We always liked to play the "Diggers", those crane devices housed in a glass cages with lots of prizes scattered beneath the crane to grab if the player was skillful enough. After putting in a quarter, the player turned a crank, always clockwise, to move the crane's jaws through a round trip which included a changing swing distance over the floor of prizes, a drop with open jaws, a closure of the jaws over the prize, a pull-up and a jerky swing over a drop hole. If a prize had been captured in the the jaws, the jerky swing usually insured that it was dropped before being delivered to the hole.
The "best" prizes were always placed just beyond the reach of the crane's jaws, but a skillful and observant player could get the jaws swinging to drop on the valued prize and navigate it to the drop hole. The concessions operator behind the diggers either took money and started the game, or made change so the player could insert money into the coin slot. The operator also handed out the won prize to the player (in the diggers we played) or the prize slid through a slot into the player's hands.
Below are two images of a digger I photographed at "Luther Auctions" in North St. Paul, Mn (with permission) June 28, 2010 some 3 months after I published this post. I was very excited that I had finally found a Digger to photograph! I still regret not snapping a photo of one at a carnival or county fair in the "old days"
$0.50 Digger with Prize Slot (left) and Crank (middle)
Closeup of Crane and Jaws
Imagine the carpeted floor of the glass cages filled with small trinket "prizes"
The day I and my sons were at the Carnival, I was saddened to see a little girl behind the array of diggers taking people's money and handing won prizes to them. I thought of how well cared for my kids were and how neglected this little girl looked. I'd played many diggers in my life but had never seen this. I wanted to capture the event in free verse:
Carnival
Alone in a cage of "diggers."
She was barely ten, I guessed;
dirty face, soiled clothes,
disheveled sun-bleached hair.
Her smallness required a
soft-drink case (or was it beer)
beneath ragged tennis shoes.
Scrambling, she dismounted,
moved and mounted, reaching
over glass-walled machines
taking quarters from eager
faces on the other side.
Handles cranked wildly, swinging
steel jaws above worthless
trinkets positioned precisely
beyond reach. Some snagged
by luck dropped into a bin.
These she retrieved for the
skilled operators, passing
dice, glass mugs, and plastic
rings outside her cage.
Exchanging hands were of
similar size but neglected
ones stayed within and
attended ones without.
"I'll tell my dad!" she whined
when a player accused her of
causing his prize to fall
from the grip of a jaw. Tears
followed wiping clean a dusty
path down each of her cheeks.
Momentarily her hardness had
broken, transforming an adult
child back into a child.
Meanwhile, odors of fried onions,
pronto-pups, popcorn and stale
beer blended with the carnival din.
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