The Dumpster
Cotton Candy: Into Thin Air
by Michael Campbell
M
e at the Buffalo County Fair, 1972: “Please can I have some
cotton candy?”
“No.”
“Pleeeeeze? Pleeeaaaauuuuzzzhhh?” As if adding syllables would help.
“No.”
“I’ll never ask for any…”
“Fine—just to shut you up. Here’s fifty cents. Get outta here.”
“It costs seventy-five, Dad.”
“What? Seventy-five cents?! For air? For sugar air?”
I shrug. Dad flips me another quarter.
“The cotton candy machine debuted
to raves at the 1904 World’s Fair...
its inventor, William Morrison,
was a dentist.”
The best part of getting cotton candy is watching them make it. It
can’t be concocted in advance because it spoils so fast. They have to
summon it