But he doesn’t just go to indulge in the cotton candy and fried butter with butter sauce.  He arrives with his booth and his paper and art materials to keep up a long-standing family tradition, making and selling caricatures of fair-goers at all hours and in all weathers for a frantic two weeks.  And as many who have seen his work at local events can attest, he is quite good at it.

 

And while I have reached the age at which I would rather remove my own appendix than spend a day oozing along in a horde of clammy Minnesotans, this annual harbinger of fall reminds me of another fair that takes place at this time of year, along the shores of the Inland Sea in the Great White North where Gitchee Gummi gnashes mighty boulders into fine red sand and the bright lights of the carnival herald the opening of the county fair.

 

It has been years since I last attended the fair in Iron County, where I grew up, and I am sure that it has changed a great deal from the event I remember when I was a boy and Taft was in the White House.  A quick perusal of the schedule for this weekend reveals some familiar items, such as the demolition derby, and the tractor pull and the fruits and vegetables and animal judging, but I’m willing to bet it has all gotten just a bit genteel for my fair-going tastes.

 

In the olden times, it was a chance to slip the leash a little bit, as all of your kid cronies were there with their folks and/or extended families too, so it was only a matter of time until we managed to get loose and roam the fairgrounds, a pack of mischief-seeking urchins dodging parents and malevolent older urchins.

 

It was all pretty calm while the sun was up, with the only potential conflict arising when Hilda and Ida went at it hammer and tongs for the blue ribbon prize for “Best Gherkin.”  What looked like a group of sweet little old ladies waiting for the geriatric judges to award the prizes were really two fiercely partisan clans waiting for the battle to commence. When a trembling hand affixed the prize to Ida’s pampered pickle entry, for example, the wailing and gnashing of dentures on Hilda’s side could be heard at some distance, along with muttered implications about the ancestry and eyesight of the judges.

 

We learned a lot about human nature by watching those endlessly repeated dramas during the three-day fair each year.  And young men could learn a lot by talking to the guys who ran the carnival, too.  Nothing like a carnie for dishing out free and wholesome advice on future life choices to groups of young hayseeds, many of whom were not quite sure about the meanings of some of the terminology employed.  Some learned the hard, soap-filled way that those questions are best not asked at the family dinner table.

 

Regulations were somewhat lax in those days as well, and teenagers on Saturday night could buy a can or two of Hamm’s in the beer garden by saying it was for “the Old Man” over in the horse barn.  A little impromptu horse racing took place around the practice track during the day as well, with some side betting action available for those with a little extra in their pockets.

 

Amenities were a bit on the rough and ready side at the old fairgrounds, this being long before the invention of the pale green portables that dot the landscape at outdoor events today.  This was still the era of the outdoor, two-stall gentleman’s convenience, which the sensible avoided like poison, which I’m sure it also was.

 

After dark and before closing, it was not unusual to hear a muffled explosion issuing from this facility.  As sometimes happened, youthful pranksters would lie in wait for one of the over-served patrons of the beer garden to make his shambling way inside.  Then, one bright spark would toss a sputtering cherry bomb down the unused side of the convenience, with the subsequent explosion and aftermath enough to send the unfortunate user stumbling out, without benefit of having first drawn up his costume, and into a full-length face-plant on the muddy pathway.  That one never grew old, but, somehow, we did.

 

It’s a little hard to top entertainment like that with the “Cute Baby” contest I noted on the event schedule for this weekend.

Happy drawing, Bill.

 

And mind where you go.