The Scoop: Fair magic different but it’s still there
There’s something almost magical about the fair coming to town. The cotton candy, the corn dogs, the pageants, the Tilt-O-Whirl, it all makes for arguably the most entertaining week of the year around these parts.
Come to think of it, now that I’m older, maybe calling the fair “magical” is a bit of a stretch. I’m no longer a wide-eyed 9-year-old running toward the bumper cars clutching a book of tickets in one hand and a candy apple in the other.
There’s no doubt county fairs do have their own unique charm, but that fair magic has changed in my mind. As an adult, the biggest part of fair magic is how a carnival worker with two teeth can erect a workable Ferris wheel in roughly three hours. That’s something I try not to think about when I’m spinning around 50 feet above the ground.
Magic or no magic, the county fair, which officially kicks off this weekend, has made great strides since it first began 50 years ago. The fair was once primarily an agricultural and livestock show, which means people traveled from far and wide, for the most part, to see a chicken.
With so much of the interest revolving around farm animals in the early days, it was common to hand out awards to just about any critter that could cluck, wallow, or trot around the fairgrounds barnyard. If you said a blue ribbon was awarded for grand champion slug, you probably wouldn’t be far off.
As the years have gone by, things have sure changed at the fair. Deep conversations about the udders of a goat no longer have such widespread appeal.
Livestock has been replaced by laptops in our lives, and the fair, too, has adopted the flavor of the 21st century. We now care more about our cell phones and our video games than who has grown the largest cabbage in the county.
As a result, we have a midway packed with rides and dozens of carnival games that are oh so tough to win. Now I’m not going to suggest those carnival games are rigged, there’s just almost no remote chance you can win.
Now that I’ve got a young’un running around the fair, he always wants to play the duck game. And, for the record, I like this game because, as the carnival workers will yell when you walk by, “There’s a winner every time!”
For those who are unfamiliar with the duck game, the rules are simple. It’s a game where the parent pays $2 for their child to look under a floating duck and discover what 10-cent prize he or she gets to take home.
Carnival games aside, one of the most fascinating aspects of the midway has to be The Guesser. Most of us are probably familiar with The Guesser, an amazing man with the ability to determine your weight and your age.
The only problem is The Guesser won’t work for free. And, as you might expect, it takes the magical amount of $2 to get this man with amazing clairvoyant powers to figure out your weight or your age. Should you manage to stump The Guesser, you’re allowed to pick from a variety of 10-cent prizes. Yes, this is sounding more and more like the duck game isn’t it.
My main hang-up with The Guesser is I already know my age and my weight. And if The Guesser really wants to have this information, he could just ask. It would certainly save him the trouble of hauling that giant scale across the state, although he probably needs a scale that size if he’s going to weigh me after I dig into all those great-tasting desserts at Midway CIC.
Truth be told, I would like it if every week was fair week. I’d have to rent storage space for all my 10-cent prizes, but that’s a sacrifice I would gladly make because the fair is certainly worth it. There’s no other place where you can drip corndog mustard on your shoe while stepping in cow manure at the same time.
James Clark is editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].