Of fairs and festivals and family fun with Helen DePrima & Liz Flaherty

by Liz Flaherty
          I am…yeah, I gotta admit it, a person who runs mainly on emotion. That’s not always good, as most of us know, especially others who have the same operating system. While being emotional is tremendous fun when all is going well, it’s not fun at all when all is not. Which leads me to the subject of the day.
          Festivals. Fairs. Rodeos. Carnivals. Circuses. It is—at least in the Midwest—the season for them. In central Indiana where I live, there is a festival in virtually every small community. Our county seat, Peru, is the “circus capital of the world,” complete with a week-long carnival called Circus Days, at least eight performances of the biggest amateur circus in the world, and enough tiger/elephant/lion ears to supply sugar to a small state for a year.

         We have county 4-H fairs here. I was in 4-H when I was a kid—and was a shocking failure at most projects, but they were fun 😊—and am in Extension Homemakers now. Even now, when local participation in both organizations seems to be dwindling, there is excitement to the fair. Little kids on rides, merchants hawking their wares, and the best food around. It is a place of meeting with friends and swearing you’ll get together through the year, of lemon shakeups and the aforementioned animal ears that will give you such a sugar buzz it might take you hours to come down.
          In my August Heartwarming, NICE TO COME HOME TO, there is a
festival at Keep Cold Orchard, which Cass and Luke share ownership of. It was fun writing the festival scene—walking around with Cass and her clipboard and hearing the music Luke and his brother Seth played in the coffee shop. Feeling the growing closeness between Luke and Cass. While it’s probably not that emotional of a scene, it drew me in. It made my heart sing. I hope readers hear its music, too.
          I also hope you’re having a wonderful summer and that you do some walking around at local festivals. It does the heart good. And the sugar’s not bad, either.

by Helen DePrima

When I was growing up, summer for most kids I went to school with meant swimming lessons at the community pool, endless bike rides through their neighborhoods, maybe away camps for the luckier ones. For my cousins and me on my grandfather’s farm, school letting out meant freedom to spend the summer with our horses. Sure, we had our chores, but riding, planning rides, inventing games on horseback, and hanging out with other horse-crazy kids filled our leisure hours from sunup to sundown. And cleaning our tack for the horse shows.


Horse shows were the high points in our summer. Not elaborate competition with expensive mounts maintained and transported by high-end stables -- we attended local shows, often church-sponsored charity events which included a modest fair and the inevitable chicken or country ham dinner prepared by the ladies of the parish. Pickups hauled two-horse trailers to the far end of a grassy field mowed short for the occasion, and long-suffering parents watched over the horses and ponies while we explored the fairs’ booths, throwing darts at balloons and beanbags at targets for tacky prizes, smearing our hands and faces with cotton candy and Snow-Cones until time for exasperated parents to stuff us into our riding habits.

The youngest riders went first, three and four-year-olds in boots and jodhpurs handed down from
older siblings and cousins, earnest on bored ponies led by anxious parents. The ponies’ hooves stirred up the scent of fresh tanbark spread in the ring; to this day, the smell of bark mulch brings back memories of those horse shows. And so up through the older riders, all hoping this would be the day a blue ribbon would flutter from his or her horse’s bridle. I was far from the best rider, but I did win one first place; that ribbon still lies in state in my cedar chest.


The real value of those competitions was the responsibility we took for most of the preparation. Our families got us to and from the events, but we kids trained our horses the best we knew how, cared for our gear, and accepted wins or defeats because we knew we had earned them. Those who placed first performed the best, and no one dreamed of expecting a token prize for participation. We would try harder and do better the next time. Maybe even win the blue ribbon.
         

Comments

  1. Where I am, starting in the spring , there are lots of activities in the small towns in driving proximity. Rodeos and chili feeds, parades of several kinds, city-wide yard sales, carnivals, the county fair, and much more. When I get to the fair, I usually head straight for the animals - the sights and scents of the barns say "fair!" to me. I get to as many events as possible and often drive to my favorite organic vegetable stand 20 miles away.

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    1. I love the barns, too--especially the goats! We never had goats when I was a kid, but they tickle me.

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    2. I agree, Liz -- goats, especially baby goats, are the most entertaining. We always had a couple on my grandfather's farm as well as horses, chickens, mules, a donkey named John C. Fremont, and Lambie-pie, and evil ram.

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    3. Goats always make me remember my mom. She loved goats.

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  2. Liz, I've loved fairs all my life! Even picked cotton a couple of years so I'd have money to go to the fair on. Back then it was a really big event and school even let out for one day so everyone could go. And Helen, oh, my! Love the picture of (I'm assuming) you in jodhpurs! I lived and breathed horses as a kid, but didn't own one until I was in my twenties. My granddaughter is living my dream - she rides dressage and works at a barn, riding show horses.

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    1. My grandfather rented the barn and riding ring to a riding academy. A whole generation of kids in St. Matthews, Kentucky learned to ride at Westglow Stables. The students all envied my cousins and me -- we could jump on our horses whenever we liked.

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  3. I remember the county fair. We'd get a short day of school and go tour the barns and the crafts, and best of all, ride the carnival rides. Fun.

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    1. I loved the rides when I was young, too. I remember going on a certain day when they were 10 cents apiece and being give a dollar to go for it.

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    2. As I recall, school let out part of the week for the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville. Now I get my fair fix at the Deerfield Fair at the end of September, a real harvest agricultural event, complete with prize quilts and pickles and mammoth pumpkins. And my favorite, horse-pulling -- handsome draft teams still used for farming and logging in New Hampshire.

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  4. I really enjoy the local fairs and festivals. We take our son to the county fair. I love showing him all of the farm animals! What a great post!

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    1. What a great way to show kids that their food comes from farmers, not from the freezer section of the supermarket.

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