My family--we're fair people.
State Fair people, that is.
I recently returned from a visit home to Minnesota. Even though there are much warmer times to visit the north woods, I wouldn't have missed the opportunity to plan my trip in conjunction with the Minnesota State Fair last week. It was also my mom's birthday.
My dear mother has the good fortune of celebrating her birthday on Labor Day weekend every year--which also happily coincides with the State Fair. This year, we decided to ring in her 54th year with one Fair activity for each year she's graced our planet. This may seem like a daunting task at first, but it's really quite do-able. With the main Fair activity being eating like a Prize Sow, we knocked about 27 things off our list in the first couple of hours!
Fair organizers make this even easier by putting all the food on a stick. Every food you can imagine (and some you shouldn't) can be fried and shoved on a stick: pork chops w/ sauerkraut, Hot Dish (what Minnesotans call "casserole"), Twinkies, various candy bars, French toast and even a pickle. (With the pickle, you get a souvenir hat, too!)
Only at the Fair
Whether you eat your way across the fairgrounds, stand in line for every ride or simply spend the day wandering through the craft exhibits, Fairs leave an impression on pretty much everyone. With the Tennessee Valley Fair kicking off tonight, we at 520 thought we'd fry up some of our own memories of the annual community get-together. Step right up and get 'em while they're hot!
Joe Beuerlein:
My schoolboy Fair memories are few and far between, mostly because my parents absolutely loathed going to it. (Fair Day in my dad's eyes was another opportunity to leave a list of chores since I was out of school and had nothing better to do.) I remember one year I only got to go because I begged and begged and promised Dad I would watch the frikkin' horse show with him if only he'd take me to the fair, dammit. (Actually, if I had used that kind of language with him, I might have lost an ear.) As per our agreement, I patiently watched the horse show (boring) and practically bolted to the midway with my Dad's arm in tow as soon as it was done. Of course, at that point, the Midway was closing and I watched in horror as light after light flickered off around me. I had time for just one ride, the first I saw: The Gravitron. An hour later, I'm home and throwing up.
Second saddest Fair memory: Winning a fish at the Fish Throw, putting it in a jar at home, deciding the "aquarium" needed a festive, earthen floor, suffocating fish with handfuls of dirt cascading to the bottom of jar. I was a smart kid, I swear. Just not well-versed in aquarium-building techniques.
Maybe after I go the Fair this weekend I'll replace these old, crappy memories with delightful new ones. I will not be riding the Gravitron this year, but I do plan to at least look a scary Carnie or two in the eye, eat something greasy, and, with my fanny pack safely facing the front, mischievously watch the East Tennessee multitudes in their full-blown Fair frenzy.
Paige Travis:
Too Bad Life’s Not the Fair
Sometimes it’s as early as July when one of us, awoken for a moment from a heat-induced stupor unfazed by another drop of sweet tea, speaks those two words that give us enough willpower to make it to September: The Fair. It’s a noun, a place, a night of preordained decadence and a glimpse of summer’s end. My parents took my brother and me to the TVA&I Fair only once that I remember; it’s well documented in pictures: two little kids with bowl haircuts circa 1980 riding the carousel and the boats and the sparkly cars, craning our necks around to spot Dad in the crowd and wave for the camera. Except for an unnecessarily cynical jaunt to the fair as a teen, I never went back until just a few years ago. We were mainly there to see Hank Williams III perform. Hank said the Fair people wouldn’t allow him to do the hell-billy portion of his act, which was just fine by me. Being at the Fair was freaky enough. The flashing lights, the noisy rides, the mullets, the army of strollers, the menagerie of vegetables and competition wigheads in the Jacob Building. So much to gawk at! And so many unacceptable-the-rest-of-the-year foods to eat! Don’t even get me started on the drama of the baby ducks. It’s priceless.
Now the Fair is a yearly event that has taken on a devoted group of followers. Not everyone’s a convert. Some people don’t want to eat their fill of corndogs and fried dough and ride the Ferris Wheel and pet goats once a year. That’s fine. But the rest of us look forward to the event with as much anticipation as any holiday. Next year I might start a new tradition and take the first Friday of the Fair off from work. Who’s with me?
Michael Gill:
Ah, the Fair:
Some of my earliest memories of are of going to the fair with my Granny. I couldn't wait to get to the rides, even back when the Merry-Go-Round seemed sort of thrilling, but Granny always made sure we toured the Jacobs Building first. There was lots of different things there, but I mostly remember big pumpkins and Indian corn. Then it was on to the livestock. There were blue ribbon champions of all different breeds, and then there were some freaks. One that stands out in my mind was a calf with five legs. Actually, the fifth leg was more like an extra tail with a hoof. And FINALLY, we made our way to the Midway! The Double Ferris Wheel! The Tilt-a-Whirl! And the freak shows! Actually, I was a little afraid to go in there, except Granny would go in with me. The "Hairless Dog" turned out to be a hot dog. Ha ha. But the "Alligator Lady" was somebody with a really bad case of eczema or psoriasis or something. Now that was bona fide CREEPY!
In high school, I went to the fair with one of my buddies. We skipped the Jacob Building and the livestock and went straight to the Midway. After a few rides, we talked each other into going to see the strip shows, one black and one white. Tassels and G-strings! Ooh-la-la! Alas, the Tilt-a-Whirl would never be the same.
Dennis Perkins:
My memories of the Fair are lost in the mists of time passed or an extra martini.
I was once very excited by the carnival rides until a childhood bout of gastritis turned my beloved Scrambler into the vomit inducing terror that it remains unto this day. Still, before that transformation, I lamented missing Wristband Day and the unlimited, all-in-one-price of endless scrambling. We were a family of modest means, so the acquisition of the Wristband was a great equalizer. Once I donned that ticket to paradise, I didn’t have to worry about the shame of counting, recounting, and budgeting the precious and sadly limited tickets.
Yet even after my love of the rides waned, and despite that fact that I had interest only in livestock that I could eat, the Fair remained a thrill of lights and activity – a communal joy that excited longing and love. Those memories, however, are vague and suspect since they occurred at the same time that I was locked in epic battle with the dark elf-prince of Beldondezzar and his king, the fell and malignant grandfather Tree. But just as I recall my triumph when I threw down that dark prince in the woods of my home, I can still feel the thrill of victory when my steady aim of the water pistol made the balloon head of a clown burst. I was magnificent then and relished in vanquishing my enemies. Certainly the prize did not equal my feat, but even the smallest of those stuffed animals was a sizable trophy to a boy who was often called a sissy. Lamentably, that satisfaction passed all too soon when I realized that there were life-sized teddy bears to be had: creatures that made my palm-sized pink elephant seem like a, well, a palm-sized pink elephant.
My only certain memory involves food and the utter temptation of frying sausages and peppers. I was in high school, barely a teenager, and in the company of friends whose farmer father insisted that we at least look at the livestock (even though we couldn’t eat it). Clever me found a way to slip away from the smell of manure and animal to find the frying fat that called out to the twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. I can still feel the hard roll in my hands and the unspeakable joy of hot grease dripping from my mouth. So glutinous was I that I ran to the next three stands alternating between kielbasa and Italian sausage. It was pure joy – a taste of unsupervised indulgence that was akin to heaven until it sent my stomach straight to hell. The rest of the evening is a blank.
My last visit to the fair is also clouded: yet, this time, the mists are composed of vodka that, like my post-pubescent procession of sausage, muddled my senses. These were the college days when everything non-academic was made better with a snort or two (or more?). Even so, I recall the lights and the festival joy as clearly as I can recall the voice of the clown/comedian whose bit was to insult any and all passersby. Sure we stood in the back of the crowd – but still he found me and called me out. I think he said fairy, or maybe he just asked me about my boyfriend; maybe he called me sissy.
Once the shock passed, I think we laughed and went on our way.
Ellen Robinson:
It's fall! (I know that for Yankees, September in Knoxville does not count as fall, but try to work with me. It's cooler at night!)
You know what fall means? It means THE FAIR!
I grew up in a very small town that only had a tiny little po' dunk county fair that was 1/2 carnival and 1/2 farm. I vaguely remember there being barns full of chickens and rabbits, and some gigantic pumpkins with blue ribbons, but I was much more interested in the carnival side. You'd have thought it was the social event of the year to gauge by the excitement it inspired in my siblings and me.
Not only were there killer rides (still my favorite part of the fair!) and carnival foods on sticks, but there was something that just hovered in the air around the fair:
I don't think I really understood it as a child, I just had a vague notion that there was something mysterious about the whole affair. It was almost as though there was something naughty or maybe even evil going on just around the corner where we couldn't see it, and for some reason none of the gown-ups seemed to be aware of it. Or even more shocking, they didn't mind that we were being exposed to it!
Whatever it was, I found it absolutely thrilling!
In retrospect, it's probably just a reflection of how sheltered I was as a child:
I suspect I was picking up on the deliciously seedy undercurrent that you find at all carnivals and fairs, but had no way to define it as such (I didn't know what seedy was yet!). I also have no doubt that I was picking up on the falsity of all the grown-ups that were there. Have you ever noticed that they always pretend that the carnies and the sideshow freaks are perfectly normal?
Of course most of them are, but any kid will tell you that the bearded lady and the wolf boy want you to stare at them! That's why they're there!
So take a ride down the bumpy yellow slide of memory on your burlap sack, and bring your kids or nieces or nephews with you to the fair this year.
And for goodness sake let 'em stare. It could be the thrill of a lifetime!
Phil Pollard:
I'm from Maryland, but more importantly, I'm from a time when shorts were short. Shorts were not baggy, and they didn't have room for pockets. If you had change, everybody knew it.
That's a good introduction to my State Fair story.
I was at the State Fair with my sister and some of our friends. We did a lot there: saw pigs, tried to win stuffed animals, and we rode the rides. We rode all the rides until we finally went for the Tilt a Whirl. (Some folks call it the Gravitron.) Whatever you call it, it's the same in all states and at every fair. You go in through a door, and you're in a round room that's more like a bowl than anything else. It starts spinning, and you stick to the wall. The floor goes away. And honestly, at that point I'm done. I stuck, the floor went away, let's go.
But for some reason, the ride runs for several minutes, long enough to start checking out the other spinners. That one lookes like he's going to be sick; that guy looks scared, the usual fair ride expressions.
These people had a new expression, one I'd never seen before on a fair ride. It was curious, and amused, and maybe embarrassed all at once. But more importantly, it was focused not just on me, but on the lower me, on my shorts, but as it turned out, not on my shorts.
I don't know the whole physics of it: was it centripetal or centrifugal force? Did the shorts ride up with me on the wall? Why was every part of me and my clothes pulled up along that wall save for the one part?
Well, I still wonder sometimes if when those people went home and their family asked what they saw at the fair . . . well I still wonder what their answer was.
Leah, Sarah and Matt
