There’s something about the sights, sounds and tastes of a country fair that takes us back and still amazes.
What is there about a country fair that makes it so appealing? So many of us are city people. Fairs seem out of date, another world for us, “watch-your-step dirty” with cheap entertainment.
And yet … and yet there is in us that longed-for connection with the world of the fair: warm animals in their stalls or working hard, quilts of unimaginable beauty, young teens handling ornery heifers, sheep as woolly-headed as I remember.
Perhaps that is one answer – many of us have memories of “the farm” and its wonders. I recall good old Aunts Grace and Esther who, with their unmarried brother Max, managed the family farm in Wisconsin. They raised sheep and let them mingle with us in the front yard. Their hard heads and soft coats scared and fascinated me as a little girl.
Or perhaps we are awed by the competence of the youngsters from the 4-H Clubs today who handle their animals with accomplished strength and a no-nonsense voice. I recall now the girl who simply reached out and shoved at the hindquarters of a pesky cow so it wouldn’t interfere with her showing her own beast.
People are still “putting up” asparagus and tomatoes and relish. It reminds me of hot summer days when my mother canned peaches. “Lugs” was her name for the wooden boxes in which the peaches were bought. How the kitchen steamed with the boiling water that sterilized her jars and the bubbling peaches to fill them.
Now similar jars of fruits and vegetables, sauces and relish remind me of one particular Depression winter when our family slowly ate the contents of mother’s colorful jars, so lovingly canned for us.
The quilts, appliqud, crocheted, stitched in colors so beautiful I wonder that the quilter could have conceived of their final result. They hang now at the fair over the cases of homemade candies, cookies, pies – tributes to today’s women and families who create beautiful and necessary “home-mades.”
I watched horses pulling great weights of granite on wooden sleds. Always responsive to their owners’ voices, they pulled and stopped and pulled again until their strength was used up. A history lesson up close, those horses are the descendants of the first horses who helped civilize our ancestors and us. For how long have we and horses created teams for the endless work that needs to be done?
There was a stonecutter demonstrating how to cut big chunks of granite, a tender tap at a time until the very stone itself split along the line he had predicted. For how many generations have there been stonecutters, and how did they learn their craft?
And always there is fair food. Wonderfully fatty and fried, it is all the food we “never” eat, but how we love it! Walking around, dripping with fat and juice, we grin at each other over ears of corn, sausage sandwiches and sweet funnel cakes.
The fair. I never miss it. It’s a part of both my past and present. And it’s fun especially for anyone who remembers when and still marvels at the creativity and strength of the people who live close to nature, especially today.
Sarah Andersen is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn.
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