FESTIVAL GROUNDS in the Sixties when the event was held at Garden Grove Park (GGSFA photo).

The Ferris wheel and carousels at Garden Grove’s annual Strawberry Festival are not just carnival devices to me. They’re more like colorful time machines.

Every Memorial Day weekend the area in and around the Village Green park at Main and Euclid streets in the city’s downtown area takes me back a half-century or more, and gives newer visitors a glimpse of how people entertained themselves before iPads and streaming services; before AI made having an imagination an optional part of one’s thinking.

A time traveler – and I suspect there really might be such people – wouldn’t feel out of place if he or she strolled the grounds of the park or lined up with the throngs on Euclid to view the parade.

As in 1960 or so – even earlier – there would be the brass marching bands stepping in their colorful uniforms, cheerful music from the calliope and boys and girls eyeing each other as they paced along the midway between the games and the food booths.

At night, it all lights up and bathes the area in a neon glow that would have been familiar to motorists driving Nash Ramblers, Ford Falcons and Chevrolet Corvairs.

Traveling carnivals and community festivals are as American as apple pie (and pizza and tacos and bagels and pho) and there’s no sign that these will pass away in favor of some electronic alternative.

No microchip can – at least so far – duplicate the experience of chomping on cotton candy and a hot dog while people-watching and gawking at the color and sound of an experience that has connected generations for over a half-century and doubtless will go on and on and on …