The carnival is coming to town, and so are the carnies. Carnies are the people who take your tickets, rattle off an unintelligible spiel about safety, switch a button and set you in motion. Carnies are the people who travel from town to successive town, each one a blur.

Sophomore Tim Morris recalled his 16th summer, when a traveling carnival came through his hometown of Woodland, Wash. The carnival was hiring and he needed cash. He was hired and spent two days convincing people to pay for the privilege of knocking down bottles with carefully aimed softballs.

Suzanne Blake, 19, spent last summer working with carnies at Portland's Oaks Park amusement park. She vividly remembers those long summer days and the carnies she worked with.

"They were all guys; there were very few women, and those women didn't have the best reputations," she said. Blake worked with carnies as young as 15.

Although carnies are people who work with the traveling carnival, Blake soon discovered that amusement parks are attracting them as well. Her foreman was the first carny she met. "I would [talk] to him and find out not only did he have scary prison stories, but he traveled with the carnival," she said.

Morris is quick to assert that all carnies smoke and that their clothes are unkempt and dirty. He described them as rough.

Blake was intrigued by the carnies. "They were very interesting because I am a sheltered girl," she said, "and I've never met anyone who has done the things that they have done." She envied their independence and observed that their outlook was very different from her own.

Blake worked a 52-hour week. She could have had 60 hours if she had been willing to work the graduation parties. However, she was reluctant because of the parties' notoriety for drunks, she said.

Blake enjoyed the variety of her work at Oaks Park. She also enjoyed working outdoors with minimal supervision. For carnies, however, the carnival is much more than a summer job. When they choose the traveling carnival, they choose a lifestyle.

Carnivals travel for as much as seven months out of the year. As a result, carnies lead a communal lifestyle. The carnies Morris worked with lived in trailers. At Oaks Park many of the carnies chose to live together rather than in the bunkhouses provided.

The carnies told Blake that sometimes, for the luxury of a room and bathroom to themselves, they are willing to pay for a motel room.

According to Blake, carnies don't develop relationships outside of the carny community. Always on the road, they don't have many opportunities to develop meaningful outside relationships. In fact, Blake identified a definite "us and them" mentality in their response to customers. After consistently encountering people walking up the exit ramp past bold warning signs, they talked of the customers "leaving their brains behind."

Traveling carnivals require that the carnies become adept at setting up and dismantling each ride. According to what the carnies told Blake, "setting up rides gets to be this routine -- everyone knows exactly what they are doing," she said. Along the way, they develop a sense of teamwork, of having accomplished something.

Despite this routine, accidents do happen. Blake remembered a carny who stepped off the ferris wheel seconds before it collapsed, killing a friend and paralyzing another. He left the carnival and still refuses to operate the ferris wheel.

Blake described the carnies as fun-loving. "They like to do crazy things. A lot of them don't really have a sense of responsibility," she said.

She recalled one carnie named Trevor who allowed friends to climb on the frame of the Sea Dragon ride and cling to it while he ran the ride. At other times, the Trevor used a rock to hold down the "dead man's pedal," a safety device, so he and his friends could climb on the unmanned ride.

The carny's life is not always one of adventure. A typical day often involves evacuating a ride to clean up after someone has vomited. The carny then runs the ride to dry it off and to move the seat so that people won't remem-ber which one it was.

What motives people to choose this lifestyle?

Travel is the attraction for many. Morris pointed out that for those carnies involved in criminal activity, travel is a definite benefit. Moving prevented them from being in one place long enough to be tracked down or to pay taxes, for that matter.

Blake also said that many of the carnies she worked with had spent time in prison. With criminal records, they weren't able to get a job elsewhere.

Blake remembers Bobby. She estimated that he was nearing 35 when she first met him. Piece by piece she found out about his life. A father by his early teens, Bobby still managed to graduate from a university. He became involved in drug dealing to make more money. But he was caught and served a prison sentence. He then worked with a traveling carnival before he was hired at Oaks Park.

Drug use is a habit that carries over from prison, Blake said. She was aware of drug use among the carnies at Oaks Park. Some carnies used drugs for the "thrill of breaking the law." For carnies from destructive home lives, drug use was a coping tool. Blake said she believes it wasn't "peer pressure so much as it's an entire way of life."

Many of the younger carnies had left broken homes to join the carnival. For individuals such as Trevor whose mom and boyfriend bailed on him when he was 14, the carnival is a practical option.

Then there are those carnies who are there for the ride.

Reflecting on her summer among the carnies of Oaks Park, Blake said, "Their lives are so foreign. There was so much there that I didn't want, but there was something that I [wanted] because it was so independent."