The Fair

The rain and wind blew out the unseasonable warmth of late summer and ushered in the cool breezes of fall. Without the heat from the sun, we needed to light a small pile of kindling nestled in discarded brown paper bags in the wood stove when we woke up, just enough to take the chill off for the day. I sit at the bar in the kitchen and watch a marauding gang of turkeys race across the road from the woods. Perfect start to Tunbridge Fair week.

There have only been three times that the fair has been canceled in its 150 years of existence, 2020 being one of those. Last year the fair was open but with heavy Covid restrictions. Tunbridge is one of our favorite places and so, during Covid, we had taken several road trips through the area, past the quiet fairgrounds. Off season the fairgrounds stand silent; the grandstand emptied of clapping concert goers, the buildings that have housed fair animals for over a hundred years [seem to] hunker into the mountainside, their roof lines tilted, the structures seemingly unstable without the support of sheep or oxen. Sometimes, for something to do, we would grab food and wander onto the field for a makeshift picnic, hoping to recreate some of the magic that we feel during fair season. Although we enjoyed being in the physical space, we felt the silence acutely. It was like an unlit Christmas tree standing in a darkened corner.

Josh called Monday morning and, without salutation, simply announced that it was Tunbridge week. We all understood what that meant. No matter what difficulty we are presented with during the week, Tunbridge stands like a beacon at the end of it.

Friday morning Paul and I talked about how the afternoon would go; he would take Muir and bring the sheep up while I was teaching my last lesson. He would feed the dogs and load the car. Anything needing to be put away would have to wait until we returned later that night. One does not carry a backpack into a fair so I folded money, tucked it into my pants pockets and we piled into the truck.

The ride is as familiar and wonderful as anything else. The late afternoon fall sunlight spills across the hillside. Old Farmall tractors sit rusted in people’s fields as if they had finished mowing and stopped for a long rest. We watch a Scottish Highland cow walk along a dirt path, her calves trudging alongside her, like children being walked home from school. In anticipation of people passing on the way to the fair locals are selling pumpkins in front of their houses, orange globes piled into a triangle. A painted sign asking for twenty dollars leans against them. Members of the volunteer fire department stand in the road, plastic buckets in hand, hoping for a coin drop. Paul and I dig through the front seat searching for silver.

We round a corner and suddenly there it is. The Christmas tree has been lit, its warmth spilling all around it. There are more cars than we have ever seen at the fair. Our fair book, worn with folded down page corners, has photos of this same parking lot filled with wagons holding families being pulled by horses, mothers in skirts, the buns in their hair askew, grappling with excited children Another shows the lot piled high with model A cars, men in straw hats looking sternly at the camera while mothers in pristine white blouses tucked into belted skirts clutch the hands of laughing children. The happy children never change.

The fair began life as agricultural and remains rooted there. We wander through Floral Hall balancing a pile of sweets and beets between us, looking at fall flower arrangements and chewing. We peruse Lego projects and baked goods, the best of which bear the coveted blue ribbon. Another building houses sixteen foot sunflowers and eight hundred and twenty pound pumpkins. Parents point their phones at babies set next to the pumpkin. We compare our vegetables to prize winners being pretty sure, had we decided to enter, ours would have ribboned.

We rush to the horse and oxen pulls and clap loudly for the home town team. Sitting in front of us are retired farmers making commentary on the teams and the handling of them: pretty sure, had they decided to enter, they would have ribboned.

There is always new food to try alongside old favorites. This year, pretty much anything you might want could be fried. I saw a sign for fried grilled cheese and spent part of the evening wrapping my head around the concept. After three years of being careful, it was joyful to see people having fun, children’s faces streaked red from candy apples, civil war reenactors back in their white tents with the requisite small fire smoldering at the front, decades-old cider presses back in service, paper cups being handed to waiting admirers. Packs of teens in a self conscious pose, as an older husband pushes his lemonade-sipping wife up Antique Hill in a wheelchair,. Young and young at heart mingle.

Late afternoon on Saturday we stand and try to figure out what we might have missed. Both of us hesitant to call it. I scan the crowd and watch the Ferris Wheel, feeling the ghosts of the hundreds before me who have done the same. My fourth great grandfather built the road that we drove in on so, without a doubt, some of these ghosts are mine. I smell the same smells I have for all of my adult life and wonder if some part of this is ancestral memory.

In choosing when to leave the fair, having gone from exhibit to exhibit, farming artifact to farming artifact, and all the 4H animal judging, you’ve seen everything you can see and eaten everything you can eat. But there is, ultimately, a tipping point where you realize that if you stay longer, you may wish that you left earlier.

Not unlike the perennial fair favorite Bloomin’ Onion. The first few mouthfuls are the best tasting food that you’ve ever eaten. But you know, without hesitation, that more would definitely be too much.