Fair week was always an important part of our summer. It came in early July, just after the Fourth of July celebration. Though sporadic fireworks could still be heard late in the evening and the occasional pop-bottle rocket arched over a roof top and popped in a mini shower of sparks, the night was mostly filled with the sounds from the fairgrounds. Our neighborhood, named after local heroes of the west, was a new development at the western edge of town sandwiched between an older, pre-war development and the fair grounds. It was not unusual for us to hear activity at the fairgrounds; the rodeo arena was often the site of demolition derbies on the weekends, or trotting horse races. The local drum and bugle corps (The Troopers) practiced there occasionally also and the constant Wyoming breeze (what most of you would consider a strong wind) would carry the sound of bugles to our street, a dramatic enhancement for those of us playing cowboys and Indians.

Fair week was special. The sounds of canned calliope music played over the top of a cacophony of barkers’ voices, rodeo announcements, car horns, and rock and roll from the teen dance pavilion. Long after the street lights came on, the international signal for children that it was time to return home for the day and once again submit to rule of parents who insisted on a radical regimen of bathing and tooth brushing, we lay in our beds and listened to the sound, falling asleep well before the ferris-wheel stopped and the last cotton candy stick was tossed to the ground.

The carnival opened a few days before the parade, which signified the actual beginning of the fair and rodeo. Its night music whetted our anticipation. We counted our coins and occasional bills, skimmed from our meager allowances, Occasionally, some of us were able to scrape together extra money from lawn mowing jobs or by collecting pop bottles which we traded in at the grocery store for two cents apiece. This was our “extra” money. By tradition, the day of the parade was “kids day” and a sheet of tickets for rides was a dollar. Our parents could be counted on to provide the money for one sheet of tickets and 50 cents for lunch money. So, unless we wanted to spend a good deal of the day wandering the exhibition looking at pies and prize jellies, we had to come up with our own discretionary funds. Despite the lines for the popular rides, we could burn through a sheet of tickets in an hour. Besides 50 cents for lunch was just enough for a hotdog, soda, and maybe some popcorn. That was lunch. What our parents failed to factor in was the siren call of corndogs, cotton candy, elephant ears, watermelon, and candy/caramel apples. So we worked at finding extra chores our parents would pay for because they were somehow beyond the duties required for receiving an allowance. We knocked on neighbors’ doors begging for bottles, scoured the alleys for salable refuse, gave a nickel instead of a dime to the church offering tray on Sundays (the call of the fair superseded salvation). We did what ever we could to feed the fair fever.

We would meet just inside the gate to the fair, off to the side, with our sheet of tickets, to compare our funds.  Negotiations to combine money for extra sheets began, often accompanied by offers of special marbles (usually shooters or steelies) to sweeten the pot. Monetary talks concluded, we began the second phase of discussion: what rides to do in what order. Frequently, the team broke down at this point and small groups with similar agendas dispersed around the grounds to meet and recombine as the day progressed.

It never failed that, long before the agreed upon hour for our parents to gather us, we ran out of money, and found ourselves in the shade of the grandstand watching little kids rope goats or ride sheep, nursing our last lemonade or bag of popcorn. We were always sunburned, covered in dust, our faces streaked with clean lines where sweat had dripped down. Some of us had prizes from the game booths, little kupie dolls hanging from the end of colored sticks, Chinese handcuffs, or rubber false teeth. It was glorious and, when the time finally came to climb out of the bleachers and head to the front gate and our parents we were sated for another year.

Out of all the years I went to the fair, I have three special memories. The most lingering is the after effects of eating six corndogs before riding the tilt-a-whirl. The ‘dogs’, via the centrifical force  of the ride, did not remain long in my stomach. Those riding with me were not amused at my sudden ejection of lunch. To this day, the smell of corndogs makes me queasy.

The second memory has to do with the year my father earned extra money by running a coca cola booth at the fair for a friend who needed an extra hand for a few days. I helped him one day, stocking cups etc. and earned some extra money not to mention childhood status. For two nights he slept in a sleeping bag at the booth to guard the supplies.  That was also the year I remember my parents coming home late from the fair. I don’t know why I was awake at the time, but it was the first time I realized that my parents went places and had fun together. Mom carried a huge toy stuffed monkey which my dad had won for her. It was always kept on their bed from that point on. My father, a journeyman carpenter at one point in his life, had won it by pounding in a bent nail in three strokes.

In my early teens, I was about done with the carnival portion of the fair as a bit childish. I had returned from several weeks counseling at a boy Scout camp and had made a new friend who happened to live in our town. He attended the local parochial school and so was out of the “mainstream” of school kids (the parochial school extended only until the 8^th grade at which point they entered the public high schools). At any rate, my new friend Andy and I decided to try the carnival one last time. As guys do, we egged each other on to try the big rides, the Rocket and the Parachutes. Now, the parachutes rose off the ground swinging its occupants out until they were nearly horizontal to the ground. We were scared spitless. After the first revolution, I could hear Andy talking to himself. “What’s that?” I yelled into his ear. “It’s the Hail Mary,” he shouted back. I knew it was a prayer. “Teach me!” I yelled back. By the time the ride was over, I knew the “Hail Mary” and can say it to this day.

 

We didn’t take the grandkids to the fair this week. It was just too damn hot and we had so many things we wanted to do. I’m sorry that they’ve missed the experience; it certainly was as much a part of my youth as the things we did see and do. We’ll take Josh to the rodeo finals on Saturday though, another part of the fair. We won’t see Roy Rogers, The Sons of the Pioneers, or Rex Allen, but I’m sure we will have fun. After all, it’s Fair Week.

The Road Fair Week