XXIIThe County Fair
I FOUND Professor Maturin deeply pondering, the other evening, the season when the county fair stirs semi-rural communities, all over the land, with anticipation, realization, and fresh reminiscence. “No one of our institutions for pleasure or profit,” said he, “is more firmly established; and yet students of local manners and customs and of social psychology appear to have given it small attention, and there is no notable record of it in literature, save that by Mr. Howells in the beginning of ‘The Coast of Bohemia.’ Its phenomena, however, are easily ascertainable by any one who has rural acquaintance or access to rural newspapers.”
I asked him to instruct me concerning the subject, and he continued substantially as follows:
“For weeks before the great occasion these newspapers record and reflect the steady growth of the greatest enthusiasm of the year. Meetings of the Fair Association begin, and become more and more frequent, until it is announced that the secretary will be at his office daily. Immediately thereafter rumors spread, or are spread, concerninglarger exhibits than ever before, of live stock, of machinery, of household entries; in short, of everything.
“Extra offices are ostentatiously opened for every sort of entry, and are as ostentatiously filled with more and more assistants, who periodically and publicly exhaust their entire supply of exhibit tags. After a secretly anxious interval the officers of the association begin to smile over the conscious possession of actual cash paid for concessions, and lavishly hire a negro of aldermanic proportions, in a costume boasting three hundred and fourteen brilliant patches and two hundred and three assorted buttons, to parade the streets in the interests of advertising.
“At the last meeting but one before the fair, it is officially announced that the ‘outlook is for the greatest collection of exhibits ever entered,’ and the association decides, out of the fullness of its heart and pockets, to equip the new barn with electric lights, and to issue complimentary tickets to all clergymen who apply for them.
“At the same meeting it awards the ‘feed privilege,’ and appoints judges, ticket-takers, grandstand ushers, and many guards, under the command of a military train-announcer, together with various unnecessary marshals and sundrymysterious functionaries known as ‘hill-men’ and ‘hatchet-men.’ All of these, especially the night guards, speedily become heroes in the now almost painfully wide-open eyes of the town’s small boys.
“The Poultry Fanciers’ Association likewise begins to hold frequent meetings, planning its own exhibits and its entertainments for visiting exhibitors, and announcing that silver cups may be given as prizes, in which event the cups also will be exhibited. Finally, at least one cup makes its appearance, and is displayed in advance, surrounded by many ribbon rosettes and streamers destined for such happy birds as are only less than the best.
“Hotel and restaurant keepers hungrily furbish up old and install new equipment, increase their attendance and provide music, and make bids for the reward of virtue by refusing entertainment to such undesirable citizens as Mormon missionaries. Local real estate booms more loudly than ever, and local commerce plumes and preens itself with all kinds of ‘openings’ and ‘fair-week bargains.’ It keeps a jealous eye on competition, requiring visiting street vendors to keep moving; but it is so hospitable to visiting custom that when visiting custom’s sleepy children tumble into itsshow-cases, it grandly refuses to accept payment for the resulting damage.
“And now ‘the Midway’ begins to cast its lights and shadows before. Its prospective patrons sorrow over the enforced absence of the glass swallower, who has at last succumbed to the rigors of his profession. But they are felicitous over the return of the electric woman, and look forward with eager anticipation to the yet untasted delights of riding on a ‘sea-wave,’ and of throwing rings at the heads of a flock of live geese. They read with avidity long newspaper accounts, by correspondents who sign themselves ‘1t,’ of the approaching Russian midget and the Igorrote village; and the report that two balloonists are contesting for a concession distracts them between the comparative merits of a real wedding in mid-air and a cannon that shoots an aeronaut and a parachute.
“Meanwhile ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-Room’ comes to town with a tent and a band that parades, but so few persons attend that no performances are given. Local entertainers, however, climb to the very pinnacle of competition. The Family Theatre provides ‘An Entire Change of Programme!’ and the Academy of Music presents ‘A Repertoire Company of World WideReputation!!!’ The skating rink advertises a new floor, and a grand opening, with decorations of American flags and Japanese lanterns. And the dancing academy announces a series of fair-week dances with a new palm-room capable of seating an orchestra of six pieces.
“Soon the zest of danger is added to the local frame of mind by the appearance of two men ‘from away,’ who appear dissatisfied with all the watches that the leading jeweller can display, until it is learned, after their departure, that they have taken several with them for more leisurely examination. Thereupon all strangers are looked upon with suspicion, doors and windows are doubly locked; valuables are guarded; and local justice warns or incarcerates on suspicion the best or worst-known local offenders, and congratulates the town on the loss of fewer horses, watches, and pocket-books than usual. Anxiety over property, however, at no time approaches that concerning the weather, which cannot possibly last if it is good, although it will certainly continue if it is bad.
“Local finance shows its approval of the general course of things by promising its bank clerks two half-holidays, and local learning smiles indulgently in paying its teachers earlier thanusual, and granting its pupils a two days’ recess. The Grand Council of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Fraternity promises its annual visitation during fair week, and the church endeavors to leaven the worldliness of the season by announcing the twenty-sixth annual convention of the Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society.
“When the exhibits actually begin to arrive, one wonders how enthusiasm can rise higher. The fair grounds present an increasingly busy scene, until there is scarcely moving room between workmen and wagons. Incoming teams grow more and more crowded with exhibits and exhibitors, fakes and fakirs, and, finally, with visitors. Every private house entertains old friends and new. Public accommodations are taxed to the utmost, and trading at the city market becomes well-nigh frantic.
“The visitors represent all sorts and conditions of men and women. The old woman who has never ridden on a railroad train and the old man who attended the first fair fifty years ago, the veteran who helped defend the town during the civil war and the business man who is taking his first vacation in twenty-four years—these divide interest with the principals in the runawaymarriages, of which there are two or three daily.
“Numerous former residents return for the first time in many years, and several new families decide to locate permanently. At the last moment the Governor finds himself unfortunately unable to be present, but the president of one railroad and the general manager of another come in private cars, and two rival political candidates are much seen but not much heard.
“Various other distinguished guests arrive in touring cars, and countless other less distinguished but equally dust-covered persons arrive in carriages. Street movement grows very brisk. Buggies clash, automobiles bump, and trolley cars jump the track; and over all begins to rise the call of the cabman, ‘Going right out.’ By night all the shops are brilliant, sidewalks are crowded, and in the square there are moving picture advertisements, and the flaring torches of vending and performing fakirs.
“The opening day dawns bright and clear, and every one jubilantly follows the call of the cabmen, until the town itself seems half deserted. On the grounds bands boom, marshals gallop, and crowds pour through and around the buildings. Within one of these, merchants display pipes andpianos, furniture and furnaces, hardware and haberdashery, shoes and sewing-machines, carpets and candy, in apparently endless array.
“On an upper floor the household department demands appreciation for two thousand four hundred and twenty-four glasses of jelly, six hundred and fifty-one jars of pickles, three hundred and thirty cakes, and eighty-nine specimens of homemade soap. Nearby in the department of fine arts are paper flowers, worsted mottoes, six hundred and fifteen pieces of embroidery, one hundred and forty-two cushions, four hundred and forty-three drawings and paintings, and one hundred and ten curiosities and relics, mostly ‘over one hundred years old.’ Among the latter the palm is borne by six cocoanut-shell baskets and a tray of seventeen-year locust shells.
“Elsewhere are many worthy flowers, shrubs, and trees; fruits, vegetables, and grains—celery a yard tall, pumpkins a yard wide, and forty-seven varieties of beans. The pavilions and grounds devoted to machinery present a bewildering array of ploughs, planters, cultivators, reapers, and stackers; of threshers, separators, huskers, shellers, cutters, and grinders; of engines and pumps, saws and mills, and of all things after their kind.
“Every domestic animal, too, after its kind, seems to be represented in countless pens and stalls, until one tarries only long enough to sign the Poultry Fanciers’ demand for a new building and to be grateful for the railroad congestion that has delayed many other exhibits, and then departs, resolutely undeflected by the charms of the Midway, the miniature railway, and the innumerable ice-cream, sausage, and popcorn stands.
“By the second day it is a commonplace that the exhibition is the greatest ever given; everybody begins to count it nearly half over, and a few acknowledge that they wish it were. The cabmen complain of trolley car competition, and a sight-seeing automobile decides that its license is too high to allow it any profit. Lady visitors complain that there are not enough seats on the grounds, that admission to the grandstand is increased to fifty cents, and that the classification of the fancy work department is years behind the vogue. The judges of jellies and the connoisseurs of cakes are prostrated after their investigations into the merits of the two thousand four hundred and twenty-four and three hundred and thirty specimens to which they have submitted their respective tastes.
“On Thursday, however, the third and, by tradition, the greatest day, enthusiasm and optimism return under the stimulus of the largest crowds the town has ever seen. Nobody can count the people, and estimates of their number are as inflated and soaring as the great balloon, which finally does its duty handsomely. Nine trolley cars are counted in the square at one time; there are eighty passenger coaches in the railroad yards, and one livery-stable entertains two hundred and thirty-four visiting horses! People who did not expect them receive premiums, and the indefatigable Poultry Fanciers have a parade and a banquet, at which they announce their building as assured.
“On Friday, the final day, the blessing continues to brighten as it takes its flight. The Fair Association smilingly admits about eight thousand dollars profit, entertains itself, and its live stock and machinery exhibitors, at luncheon, promises the Poultry Fanciers their new building, and utters mysterious hints concerning a great aquarium for next year. Nothing mars the growing satisfaction save that some unknown miscreant drops a lighted match into an entrance ticket box and burns up approximately a bushel of tickets.
“Such are some of the phenomena of the county fair,” concluded Professor Maturin. “They promise much to any proper scientific and literary exposition. Here, as everywhere else, we need only a little more information and a little more intelligence to transform our contemporary superficiality into a realization of life that is, at the same time, strong and fine.”