ASHFIELD — Every carnival game at the Ashfield Fall Festival is an independent business enterprise run by children, most of them middle school age. Most games cost a dollar to play; winners get small prizes, usually candy, and the game’s owner pays a fee for the space at the festival.
It’s a matter of tradition, like the festival’s popular fried dough and tag sales.
“I call it business 101,” said Phil Pless, who coordinates the field space for the festival’s organizational committee.
The owners either build their games themselves or buy established ones that have been at the festival before. A game may change hands many times, and some of them have appeared at the festival every year for decades.
One of those legacy games is the catapult, now owned by Emaline Drury, who is 12. The machine’s arm is about 5 feet long, and it launches soft, soccer ball-sized cannonballs. The player pays a dollar for three tries at shooting the ball through a hoop.
Drury wasn’t sure exactly how old the catapult was, but she said someone’s mom told her it had been at the festival for about 30 years. Other game owners pointed to the catapult as one of the festival’s most popular games. Drury said she bought it in 2017 for $200. She mentioned she has made her money back several times over.
The classic games don’t always overshadow the new ones. “Flying Frogs,” in which players slam a lever with a hammer to launch a rubber frog at targets, was especially popular. Twins Emmett and Oliver Johnson, both 12, built “Flying Frogs” last year, and are co-owners.
“It’s probably the most popular kid-run game,” Emmett Johnson said.
The only one that he thought might have been even more popular was the rope-climb, which is run by the Boy Scouts.
“I think people just like hitting things,” said Austin Parker, 13, who was operating a miniature shuffleboard-like game in the next booth over.
Parker said his family has had the shuffleboard table at home for years, but this was the first time he had brought it to the festival. The table is designed for “Dutch shuffleboard,” a two-player game with a complex rule set, so Parker came up with his own rules to pare it down into a one-player carnival game.
Tossing the pucks requires some finesse, which makes the game more difficult than others, Parker said.
“The older the kids are, the better they do. A lot of little kids can’t even get it to the end,” Parker said.
Max Marcus can be reached at mmarcus@recorder.com.