I wonder how many are like me when it comes to the glimpse of forgotten childlike enchantment a fair adds to life each September. These colorful, flashing festive hoots spring virtually overnight as if by magic in fields on the outskirts of our smallest burgs to sprawling metropolises.
The sight of so many brightly hued lights blended with the aromas of corndogs, popcorn and funnel cakes as carnival machines whir and grind on a cool evening spurs recollections of the wonder I felt as an innocent child approaching a bustling midway.
Locations of some fairs could be pinpointed miles away by the powerful searchlights mounted on truck beds as they scanned back and forth across low-hanging clouds. Anyone else remember thinking as a youngster: Wow! Something big is happening over there. I wanna go see?
The District Fair in Harrison the other evening triggered such stirrings even at my far-from-tender age.
Today, I bypass the stomach-churning Twisters, Tilt-A-Whirls, Gravitrons and Ferris Wheels (and terrified screeching pouring from them) in favor of a greasy long corn dog with extra mustard.
I still throw darts and burst balloons until I've spent four times as much as the fuzzy little stuffy (they call their large prize) would have cost at Dollar General. Last week I won an 8-inch giraffe made in China for $10. But I burst those seven balloons, by dang!
Forget those stacked white milk bottles. I could never topple them with a softball (the pivotal center bottle was weighted). The basketball game features hoops too small to accommodate a grapefruit. Yet son Brandon at 48 still has the hand and eye to actually win. I outgrew the ping-pong toss for goldfish sometime after the 10th one bellied up decades ago.
Any evening at a fair wouldn't be the same without a pass through the distinctively aromatic livestock barn where I can ogle Jersey cows with enormous brown eyes, admire species of velvety long-eared rabbits (love the Lops) and hear the roosters crow.
I feel as if I should be wearing denim overalls in the livestock building. And while I don't drive a tractor, it's still fun to admire the big ones parked outside and sit a spell in the seats of the latest four-wheelers.
The exhibition buildings contain plenty to admire and critique. "You mean they gave that a blue ribbon and this magnificent specimen only got a red?!" Besides seeing folks I know, this social setting proves just how many among us have hidden artistic talents worthy of ego-boosting colored ribbons.
The creativity reflected in exhibits spreads from someone's perfect cherry jam to creative writing, posters and exceptional flowers, plants and vegetables grown in backyard gardens. Friend Danny Timbrook found blue ribbons hanging on his enormous, perfectly colored gourd, as well as the plump jalapeños he and wife, Susie, also grew in their backyard garden.
Visitors can spend an hour or more examining the photography exhibits and various artwork. While most don't touch me beyond being interesting, others can be fine pieces of work reflecting exquisite senses of moment and balance.
It's about to become customary that I stop by the tattoo tent for a temporary $5 henna version, usually one of those barbed-wire rings wrapped around my bicep like the one Marilyn Williams of Mountain View left on me last week. It's one of those "fair kinda" kid things that still hearkens to 60 years back. But what the hey (hay), since it washes off in a week.
Here amid the piercing screams, young mothers (and occasional dads) with wide-eyed kids in tow, and all the colorful neon, I'm just as happy nowadays to plop on a bench with that corndog, watch, and remember what once was my own innocent state of mind.
My lifelong friend Ralph Guynn, a farming entrepreneur and county justice of the peace who covets his coveralls, likely would survey this unpretentious melee of animals, people, noise and smells then proclaim, "There sure ain't no flies on this!"
Incidentally, I read the other day that, according to showmensmuseum.org, carnival games once awarded prizes far removed from today's stuffed animals stitched together anywhere but in our country.
It was normal practice decades back to receive straw hats, porcelain dolls, pocket knives and religious pictures as prizes for carny games. Even grocery items were popular as prizes on some midways beginning during the 1930s Depression era.
It was common to award entire baskets of food or commodities like sugar to some winners. To many in that impoverished era, just finding food was a goal. Eating daily (or taking much of anything else for granted) wasn't a consideration.
After two hours of roaming, gawking, consuming and winning a hamster-sized stuffed animal to expensively reaffirm my masculinity with bursting balloons pinned wall-to-wall four feet away, we bade farewell to the latest annual escape that added a few more colorful memories, like leaves that drop each fall, scattered through the landscape of our lifetimes.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 09/23/2018