What You Learn at the Fair
And the roads you travel getting there.
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Probably everyone in the world but you knows that driving a rental car alone across America to attend as many country and state fairs as possible may not be a very good idea. Even if you did know, you’d still set out because you miss strolling down a midway. The car racks up miles and the summer heat increasingly reaches chicken frying temperatures but you’re the happiest you’ve been in a long time, almost as long as the roads you’re lost on.
Most of the fairs were established in our agrarian past to give farmers a chance to crow about the superiority of their crops and livestock and to show off handiwork and fine cooking. The New York State Fair is the oldest, taking place in Syracuse in 1832. Minnesota, opening in 1859, claims the honor of being the largest. Since watermelon is the state vegetable of Oklahoma, there are a couple of towns with very competitive seed spitting contests. Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana State Fairs occur around the same time, making it easy to bounce from one to another and compare their butter sculptures. Mississippi’s Nashoba County House Party earns the horrible Civil Right’s history prize. The Kutztown Fair, is a yearly favorite because you never tire of watching a whole steer roasting over a hickey fire.
In truth, you admit to being something of a mess when you travel alone. No matter how much you love making wrong turns that careen you miles off course, it’s also scary. Earlier excursions have taught you not to rely heavily on the G.P.S. lady because she often doesn’t know what she’s talking about or the route she insists is fastest is way off base. This is why you keep an old-fashion map book and a pile of print-outs as back-up directions on the passenger seat. A woman pulled over to the side of a road with twilight’s shadows creeping further across the surrounding corn fields, is not a happy woman at all. At best she’s annoyed. At worse, she’s exhausted and lonely. And she has to pee.
What do you do? You drive a little further on where you usually come upon an outpost of civilization—a store, a gas station, a little restaurant, a not-too-rowdy bar. Even though your up-for-anything attitude is a bit deflated and your normal good humor is depleted, people are generally receptive to steering you to your destination. You also rediscover why you like getting lost: you meet some good people, find good food at a local restaurant, and perhaps a local historical landmark you would have missed. When you finally arrive at your motel you bless the shower and bed, no matter what the water pressure or the mattress age. Your tiredness is a blessing and you (mostly) wake the next day revved up for your next adventure.
[A stop here for a little advice: You are not proud of the fact that the country is strewn with your wardrobe, notebooks, a phone and several chargers, and a pair of sandals that did not blister your feet. Pack lightly but with an eye for similar disasters.]
Large and small fairs are lessons in local history beyond what the display cards say in the Hall of State History. The events tell a lot about the influences played in the formation of the community, starting with nods to the original native population and then launching into testimonials to hardy pioneers who were anything but native; tales of hardships and prosperity; and the cultural, artistic, and culinary contributions that flowed across borderlines and made America what it is today. There are many other ways to learn all these facts but they are never found in one place, in such a high concentration, and certainly not surrounded by an array of festivities.
What is learned at a fair is often something you would never encounter in your everyday life. This is why you are the only one of your acquaintances that knows how to milk a cow. Your teenage instructor nor the cow is very happy with you because you can’t help embarrassing yourself with bouts of laughter at how sensual the act is. A little kindness is called for: you are permanently twisted for polite society because you are the sole woman sharing a house with an irreverent husband and two cheeky sons. It’s a burden.
A civic lesson begins late one night in one of the beer tents at the Iowa State Fair when the man at the next table asks why you are taking notes during a favorite fair activity–the frozen tee-shirt contest. He turns out to be a state senator and since it’s an election year he launches into a very informative talk about the political make-up of this nationally influential state. He borrows your notebook to sketch a map that sort of looks like Iowa considering the number of beers we’ve already consumed. He draws a line down the center to illustrate that, historically speaking, the state’s west is conservative, east is (kind of) liberal. Or at least it was several years ago. Who knows now. But it’s a good visual and you regret losing it if only because he wrote his name and contact information on it. Who knows? He could be a Congressman or Senator by now.
The evening’s other pearl of wisdom is finding out how to unfreeze a frozen tee-shirt. No, not by stuffing it under your shirt or armpit. Pulling it apart or smacking it against the floor will get you only so far. Forcing yourself into the stiff shirt sort of works but the surest way is to thrust it into a pitcher of warm beer. Now you know.
Win a blue ribbon in the livestock shows, cash in on stud services. Conservatively speaking, you’re looking at earning thousands of dollars. The father of the nine-year-old girl with a blue ribbon sticking out of her back pocket tells you she just earned her college education. She’s occupied in grooming her pig for photo ops but pauses to reply that she’s most proud for personally picking her little 200 pound guy out of the litter. His name is Peanuts.
The culinary scene includes cakes, pies, and barbeque sauce competitions, and large halls with rows upon rows of giant fruits and vegetables. The midway, of course, is a gauntlet of frightening rides outlined in blazing strobe lights, dubious game booths, and trucks selling delicious frankenstein-like food. You know better but still you wedge in line for the fried variety pack. The surest way to survive is to sidle up to a teenage boy stuffing himself with whatever you want to stuff yourself with. If he says something like, “yo, this sucks ass, man,” (a representative verbatim quote) consider yourself warned and step out of line.
By this time you’re eight days out and there’s no getting around the increasing protrusion of your stomach from under your tee-shirt. A man you meet at a small town fair who brews both root and ginger beers graciously mixes up a variety pack for you. Not for the first time, you appreciate humanity’s proclivity for kindness.
There are many, many, other subjects to be tackled but it’s clear you have to go home for now. You open your book and go through your notes, taking special delight in memorizing something you were most ignorant of—how many different breeds of chickens there are in the world.
And now, rested, showered, reacquainted with the irreverent husband and cheeky sons, you begin to plot your next voyage out. This time, you consider concentrating on the many weird fairs in the country. One of the strangest seems a possibility, although you’d have to go to Texas at the end of July, a state that is currently burning for its sins against woman/mankind. But maybe it’s worth it to have the chance to take a spin around the dance floor with Willie-Man-Chew, the Great Texas Mosquito Festival’s mascot.
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I guess I'm the "you" who doesn't know, because that sounds like a perfectly enticing road trip to me!