Bob Sanders: Fairs still stand the test of time

It’s fair time. There are fairs all over the place. Many counties have their fairs, and there are bigger regional fairs. I like the whole idea of fairs.
I loved them before I ever went to one. My neighbors and childhood playmates, Howard and Herschel, had been to a fair. I grilled them constantly as we picked cotton. How it was ... Tell me. Tell me about the rides and exhibits and rides and games and rides and the cotton candy and hot dogs and booths and rides and the smell of the place and the popcorn, and the rides. I wanted to know.

Finally, I got to go. My bachelor uncle Kelley drove a short-route school bus, actually a pickup with something like an oversized camper body on it. Not bad. Even padded seats. He hauled McCarver and Sanders and Matthews and Roberts and Todd and Reeves and Finch and Chandler and Boman kids to and from school.

He’d sometimes use it to haul us to, oh, some special swimming hole we wanted to try out. Or ... anything. This time it was to a fair, about 30 miles away in, to us, a big town. I think it was more than just a county fair, more like a regional fair

Oh, the anticipation. We could see the lights from ten miles away. And there we were.

It was everything I had dreamed of, except it didn’t have a roller coaster. I had kind of hoped… Anyway, there was the Ferris wheel and the Merry-go-round, and all kinds of things that spun and slung you around and would make the cotton candy and hot dogs and popcorn leave all but the hardiest stomachs.

I loved it.

When I was about 14, the movie “State Fair” came to the hallowed Lamar Theater. A big bunch of us cousins crammed into Uncle Kent’s ancient Ford to go see it. Many decades later, Frosty and I went to the movie’s setting, the Iowa State Fair, the granddaddy of fairs. Didn’t see Dana Andrews or Vivian Blaine or Jedanne Crain or Dick Haytmes, but it was everything a fair is supposed to be.

I’m still a sucker for the movie. If I run across it while surfing, I’m hooked for the rest of it.

In another category, once upon a time, Frosty and I happened to be going through the metropolis of Tunbridge, Vt. (about the size of Loachapoka). Its fair was going on, the (this year) 138th Tunbridge World’s Fair.

Small-caliber, but delightful.

Exhibits of prize-winning fruits and vegetables, the biggest pumpkin I ever saw, horse-pulling contests,, steer-pulling contests, the biggest steers I ever saw. If you’re ever up that way in mid-September ...

In the meantime, if you hurry, you can get to our fair, or to one of the many county fairs around the state.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.