. Another fact check-- bulls can't actually see red. The boys wander around the outside of the cattle barn, looking for the right entrance.

Ira Glass

The bull's name is Teddy Bear, and it weighs 3,060 pounds. Signs duct taped onto the pen say, do not touch the bull, which is, like, yeah.

Ira Glass

When you see a giant animal, if you're a kid or an adult, what is there to say other than, yeah, OK. That's about right. Elsewhere--

[GUNSHOTS]

Ira Glass

In the cowboy-mounted shooting competition, each competitor is on horseback. And they ride a course, shooting burning embers from their guns. They try to pop five balloons with one pistol. Then they change guns, shoot five more balloons with the other pistol, then gallop to the finish line, all without stopping.

Ira Glass

Adam Ross is actually ranked sixth in the world at this sport, but somehow, he has never won first place here in his home state of Iowa. That's his mission for this year's fair, he told my co-worker, Ike Sriskandarajah.

Ira Glass

A slightly slower pace over at the replica of Iowa's first church. The original was built in 1834. It's a cozy log cabin, where the goal is to reflect on God's goodness right in the middle of a gigantic, noisy carnival. They hold services twice a day during the fair, where Iowans are not officially permitted to pray, but they are, the guy leading the service says, allowed have to sing prayers.

Ira Glass

High above nearly everything at this fair, looking down on everyone, stands Byaunda, age 11, on the giant slide for her very first time. It is a massive metal slide that you fly down on a felt mat. And she has a simple goal of her own.

Ira Glass

And then she and her sister, Asele, grab their mats and push off.

[SCREAMING]

Ira Glass

The Varied Industries building is an enjoyable mishmash of t-shirts and household stuff for sale, but also expensive devices to help your blood circulation or your horse's blood circulation, plus, a guy in one of the more surprising missions at the fair, I thought.

Ira Glass

Marty Golden, in a neatly pressed blue uniform and Navy hat, was standing in front of a booth promoting the USS Iowa battleship, a World War II-era ship that's now a floating museum, its restoration paid for in part by grants from the state of Iowa.

Ira Glass

But there's a catch. Iowa happens to be landlocked. The ship is docked in Los Angeles, hence Marty's mission to get Iowans out there. Marty did two years in the Navy, 30 years in the Reserves. He served on a ship right off the coast of Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He's also a marine biologist who studied ocean life, retired now. But he loved the Navy enough that now, he's a tour guide on the Iowa, which, again, is in the Port of Los Angeles. Marty is not an Iowan. He lives out there.

Ira Glass

The Iowa State Fair began in 1854, just eight years after Iowa became a state. They hadn't even picked a location to build their State Capitol building yet, but they wanted to come together for a fair, for reasons that aren't that different from why we do it today. And what are they?

I think at a state fair, so much of what's on exhibit is us. We come, with the animals we raised, and our pies and sewing projects, our spelling bee skills, and our expertise at shooting balloons from horseback, and our love for a Navy museum battleship that we think others would love also if we could just tell them about it in person.

We take in the exhibits and we are the exhibits at a state fair. That's what's so different about a state fair from everything else. Today, we hang out with some of the one million people at the fair and see if they get what they wanted and dreamed of from the fair this year. From WBEZ Chicago, This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

This American Life, Act One, Carney Confidential. So Bailey Leavitt has a different relationship to state fairs and carnivals from most of us.

Ira Glass

Bailey grew up in carnivals, comes from a family of carnies.

Ira Glass

Bailey read on Instagram that we were going to be doing this show about state fairs and she wrote in, talking about her family's life on the road as carnies, mostly out west. I thought it would be fun to walk through the midway with her and see it through her eyes, because she notices all kinds of stuff, big and little, that you and I don't know enough to notice. She grew up with a different vocabulary for everything around us here. She calls all the games joints.

Ira Glass

Cotton candy stands are poppers. Food stands are grabs. Prizes are flash. Carnivals themselves are shows, as in--

Ira Glass

--a bunch of different shows. 13 independent companies provide the games and rides for the Iowa State Fair. We walk up to a balloon game that must be, I don't know, 20, 25 feet tall, a structure made from aluminum scaffolding with flags and prizes hanging everywhere, and two giant banners saying, bust one wins. Bailey gives it a once over. She's impressed.

Ira Glass

Bailey tries to spot who's green help and who's a 40 miler-- that means just there for a bit-- and who's a genuine carny. Before I met Bailey, I honestly wasn't so sure if people still use the word carny or if it has some sort of derogatory, old-timey feeling to it. She told me some carnies hate the word, but she and her family embrace it with pride. These days, Bailey works for a little software company that her mom started.

Two of Bailey's brothers and her sister are still on the show, and her dad and stepmother were in a show in Alaska that her dad tries to pull her back into now and then. Bailey has happy memories growing up, running around carnivals and state fairs. She could ride any ride or play any game for free, surrounded by adults, her parents' employees, who kept their eyes on her. There were incredibly special days, like stock day, when the stuffed animals for the fair, the stock, would arrive on a giant semi-trailer truck.

Ira Glass

Bailey started to work in the fair for real when she was 10, working a goldfish game.

Ira Glass

Bailey's mom, Tyna, joined us for a while in the midway. She was watching Bailey's baby while Bailey and I walked around. Tyna co-managed the family carnival for years and jokes that her kids learned to count by counting money. Says Bailey was great at drawing a crowd, loved the attention, loved performing. When she was little, her flaw as an employee? She did not care about convincing people to spend more money on the game.

Ira Glass

Mom was actually right about that one. Something you don't think about too deeply as a civilian fairgoer, looking for fun, is that for the people working the fair, it really is all about money, how much you can make and how quickly and efficiently you can bring it in. Among other things, a state fair is a collection of small businesses attracted by the massive crowds. And among the people like Bailey, who work games and rides, the workers who make the most money are called agents.

The word "agent" means different things in different regions of the country among carnies. But where Bailey was a carny, agents were just the best there was, so good at getting families and guys trying to impress their girlfriends to throw money at games that carnival owners would pay them more than anybody else, and they would jump from show to show. They're agents, as in free agents. As we walk through the fairgrounds, the thing that Bailey wanted to show me more than anything was an agent.

Ira Glass

Bailey and her stepdad once watched an agent who put a mark to sleep so well that he spent all of his money, left the game, and then came back with more money.

Ira Glass

I wanted to see this. I wanted to see an operator who put somebody to sleep. So we headed out in search of an agent.

Ira Glass

We head over to a game where there's a row of 14 chairs in front of 14 targets. The way this game works is you sit and fire a water pistol at the target. When you hit the bullseye, the water goes into a tube, filling it up. First player to fill their tube wins a stuffed doll.

Ira Glass

These long pauses you're hearing, Bailey disapproves.

Ira Glass

This guy's trying to get people to sit and play the game. Three players sit, then a fourth. 10 seats are empty.

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Bailey knows this particular game well, the water race. She's been the one on the mic running the water race for her dad's carnival in Alaska.

Ira Glass

She was taught to do lots of rhyming when you're on the mic, lots of alliteration, like watch them race them, watch them chase them. That's one she did. This guy does not do much of that. Also--

Ira Glass

We cross the fairgrounds, find another water race game, and this one's huge and beautiful, 26 seats instead of 14 like the first one. It's what Bailey calls a double-sided joint. There are two rows of chairs facing each other, and the guy on the mic stands in the middle on a platform between the two rows. Huge, fluffy prizes hanging everywhere. And the guy on the mic--

Ira Glass

Even I can tell, this guy's got charisma. He's a stocky, bald guy with a five o'clock shadow. When he's on the mic, you cannot look away.

Ira Glass

And that great, gruff, rock and roll voice.

Ira Glass

Bailey's mom, former carnival manager, she's watching him, too.

Ira Glass

I do get the guy to talk to me in little snatches of conversation while winners are picking their prizes. His name is Jeremy Buvier.

Ira Glass

So we saw an agent. But the truth is, we never got to see him really do his thing full force, because it was after 8:00 PM. This section of the fair, kiddieland, was dying down. So he never filled more than half the seats in his game. We didn't see him put anybody to sleep and keep them playing and spending money.

But there was one more person Bailey and I watched. He was not, strictly speaking, a fellow carny. He was a salesman, a traveling salesman. But Bailey and I both watched him, mesmerized. And he was in one of the prime spots that anybody could possibly get at this state fair for selling anything.

This was outside the Varied Industries building, next to the door, and also the corner of the building. So you saw him approaching from two different directions. The Iowa State Fair charges a bunch of extra money for that spot, of course. This guy was calmly making bank-- Kenny Burnell. He sells nozzles for garden hoses.

Ira Glass

Some agents, Bailey says, are high-energy, but some are the opposite. They win through calm. That's Kenny. And OK, just to describe his setup, he's standing next to a clear glass box that's maybe two feet by two feet by two feet, spraying water into it with a garden hose, whose nozzle Kenny twists clockwise or counterclockwise to make the spray bigger or smaller.

Ira Glass

We stare at him as he puts people to sleep.

Ira Glass

With every new group of customers, Kenny hits the product against the ground to show how durable it is. He makes the same jokes.

Ira Glass

When he gets a minute between customers to talk, Kenny Burnell tells me that his grandfather sold at state fairs, and his father. His own first memory of selling is doing a salsa maker demo at the Colorado State Fair one time with his dad when he was five and a half. He enjoyed it. When he was 10, he toured with his parents to state fairs and had his own booth, selling radio-controlled cars. As he got older, he learned to demo kitchen products.

Ira Glass

He wanted to sell that because it has a great visual pitch. It's a quick pitch. Also, the water is loud. It's attention-getting. There's a wow moment when you hit the jet spray. And there's another wow moment when you go to the mist. And another advantage of these things? They're tiny.

Ira Glass

A quick trade show-- he can check all the nozzles he needs into a carry on bag. Way better, he says, than when he sold pillows. It was 24 years ago when he started selling these. Some of his moves today, of course, he doesn't stop talking. Of course, he puts the product in the customer's hand. That's something he saw his dad do.

He's learned that to talk for 12 hours straight for a week and a half for a state fair, to preserve his voice, he'll consciously pitch it a little higher or a little lower for stretches at a time. Here in the Midwest, and also in certain cities like Seattle, he said, he mostly does not make direct eye contact during the pitch. I noticed that.

Ira Glass

And then they got into a little chat about headset microphones. Bailey wanted to know why he didn't use one. Kenny was like, I usually do, but I had a problem with my mic and then a problem with my backup mic. Bailey was sympathetic. They liked each other. Game recognizes game. In my line of work, I have to say, putting somebody to sleep means you are not doing your job right. It's one of the worst things you can say to somebody.

When I told Kenny that's what Bailey said about him, he laughed and decided to take it as the compliment it was. He ended up selling $33,000 worth of nozzles over the course of the fair. That's 877 nozzles in 11 days, or put another way, for 12 hours a day, every single day, Kenny sold an average of one hose nozzle every 10 minutes.

Coming up, we go on a roller coaster of sorts, one filled with bunnies. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, "Meet Me at the Fair," we hang out with some of the 1.2 million people who came to the Iowa State Fair this year to see if they got what they hoped for. And we'll get back to that in a second. But first, let me tell you a story. Back in 2013, the band Motley Crue was getting older. One of its founding members had gotten a degenerative disease. The drummer, Tommy Lee, was going around saying they wanted to stop doing shows before they had to start replacing bandmates.

Ira Glass

A year later, Tommy Lee said, we are not playing county fairs. But Wednesday night, at the Iowa State Fair this year, Motley Crue played. They rocked. Fans partied.

Ira Glass

Curious about what it is like for the band to do this thing that they had sworn repeatedly they would never, ever do, we asked for an interview. The band said yes. And then a day later, we were told they would still love to talk to us, with one condition. They would not discuss playing state fairs.

In other words, Motley Crue is chicken. So I just want to say to the band right now, our offer is still good. We actually do want to hear what this is like for you to do this. Reach out if you change your minds. And with that, we turn to Act Two of our show.

Ira Glass

Act Two, How Bad is Your Bunny? So many people who come to the fair arrive with dreams tied to farmyard animals. There are non-stop animal competitions in hundreds of categories, all 11 days of the fair. One of our co-workers, Dana Chivvis, went to watch the 4H rabbit competition. She had no idea what an emotional roller coaster it would turn out to be. The 4H rabbit program is meant to teach kids lessons about animal science, and breeding, and caretaking, which they do learn, along with some other lessons. Here's Dana.

Dana Chivvis

The rabbit show takes place in an industrial building on the outskirts of the fair-- tin roof, beige, metal siding, no frills. Rabbits don't get the respect they deserve, except from the kids.

Dana Chivvis

Molly has shown rabbits at the county fair before, but this is her first year at the state fair, the big time. She's waiting in line to present the incredibly fuzzy black rabbit in her arms, a breed called Lionhead, named for the poof of mane it's supposed to have around its head. This competition is about presentation skills, demonstrating your knowledge about your animal's breed to a panel of three judges. Molly tells me she's not nervous. She carries her bunny to the judges' table.

Dana Chivvis

Molly flips Onyx onto his back and opens his little rabbit mouth so his teeth show. So she's checking for buck teeth, pegged teeth.

Dana Chivvis

The goal here is for the kids to look for the things a veteran judge would look for if they were evaluating this rabbit. Molly runs through the checklist she memorized with her dad, ears, nose, teeth, and then wraps it up with this professional assessment.

Dana Chivvis

Molly has learned her 4H lessons well. The judges have no questions. She gets 94 points out of 100. Most of the kids I meet are proud of their rabbits. They talk about how soft they are, how nice their markings are, except for Jillian King, who is 11 and who has absolutely had it with her rabbit.

Dana Chivvis

The rabbit in question is named Chacho. He's small and brown and has a bad case of bedhead, hair puffed out in all the wrong places, and a look that says he knows he screwed up.

Dana Chivvis

Jillian takes me a few rows over and points to two bunnies. And holy hell, I am telling you, these bunnies are some good-ass-looking bunnies, with that kind of calm demeanor that comes with effortless beauty. One is brownish-gray with dark brown ears that stick up in a regal way and hair that seems feline. The other one has a classically pretty bunny face, light brown, chubby cheeks, button nose. He's sitting up like a dog-- or like a bunny, I guess-- his eyes locked on the back of Chacho's fuzzy head.

Dana Chivvis

Jillian holds Chacho up in front of these hot bunnies so I can see the difference.

At the rabbit show, each rabbit is sized up against its breed standards. And then the judge awards the rabbit handler a ribbon. Confoundingly, purple is the best, followed by blue. A blue ribbon says your rabbit is up to breed standards, but isn't exceptional enough to get a purple. Next is red, which means your rabbit is a delinquent, and then white, which means you are a delinquent.

Jillian and her older sister Jenna are both having a bad "hare" day. Get it? Chacho is a mess. And Jenna's best rabbit, Martini, just got disqualified. Jenna is sitting in a camping chair in tears.

Dana Chivvis

Disappointed and also worried. She loves this snotty rabbit. We walk over to Martini, who's lying across the back of her cage.

Dana Chivvis

She has black and white bands across her body, and a perfect face split, which is to say, half her muzzle is white and half is black, a very desirable trait in a Harlequin rabbit.

To my untrained eye, she seems pissed. Jenna says Martini and her sister, Tequila, don't really like people. She bred them herself, choosing to pair a rabbit named Whiskey with good coloring to a lady rabbit named Fawn, who has a great face split. Out of that blessed union, Martini was born.

Dana Chivvis

Jenna and I have a difference of opinion here. I'm totally for quitting, especially if the activity involves frozen bunnies. As we're admiring Martini, Jenna's mother, TJ, walks up with news.

Dana Chivvis

Martini is not sick. She does not have snuffles, which is rabbit sniffles. She's just allergic to the sawdust they put in all the rabbit cages at the fair. Jenna doesn't use sawdust at home, so she had no way of knowing this. She's crying again.

Dana Chivvis

I suspect the lesson TJ is referring to is don't put sawdust in a rabbit cage. But I could see another lesson appearing on the horizon, one about the inevitability of disappointment, how disappointment leads to growth, how you don't need some technocrat from the bunny industrial complex to hand you a ribbon to know in your heart that you've got an outstanding rabbit.

Dana Chivvis

They hug it out.

Dana Chivvis

Understanding washes over Jenna's face. More tears.

Dana Chivvis

Jenna plans to match Martini with Mo, the rabbit in the cage next door, who's a few months younger than Martini and seems like a doofus. But I'm no expert.

And what about poor Chacho, Jillian's discombobulated rabbit? He ends up getting a red ribbon, which is second to worst, or if you ask Chacho, third best. Jillian's surprised.

Dana Chivvis

The lesson Chacho takes home from the State Fair is show business isn't for everyone, but he has a happy retirement to look forward to. Jillian plans to sell him to a good home, where he'll be someone's pet-- or maybe better for Chacho, the young buck in someone else's probably unsuccessful breeding program.

Ira Glass

Dana Chivvis is a producer on our show. One quick program note before we go any further. Some of you may have noticed a word usage that you're getting ready to email us about. I just want to say right now, yes, we know that a hare is not the same thing as a rabbit. But can I say, puns breed around this office like punnies.

Ira Glass

Act Three, Limp Biscuit. So every Iowan that I talked to outside the fair this year, when I mentioned that I was going to the fair, what we would end up talking about was food and what to eat. Food is a big thing at so many state fairs. News coverage of Iowa's fair always includes the latest stuff, like this year's bacon cheeseburger egg roll.

There are nearly 200 food stands at the fair, and they rarely become available for people who want to try to create the next hit themselves. Those spots are highly coveted because there's so much money to be made. Fair's management says that some vendors earn their entire annual income for the year at those 11 days at the fair. Chris Benderev had followed one family that tried to jump into the game this year.

Chris Benderev

Of the handful of new food stands at the fair this year, it was obvious which one would be the most interesting to watch. It's run by a couple, Jamie and Jennifer Adkins. And as best as I can tell, they're different from the other food stand managers at the fair in one important way.

Chris Benderev

All the other new food stands in Iowa this year are owned and run by people in the restaurant business, or they've done other big fairs. So how did Jamie and Jennifer end up doing this? Well, for a long time, Jennifer had dreamt of opening her own coffee shop. Then her husband saw this opportunity, not to launch a coffee shop exactly, but to launch an 11-day-long state fair version of it.

He heard about a food stand that was withdrawing from the state fair. They could save money by buying its used trailer and equipment. Jennifer could sell coffee drinks, and they'd do some food on the side-- biscuit sandwiches, they decided, because there aren't many vendors selling breakfast at the fair. And so they jumped in and prepared to launch Biscuit Bar. But when I talked to them in July, before the fair opened, they each had very different expectations for how much money they'd make.

Chris Benderev

Jennifer just wants to break even, cover all their costs, but she told me she didn't think they'd do that. The costs were too big. They'd spent $300,000 for the trailer and all the equipment. And that's before you get to salaries and food costs. Plus, the State Fair takes 19.5% of every dollar every food vendor brings in. Jamie, her husband, owns a successful trucking business. And when I reached him by phone, he was confident they'd make everything back this first year.

Chris Benderev

This kind of confidence, of course, is exactly what you'd need if you're an amateur and you decided you're going to get into any part of the restaurant business, a notoriously difficult business to make money in. But Jamie has a cousin, Joni, who runs two popular, very successful food stands at the fair. Jamie's helped her out a little in the past. And seeing his cousin's operation made the idea of raking in lots of cash seem way more possible, at least for him. Again, here's his wife, Jennifer.

Chris Benderev

The trailer Jamie and Jennifer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for is gleaming, with a green and pink facade, emblazoned with real pictures of biscuit sandwiches, but also cartoons of friendly anthropomorphized biscuit sandwiches. The word "espresso" appears in four places. And then at the top, outlined with dots of neon lights in big letters, Biscuit Bar. There are three registers out front, each with a teenager behind it. Lily is the most chipper by far. She's ready to sell.

Chris Benderev

It's about 7:45 AM. Some of the people who are allowed in early, fair staff, people here to show livestock, they start lining up at Biscuit Bar, eager for breakfast and coffee. I find Jamie inside the trailer. He's got a buzzed head, goatee, gruff voice, but soft eyes. He's assembling coffee orders alongside one of his new employees.

Chris Benderev

They're both wearing these hot pink Biscuit Bar t-shirts. Everyone here is. And in this moment, I'm struck by how something as simple as matching t-shirts can create a unifying sense of shared fortune, of teamwork. It's almost beautiful to behold.

Chris Benderev

Wait, actually, there's some kind of issue with the espresso drink.

Chris Benderev

This iced drink looks weird. It tastes weird. Jamie starts inspecting the back side of the large espresso machine.

Chris Benderev

When Jamie says it'll take five or six minutes for the water to reheat, he actually has no idea how long it'll take. A couple espresso drink orders are already waiting, and more are coming in. Five minutes pass. The water still isn't hot. Jamie shows Jennifer.

Chris Benderev

Jamie leaves Jennifer to figure out the coffee. Meanwhile, the employees assembling the sandwiches inside the trailer are shouting out the window to the kitchen. They need supplies. Brisket for the brisket sandwich won't be ready for 20 more minutes. And there are other shortages.

Chris Benderev

Or a little later--

Chris Benderev

Jamie starts rummaging through the fridge, looking for more individually wrapped sausage patties. He started the day with just 80, and now they're almost out. Jamie does find a huge bag of raw sausage and gets people to start molding that into patties. His brother Jeff starts grilling them. Jamie feels like these handmade patties are a workable solution. Jeff, who is like a shorter version of Jamie with a dash of Joe Pesci mixed in, does not.

Chris Benderev

In case you didn't catch that, Jeff said the handmade patties are a pain in the fucking dick to cook.

Chris Benderev

Jamie does have a secret card he can play in this situation. He phones up Joni, his cousin with the successful food stands, to see if she has extra patties.

Chris Benderev

Albert is the guy who was supposed to deliver the milk.

Chris Benderev

Another problem.

Chris Benderev

This is a problem. You can't make gravy with skim milk.

Chris Benderev

Meanwhile, out in front of the trailer, there's a semicircle of customers waiting for their orders. They all seem pretty calm, including Erika and Kris, two women who are wearing athleisure wear.

Chris Benderev

Back inside the big green and pink trailer--

Chris Benderev

--it's very tight in the trailer. And to assemble sandwiches, people are constantly squeezing past each other because the sausage and biscuits and eggs are on one end, and the sauces and dressings and cheese are on the other. Then they drop the finished sandwiches, wrapped in foil, near the front window. But the problem is, there's nothing written on the foil. They all look alike, which is why one of the cashiers sticks his head in and asks me--

Chris Benderev

Over and over, the staff have to gently unwrap the corner of a sandwich to check what it is. Of course, there's a simpler solution to this, a way to label the sandwiches. But--

Chris Benderev

Jennifer, who's in charge of the trailer, cannot find the one permanent marker that they had. Oh, and also, some of the orders aren't showing up on the overhead computer screens inside the trailer. So everyone's resorted to just yelling out orders at each other.

Chris Benderev

Things feel so out of control that just 45 minutes after the fair's gates have opened, Jamie calls for reinforcements, his 12-year-old daughter and his 19-year-old stepson, Alex.

Chris Benderev

Back out front, I tracked down the customers, Erika and Kris, again. They'd just gotten their food.

Chris Benderev

The whole thing's kind of painful to watch. People are requesting refunds. It's obvious this is not how this is supposed to go. I was curious how a food stand at the fair is supposed to work, and I didn't have to go far. A couple stands down is an incredibly successful food vendor that's been around for years.

Chris Benderev

Matt Rebar runs three cheese curd stands and one poutine stand here at the Iowa fair. And the way they operate has been refined over decades. And the biggest difference I noticed from Jamie and Jennifer's Biscuit Bar? Simplicity, all emanating from this fact.

Chris Benderev

Biscuit Bar, by contrast, has 11 food items and 16 beverage choices, many with a bunch of different customizations.

Chris Benderev

Inside his trailer, it's tightly packed with employees in a smaller space than Biscuit Bar. But somehow, it's more orderly.

Chris Benderev

The trailer was custom-built, so every step of making the food is laid out in perfectly sequential cheese curd assembly stations. Over at the Biscuit Bar, employees make complicated coffee drinks, smoothies, and pour fountain drinks. At Matt's cheese curd stands, his employees don't make drinks at all. Matt sees that as inefficient. Instead--

Chris Benderev

One last note about the simplicity of Matt's cheese curd stands-- paper towels. People need them constantly in a kitchen, and Matt has positioned a roll that hangs horizontally from a bungee cord above the workers. They can grab and tear them off effortlessly without taking up any space. Meanwhile, back at Biscuit Bar--

Chris Benderev

--Jamie had one of those large, black, mechanized paper towel dispensers that you find in public restrooms, the kind you have to wave your hands under. This morning, it was spitting out only a couple inches of paper towel at a time. The whole first morning, it seemed like Biscuit Bar couldn't catch any luck. Then in the early afternoon--

(SUBJECT) JENNIFER ADKINS: Are you guys ready to order?

Chris Benderev

--it finally feels like Biscuit Bar rights the ship.

Chris Benderev

Everybody's talking in a more normal volume, the wait times are way shorter, and the kitchen is feeding the sandwich makers what they need when they need it.

Chris Benderev

The lines are shorter now, not exactly 10 or 12 people deep, like during the breakfast rush, but there's still a steady flow of customers. People really like Biscuit Bar. I feel hopeful for them. For the first time, I think maybe they could break even. By the time I catch up with Jennifer again, it's closing time, 10:00 PM. She's at the cash register, is printing out the daily totals.

Chris Benderev

Jennifer looks over the receipts, then tucks them away. Her face is hard to read, maybe a little solemn.

Chris Benderev

Just then, Jamie wanders over.

Chris Benderev

10 days pass. The fair ends, and I check back in with Jamie and Jennifer. They'd both worked from 5:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night on their feet for 11 consecutive days without a break. It was grueling. And the money was way less than they'd hoped for, less than half of what Jamie had predicted. After the food costs and operating expenses, and after the fair took its nearly 20% cut, they were left with about $70,000 profit.

$70,000-- good money, but all of it would go towards paying back their original investment, which was, remember, $300,000. At that rate, Jamie and Jennifer will be working for free for four years before they pay off their debts. And after four years, they take home $70,000 every state fair before taxes. A solid chunk of money, for sure. Lots of families would take that deal. But this was still so much less than they talked about earning. Remember, Jamie's estimate would have had them pocketing two or three times that amount.

Chris Benderev

Jamie told me he was completely unfazed when he saw the numbers come in.

Chris Benderev

I didn't appreciate at first just how much Jamie sees opening a business at the fair as being like a trip to the casino. When he predicted that they'd make $300,000 to $350,000 their first summer, that wasn't because he'd done some careful calculations, counting the number of biscuits you could sell each day.

It was just a wish. He was going to put his money down on the table, roll the dice, and hope for the best. And even though it'll take years before they pay off Biscuit Bar's debts, Jamie is already encouraging Jennifer to open up her coffee shop this upcoming spring. Jennifer isn't so sure if the finances will work. Jamie, though, he feels lucky.

Ira Glass

Chris Benderev, he's one of the producers of today's episode.

Ira Glass

Act Four, Last Stand. Saturday night, the part of the park with rides for little kids closes down at 10:00 PM I stopped by there a little before that, wondering if I can talk to Jeremy, the agent of the watergun game.

Ira Glass

That hoarse, exhausted-sounding person is Barry, who's doing stock, handling prizes for Jeremy earlier in the day. Now, Jeremy's the one handling prizes, and Barry is on the mic.

Ira Glass

There are a few straggler families left, and they are keeping themselves as far as they can from Barry, holding a distance of maybe 35, 40 feet. They look beat, and they are not interested in Barry's shenanigans on the mic. Finally, one woman sits down at the game.

Ira Glass

Second woman pulls up in a motorized wheelchair. Barry pleads with people to sit. And when I ask him what this is about--

[CHATTER]

Ira Glass

Jeremy tells me that they have a goal to bring in $10,000 that day for the game.

Ira Glass

And I want to be clear, this was not management that set this goal. Jeremy did, he said. That's the number he wanted to hit. He and Barry each got a percentage of that $10,000. And they decided on how much they wanted to make for the day. And then they were going to use everything they had to make that number, begging people to sit down.

Ira Glass

Barry ends up running a modified two-person version of the game for a smaller prize and keeps going with more rounds.

Ira Glass

10:00 comes. The rides around us starts shutting down. Ferris wheel lights go off. That feels weird. This gigantic, multi-colored bright thing, suddenly pitch dark. Very tired clumps of people wander past it towards parking lots. But the water gun race is an island of light and noise.

Ira Glass

They finally run their last race four minutes after 10:00.

Ira Glass

Four minutes after this part of the park officially closed.

Ira Glass

They're done. Sound system is off. They made their goal, they told me. Jeremy said, when 10:00 hit, of course, they had to keep going.

Ira Glass

Got to flash means they're not done for the night. They have to head over to where the prizes are stored, get some prizes, come back to the game, and put them in place for tomorrow. He said they started to work around 9:00 that morning. It was 10:00 at night. They had another hour's work to go. We kept going, Jeremy said, because we like money.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Chris Benderev and Ike Sriskandarajah. The people who put together today's show include Bim Adewunmi, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Hany Hawasly, Henry Larson, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Yolanda Stephen, Clinton Wallace, Jodi Weeks, Andy and Scott Schaffer, Jennie Wunderlich, Mindy Williamson, Tyrus Thompson, Kris Olson, Jeff Jones, Sam Stroozas, Melissa and Megan Swartzendruber, Anna Paz Lopez, and Jon Wiederhorn.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to our program's confounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Just this week, he turned down Timothy Chalamet's offer to help him and his wife conceive a child.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

["I STAYED TOO LONG AT THE FAIR" BY BARBARA STREISAND] Have I stayed too long at the fair?