The County Fair

    It comes once a year at the beginning of August. 4-H kids across the county get prepared. Livestock is loaded into cattle trailers, prize-winning apple pies are taken from the oven and a vacant parking lot becomes a bustling midway filled with rides, music and neon lights.     In a small rural area, the annual county fair brings out people of all kinds. Young children who are content to play with a pink piglet for hours, teenagers who seek the thrill of the midway and grandparents who get together to reminisce about the good old days. There is just something about the fair that brings people together.
    For one little girl, the fair is her favorite week of the summer. She and her brothers bring cattle to the fairgrounds for the week. She has spent one week each year of her young life, living in a camper with her family and many other 4-H families at the fair. Oh, the time she has romping around those livestock barns, playing in sawdust piles, climbing over bales of hay and seeing brand new farm animals being born.
    On the first night of the fair she always begs her mom and dad to let her sleep in the barn to comfort her young calf in this new place. All the animals are not used to the strange fair sights and sounds; booming voices over the loud speaker, music blaring and lights flashing from the midway.
    The first few nights the farm animals spend at the fair sound like Noah’s Ark. The constant lowing of cattle, whinnying of horses, the cry of sheep and goats mixed in with the occasional rooster’s call, is heard through the night until dawn. Those fussy animals are quieted only when sleepy bed-head kids roll out of their campers and tents, pull on their rubber boots and tromp toward the barn to do their morning chores.
    A unique bond is shared between a child and his animal. Some bring their sheep, pigs, goats, horses or cows for fairgoers to look at and admire, while others bring their animals in hopes of a good auction price. Whatever the reason, those who bring their livestock to local fairs labor many hours raising and preparing their animals. Their return is not merely monetary.
    Behind the excitement and lights of the midway the county fair holds an older, richer tradition. Most don’t live this way anymore and the family farm is on its way out of style. There are children who have never even seen some farm animals up close, let alone petted one. That is why the tradition of county fairs must live on.
    In this beautiful land we live in, we should take a week or so and celebrate together; eat too much fried food, lose our voices cheering at the tractor pulls, get dizzy on a crazy ride or two and walk back in time to the simple life. Celebrate the bond between a newborn lamb and a little child. Cherish overhearing a conversation between a girl and her calf. Watch as a young man proudly auctions off his homegrown steer.
    May we not let a summer drift by without an evening or two spent with friends and family at the county fair.
    Ingrid Braley, of Mapleton, is a 2006 Presque Isle High School graduate. In each column of Rural Reflections, she hopes to bring readers back to the simple pleasures of the County and the country way of life.