At 89, the Fair Is Still His Way of Life Man has seen carnivals change The Buffalo News, 15 August 1995 By Matt Villano News Staff Reporter Benjamin Franklin Braunstein squints at the blinking rainbow of lights from the Ferris wheel behind him, and he laughs. "There ain't nothing in the world like a fair," he says. He looks to his left and sizes up a group of teenagers walking his way. Braunstein grins a grin so large that the wrinkles of his face swallow his eyes. "People here are always smiling. It's like these rides and all the sights and sounds just go straight to a person's spirit and set it free," he says. If anybody knows about the magic a carnival works on a person's spirit, it's Braunstein. He's the oldest "carney" in the country. Just how old is he? Braunstein is 89. He has been a part of Strates - and the Erie County Fair - longer than any single ride. He entered the carnival business before cotton candy. "I was 17 and my parents asked me what I wanted to do with my life. You know what I said? I told them I h ad no idea." He chuckles at the memory. "I can assure you, though, spending all this time working at a carnival was never even an inkling." And after 70 years in the business, Braunstein says he's never been disappointed. "When I was born, my parents knew I was going to have a terrific life," he says. "So they named me after one of the greatest men in the history of this country - Benjamin Franklin. The Braunstein part is to show that I'm also my own person; it's my chance to make a name for myself." Here he pauses and scans the panoramic palette of colors down the midway. His eyes widen and he gently nods his balding head up and down. "I think I've done a pretty good job so far," he says. Braunstein doesn't fun a concession booth or operate a ride. He handles the media - giving tours to television anchors, getting reporters interviews, and setting up the perfect photo or video shots. He joined his first carnival when he was 20, in 1926. Although he didn't join Strates until 1944, he has played the Erie County Fair for almost 70 years. "This fair is one of my favorite because it always amazes me how many people show up," he says, nodding at the crowds around him. "This one and the State Fair in Syracuse are the biggest shows we do." But how the people enjoy the fair this year is not the way it used to be. In 50 years, Braunstein says, the show has changed drastically. "Our show used to be nothing but animals and freak shows," he says. "We had fire swallowers, inflatable women, she-men, big Vikings, you name it. In fact, one of my best friends was a three-legged man." Braunstein smiles. He may be joking. "Really, he had three legs. Frank Lentini was his name. We'd be sitting on a bench in Manhattan and people would crowd around him to see his third leg. Honest. "We also used to have girlie shows, like the kind you've gotta go to a bar to see today," he says. Seventy years ago, there weren't nearly as many rides as there are today. But the times changed, as they always do. Most of the freaks died or retired. The girlie shows were banned. People started getting bored with just the animals, so we invented more rides." At this year's Erie C"ounty Fair - the 156th - there are more than 45 rides along the mile-long midway. Although the show also features a headless woman and a she-wolf, the freaks are, as Braunstein says, "not what they used to be." The Strates show is the only remaining railroad carnival in the United States. The Orlando, Fla.-based company uses a 60-car train to move the show's equipment and employees to various locations throughout their seven-month season. In one season alone, the train will visit 16 different locations and cover more than 7,000 miles on the East Coast. "We're the only rail-based amusement show left in the world; like a big city that moves into another city overnight," Braunstein brags. "It's an honor, but believe me, traveling across the country by train sure is hard for all the people who work on this show." Braunstein never travels on the train; he prefers to drive his red Eldorado. (His license plate reads "BFB 6," his initials and the year he was born.) Sometimes he'll drive 14 hours a day, all by himself. Braunstein grew up as an only child, and lived with his parents in an apartment on Forsythe Street in New York City. He spent two years working for a promotion agency in New York City. There he saw stars like Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, and Ethel Merman, and a ventriloquist named Paul Newman. After working so closely with actors, Braunstein decided to give show business a try. He wandered around Broadway until he was chosen as an actor in Gus Edwards' "School Daze." Braunstein traveled all over New York to perform, but gave it up before his 20th birthday because he couldn't stand living out of a hotel room. "I knew I wanted to be in the entertainment business, but being an actor just didn't live up to my dream," he says. "I needed something more." Then he found the carnival. "It was something a little different - something exciting and fulfilling but not overly demanding." He pauses. "Something wonderful." Braunstein's first carnival job was as a public relations intern for the now-defunct Kaus Expositions. He was stationed in front of the merry-go-round, where he would talk to fair-goers and give them pamphlets about the fair. "All those smiling eople would rant and rave about this ride and that ride, and it just made me feel wonderful," he says. "I knew then that I was in the right place." Both of his parents died in the next few years. He says he never kept in touch with many of his relatives. For the first time in his life, Braunstein was alone. But not for long. "The Strates family just took me in and made me one of their own," he says. "I couldn't have ever asked for a better arrangement. It was like I had a family again." Within months, Braunstein became one of the primary people in Strates' public relations department. For him, it was the best of both worlds: he could be his own boss, and he was constantly entertaining. Braunstein started dating Frances Osulky, who operated the booth famous for its duck pond. One date led to another, and at the end of the season, Frances asked Braunstein to drive her from the fair in Hamburg to her parents' home in Toronto. On the way, they got married. "A lot of people couldn't believe it, but we didn't plan it at all," he says. "We just got to talking, and decided it was the best decision. That was a beautiful time." Braunstein pauses and stares into the distance. For a moment, it seems his mind is elsewhere. "Well, she died in 1963." He looks away. "She was something else." Braunstein didn't stay single for long. Today, his "girlfriend" is a 76-year-old widow from Orlando named Soni Weiner. Mrs. Weiner doesn't like carnivals, but the two see each other for the five months of every year that Braunstein is home. He says the job itself makes up for the seven months he must spend away from his Orlando apartment and from his friends there. "People call me a dreamer, and stumbling across the job was definitely a dream come true," Braunstein says, tapping a tiny "Strates Shows, Inc.," lapel pin. "Sure there are things about this job that aren't ideal, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. And by now, I've been here so long, I wouldn't know what to do with myself anywhere else."