Nothing says SUMMER IN AMERICA like a county fair. This month I
was privileged to attend two such fairs, and when I say
privileged, I, of course, mean obligated.
Our county fairs have a long and
proud tradition. The predecessor of the county fair was the
market fair, which was the organic grocery store of its day,
though lacking the smug self-righteousness. County fairs were
begun in the early 1800s as a way to promote the latest
agricultural machinery and techniques, as well as a way for rural
families to gawk at potatoes that looked like famous politicians
and politicians that looked like famous potatoes.
Elkanah Watson
(1758-1842) is credited with originating the American
county fair in 1810 in Berkshire County, Mass. If that had been
all he did that would have been enough for most people, but Elk
was a Revolutionary War hero, too, smuggling important messages
to Benjamin Franklin in Paris (”What exactly are you doing over there?—Geo.
Washington”) and, in his free time, coming up with the
idea for the Erie Canal.
The character of the county fair hasn’t changed all that
much in the nearly 60 years since E.B. White described it in his
book Charlotte’s Web:
When they pulled into the Fair Grounds, they could hear
music and see the Ferris wheel turning in the sky. They could
smell the dust of the race track where the sprinkling cart had
moistened it; and they could smell hamburgers frying and see
balloons aloft. They could hear sheep blatting in their
pens.
As dusk approached, we wandered over to the livestock pens
where the sheep blatted and the hogs squelched and we talked to
some pig farmers. They were warm, hospitable folks who, oddly
enough, were staying in one of the pens next to their prize hogs.
They invited us to accompany them to the swine judging, and we
stayed on for the cattle and sheep judging too. Then we hurried
over to the grandstand for the teenage-girls-in-swimsuits
judging.
Like most fair-goers, my favorite part of the experience is
the combine demolition derby. If you’ve never been to a combine
demolition derby allow me to explain the rules. There are none.
At least none that I can make out. Basically it’s like giant
bumper cars without bumpers. Instead the drivers ram each other
with their combine header. And here’s where things get really
surreal. Don’t ask me why, but the combines are decorated to look
like spotted Holstein cows and giant football helmets (an homage
to the local high school team, I assume). I can see how this
would be exciting for a guy. It is every young red-blooded
American male’s dream to destroy thousands of dollars of
agricultural machinery, while his buddies and his best girl
proudly look on. Normally we have laws against this. The great
thing about the county fair is we leave the trappings of
civilization at the entrance gate. In this way, the fair
resembles a great lawless region, say the Khyber Pass or the
street out front of my girlfriend’s urban St. Louis house.
AFTER THE demolition derby, the rest of the fair seems
rather anti-climatic. All that’s left are the tractor pull and
the truck pull, both of which could be considerably improved by
having participants ram their vehicles into each other.
This is no doubt what Elk Watson
had in mind when he established the county fair as a celebration
of human progress, science, education, the agrarian ideal and the
amazing culinary properties of lard. No other
profession or occupation is so celebrated. You certainly don’t
see large outdoor events where accountants go head to head over
who can track the most incoming expenses in 30 seconds on an
Excel document. Nor should you.
The dearth of accountants notwithstanding, the county fair
remains a very conservative affair. You seldom see liberals or
feminists on the grounds, because the fair is really about
competition, which liberals hate. Liberals would shut down the
combine demolition derby and replace it with earth-friendly games
in which children are praised for turning off the most lights and
air conditioning units in the exhibition hall. This would result
in the tragic spectacle of heat-exhausted elderly women falling
into giant gourd exhibits and getting entangled in blue-ribbon
quilts.
Feminists would try to shut down the beauty pageant and
replace it with a workshop titled “Liberating the Recipe: A
revisiting of underrepresented soups in feminist magazines of the
1970s.” This would likely cause an interesting confrontation
between the angry prickly-legged sisterhood and stocky female pig
farmers/stage mothers, one that might best be settled in a
Tournament of Destruction: Priuses versus Combines.
Now that would be a fair to remember.
