There’s a scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation where our hero, Clark Griswold, takes his family on a very familiar tour as he struggles to exit a London roundabout. “Hey look, kids, there’s Big Ben, and there’s Parliament!” he says. “Again.”
I did not know this cultural touchstone until yesterday, when someone I was stuck with in a hot box informed me we were living it. Except our experience was quintessentially American. Instead of the hulking clock tower, we had the Washington Monument. Instead of Parliament, there was the U.S. Capitol. And, most importantly, instead of a car with a right-hand-side driver’s seat, we were passengers on the longest Ferris wheel ride of my life.
Such was my introduction to The Great American State Fair, the exposition erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. After making my way through the queue and piling into a car with four others, we waited in suspension. It wasn’t until several minutes later, when we began rotating with some speed, that I realized the ride had not technically begun until then. (Or had it?) Around we went. There was some moving, and some waiting, and some rocking in the wind, all typical Ferris wheel things. Until, during one such waiting period—by which point I had come to resemble a ripe little cherry tomato—I came to question if the ride would ever end.
Seated in the car were a handful of locals, along with a lovely woman from Montana, who joked that we were getting a real bang for the taxpayer buck with our eternal ride. It’s a fair point, especially when you venture from approximately 2,000 miles west. A mustachioed man diagonally across from me observed that we had spent more time dangling in the air than we had waiting in line, and I took many photos of him and his apparent girlfriend, because, hey, we had the time. There was a playful and slightly anxious aversion to anti-MAGA sentiment, as if the spirit of President Donald J. Trump might show up to blow on our carriage and send our gondola in the sky tumbling to the pavilion below.
“I’m very MAGA,” the fourth passenger told the car on one of our descents. She then leaned up against the doors, pressing her face against the glass, like a kid longing for candy on the other side. “Sir,” she said. “Can you please let us off?” She was, in that moment, the hero of our story. The attendant smiled and pointed skyward. Up again we went.
In retrospect, there were signs: “Freedom 250” sprawled onto each car, a reference to the group the Trump administration formed to rival America250—the decade-long bipartisan planning effort to commemorate the Founding. Freedom was everywhere, really. Red and white and blue and gold and stars and flags and people milling about eating turkey legs beneath us. Freedom, freedom, freedom. So why was I locked in this aerial dew drop?
The upside, maybe, is that Ferris wheels invite introspection. What else is there to do when hanging delicately from a capsule, surveying the view? And here, on this particular ride, we were taunted with some of the most iconic symbols of freedom while unable to extract it ourselves. Nothing makes you appreciate your liberty more than losing it. Which made me wonder, in Carrie Bradshaw fashion, if the entire thing was a psyop meant to coax us into relishing the autonomy that makes America exceptional. I think it worked.
The view was also striking because of what was absent. To my left, the grass was a lush, nearly unpopulated carpet stretching toward the Washington Monument, abutted by booths tailored to the states willing to participate amid the polarizing planning process. To my right, there was a small rodeo that featured, among others, a woman wearing a skin-tight, sparkly pink bodysuit. There were stalls selling refreshments like water bottles and sugary strawberry lemonades—about $5 and $10, respectively—and an enclosure where you could watch the World Cup. And that was basically it. “The Great American State Fair” was always a paradox, but a welcome one: a state fair that went national would, in theory, outcompete the actual state fairs by bulking up with circus-like steroids. Who doesn’t love a fair? Yet there’s a good chance you will find more magic at a small-town carnival.
It’s also a missed opportunity. That is evidenced, counterintuitively, by my Ferris-turned-hamster wheel ride.
It isn’t very often that you cram a bunch of strangers into a pod and send them heavenward: to think, to bake under the sun, to wonder aloud when, exactly, you are going to be permitted to get down. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has gotten flak for filming a reality television program—The Great American Road Trip—while a government employee. It’s a little weird, I’ll admit. Perhaps it would have been better to recruit ideologically diverse groups for those Great American Ferris Wheel cars and leave them to work out their differences for 40 minutes. That’s about how long I’d estimate my ride was, though I felt I had aged considerably more upon exiting and kissing the ground. In any case, maybe participants would meet a nice lady from Montana, who would teach them that it allegedly can snow there in June. I would watch that.
I might even go on it again. In National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Griswold found himself stuck in a loop mostly because he was a clown. In London, the exit was his for the taking. But this is America. We choose to do the hard thing. “I’m so sorry,” a friend texted me after I told her that my new home was a Ferris wheel, “but this is really funny.” I can’t say I disagree.
