- Jerry Apps: The Midway became popular after 1893
when the very first Midway was at the Columbian Exposition
in Chicago in 1893.
It was a mile long.
There were all kinds of rides,
all kinds of sideshows, all kinds of chance deals.
Stuffed animals were often the prize
for all of these kind of competitions.
Like, you could throw darts at balloons.
That was one of the games.
You could shoot a rifle, with real bullets, by the way,
at little ducks there going along in front of you.
You could stand in front of a guy,
and he's going to guess your weight and your age.
There's another one where you could impress,
if you're a boy, you can impress your girlfriend
with the strength that you have
by hitting this thing that goes up,
bing, oh, look at that.
Or getting halfway up and being embarrassed like,
"Oh, geez, what can I tell my girlfriend?"
So there was all of this going on at the fair.
The games of chance in the early days,
a lot of them were fixed.
[chuckles] You didn't win.
One of the games of chance
was with a ball, to throw a ball at milk bottles.
And if you knocked over so many milk bottles
that then you got a teddy bear.
What you don't know is they're half filled with lead
and they're not about to tip over,
no matter how hard you hit 'em. [laughing]
I don't think they do that anymore.
But that's in the early days.
There was a lot of that kind of mischief that went on.
[banjo note]