Poster image filched from chickenbetty's blog.
In recent years The Cummington Fair has been recycling its old posters from the 19th Century, and like recycled old calendars, using old posters where the weekend dates are the same as this year's fair.
At the Cummington Fair, it is as if 9/11 or the Iraq War or the Vietnam War or the assassination of President Kennedy or of Martin Luther King Jr. never happened. There are American flags here and there, but not a fearsome superpatriotic explosion of flags in your face. Little girls wander around holding hands, unsupervised.
There's Fried Dough to eat, of course, and pierogies, and hot dogs and French fries, and cotton candy, and every Delicious Bad Thing an agricultural fair out in the boonies ever deep-fried and served to people who should know better.
The worst peril or danger anyone faces is getting too close to some huge animal and getting your foot stepped on. The background noise in the animal sheds are moos and baaahs and bleats and the squawks of chickens and the grunts of gigantic hogs and sows. There are yaks and llamas and alpacas and camels. Ponies, of course.
I'm a City Boy, and it's here every summer that I have long conversations with farmers and the children of farmers who have brought their sheep or chickens or goats or heifers or bunnies to the fair to be judged and to win a blue or a red ribbon. It is here I learn about where my food comes from, and meet the people who grow it for me.
Giant draught horses pull sledges of a ton of concrete blocks. Teams of oxen with wooden yokes do the same! Ancient steam-powered tractors and farm machinery! Ancient automobiles -- one very nice gent let me crank-start his Model T Ford, the first and only time I ever cranked a car! (It's Very Hard!)
Wonderful cheap little hand-made arts and crafts for sale! Cheap screwy hats! This year's junky t-shirts! Biker leather crap! A lady who'll read my Tarot! Home-made jams and jellies and honey!
The Cummington Fair is just More Fun than people should be allowed to have with their clothes on. I'm so excited! A day in the Now which is EXACTLY like Country Fair Day 100 or 150 years ago! Almost no cell phones (I think Cummington, far from cities and up in the mountains, is a cell phone Dead Zone) or iPods!
2 comments:
Thanks for the photo nab :)
I took that during the Mass Sheep and Woolcraft Fair back in May but I love the fall agricultural fairs. My Mom lives just a mile up the road and yes Cummington is a cellphone dead zone - Whee!
Hope you have a great time.
Toots
You can't beat the Minnesota State Fair...something like 3/4ths of the population of the entire state of Minnesota, close to two million people, visit the Fair during its two-week run. There are the usual agricultural exhibits, from real farmers, a spectacular midway, and more 'food on a stick' than you can imagine.
The church I served in Minnesota has had a booth at the MSF every year since 1930, serving coffee and pastries...it makes their entire year's budget in two weeks. The younger members of the congregation have embraced Fair Month (a week of prep, two weeks of the fair and a week of clean up) that has surprised the older folks.
Minnesota comes to a grinding halt during the Fair...all the news stations broadcast from the Fair, even the Twins play a couple of baseball games on the fairgrounds instead of at their usual awful venue, the Metrodome. School does not start in Minnesota until after the Fair is over; there are too many kids who spend two weeks working at the Fair.
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