I used to have a picture of my daughter at age three, a green and yellow John Deere cap – much too large for her – tilted precariously on her head. She’s sitting in my lap, and both of us are perched on the seat of a Deere Series 8410 tractor. I have no idea what’s become of it; probably stuffed into a box in some obscure corner of the barn, no doubt, but for some odd reason the image has stuck in my head all these years. I think we were at the New Hampshire State Fair in Hopkinton or one of the county fairs – Hillsborough or Cheshire most likely. I love the fairs; I love them in a way that only someone city born and bred can. In this place, where I’ve lived for the balance of my adult life, there are trees, and flowing water, and fields full of wildflowers in the summer and the hum of bees in the air. I almost always see a horse, or some cows, in the normal course of an average day. I grew up, however, in Jersey City; where all that was left of nature were these little horseshoes of dirt carved neatly out of the sidewalk, spaced about twelve to fifteen feet apart. These were the only clues that once, long ago, there had been a tall, shapely elm or ash in that spot, whose roots had buckled the pavement. They were reminders of a time when (so my mother told me) cities were still green places, not so cut off from the natural world, before the cars, the factories and the diesel exhaust slowly and inexorably choked the life out of them. A time when there was a veritable canopy of trees, arching over from both sides of the street, which stretched all the way down our block and practically every other block in the city.
This is why you’ll most likely see me on opening day up to the County fairgrounds yet again this year, I think. It is an attempt, somehow, to immerse myself fully and completely in this place, to make up just a little for not having been born here. I want to consciously distance myself, if only just a bit (because there is something to the notion that it is possible to take the boy out of the city, but not as easy to take the city out of the boy), from the time I spent growing up with the noise of busses and sirens, with concrete and asphalt and the ghostly footprints of trees long dead. I will gladly spend the day watching the Border Collie herding exhibitions, the oxen, draft horse and tractor pulls, the lawn-tractor races. I will take the time to walk through each and every stall where cows and pigs and sheep and goats are being tended lovingly by diligent 4-H-ers, admiring the hard work and patience it must have taken some eight-year-old to research and set up the poster board presentation, complete with illustrative drawings and photographs, on the different breeds of domestic hogs and how they go from farm to table.
Besides, I am a bona fide tractor junkie. A day at the fair means a walk through row after row of harvesters and hay wagons, balers and brush hogs, tractors as big as a house whose enclosed cabs have air conditioning and AM/FM six-speaker Stereo CD players. I harbor no illusions, mind you. I’d make quite the lousy farmer; in fact, I’m sure that just a week’s worth of work – heck, a day’s worth – at one of the local dairy farms would probably kill me. This has never stopped me, though, from climbing up onto that John Deere equipped with a Model 338 square baler (twine or wire), and imagining for just a moment how different, and how much better, my life would have been if I’d been raised here, in New Hampshire, on a farm. It is why I take my daughter – I want her to see and smell and hear all these things that are at the heart of growing up in the country – so that they may be a part of her, root and branch, wherever she goes, for the rest of her days.
I have a clear memory of one particular visit to the fair, in 1989. I remember it specifically because the three of us – my wife, daughter and I – had just returned home from a vacation to Disney World in Orlando; a trip that I’ll return to a little further on in this narrative. For the moment, it is enough to know that my daughter is five years old, and she and I are picking our way carefully through a field full of livestock trailers, pickup trucks and RV’s. Scattered among them are small groups of two or three people each, sipping coffee in paper cups and finishing off the last few crumbs of a take-out breakfast. Several of them congregate under stained and battered roll-up awnings hanging awkwardly over the side doors of their Winnebagos. The air is full of the sharp smell of manure mixed with the sweet odors of caramel corn, fried dough and cotton candy. As we stand with our backs to the mid-morning sun, on our right in an adjoining field are pavilions full of goats, pigs and cows; and a-ways off to the left there is a fenced-in ring containing five incongruously well-dressed teen-agers of varying heights and genders, all with potentially prize-winning sheep tethered to their sides. The sheep look somehow hopeful (visions of blue ribbons dancing in their heads?), the teens all with concerned faces and furrowed brows. Each serious-looking young man or woman is making a final pass with a large, flat carding brush, or giving a last-minute clip to an errant piece of wool sticking up from an otherwise perfectly flat and impeccably groomed coat.
Fairs are noisy places. There’s an unintelligible babble coming out of a PA system a short distance away, which competes for our attention with the sound of screaming guitars blaring out from over where the carnival rides have been set up. Underneath it all, like the drone of a bagpipe, is the unmistakable dull roar of farm equipment off in the distance, warming up in preparation for the tractor pull. My daughter takes my hand and leads me, following Led Zeppelin’s siren call, towards the bright, noisy midway. I try unsuccessfully to steer her the long way ‘round so that I can get a glimpse of the tractors, but she is determined, holding on to my hand with both of hers, to bring me in a beeline to our ultimate destination. She knows, even at this early age, how easily distracted her father can get. We manage to find our way through the maze of sheds, barns, and exhibition halls (“See The Prizewinning Zucchini!”), avoiding the cow patties and piles of fresh horse manure that dot the pathways, toward the Fried Dough concessions, ring-toss games, wheels of chance and face-painting booths that are lined up on both sides of the carnival midway. The racket of the tractors subsides to a low rumble as we make slow headway up the crowded thoroughfare that leads to this portable Emerald City; loud, whirling and glowing. Each ride is outlined by hundreds of forty-watt bulbs, all lit (except for the few that are broken or burned-out) even though it is almost high noon.
We find the source of the music – two speakers that look as if someone borrowed them for the day from their brother-in-law’s stereo system – sitting in front of a large, black tentacled ride called, appropriately enough, the Octopus. At the end of each metal tentacle is an egg-shaped car holding one or more shrieking riders, hanging on for dear life with looks of intermingled joy and terror on their faces. My daughter watches the ride and its occupants for a moment, then tugs lightly on the sleeve of my jacket, indicating with a turn of her head that she wishes to move on. “It’s too loud, Daddy” is the only comment she eventually makes. She guides me towards a group of rides all enclosed with two dozen or so battered panels of free-standing moveable pasture fencing. There’s a makeshift archway over a break in the enclosure, and a brightly colored sign at the top of the arch that says “Kiddie Korner”.
An impatient pull on my arm gets me to move over to the ticket booth perched just to the right of the break in the fence. A woman with big, bleached blond hair, wearing just a bit too much eye shadow, sits in the booth smoking a cigarette. She snaps out a quick “How many?” to me as I push a five dollar bill through the curved slot at the bottom of the Plexiglas window. She takes the five and begins to count out tickets off a large roll. She looks up briefly, and makes eye contact with my child. The woman’s face immediately brightens into a great, broad smile. She asks “What ride are you goin’ on first, sweetie?” My daughter thinks for a moment and replies, “The roller coaster. Or the fire engines. Or the space ships.” The woman and I both laugh. She passes a folded wad of tickets to me through the window and says, as we leave, “You have a good time, hon!” I toss the woman a thank you as my daughter yanks me through the archway. I notice that, with only a few exceptions, these are the same rides I remember from the amusement parks of my own childhood – boats plowing around a small aluminum moat, miniature tanks and jeeps painted a camouflage green, forever circling an enemy position, red fire engines with bells to ring. I stand drenched in nostalgia for the briefest moment, until she makes her choice; she then marches us determinedly past the merry-go-round and the miniature roller coaster over to where the space ships are.
The space ships are just what their name implies – little child-sized rocket ships that look like they may have once been used as miniatures in the old Flash Gordon serials. You know (or maybe you don’t; I’m showing my age here, I think) – the ones with Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon and a wonderful character actor named Charles Middleton as his archenemy, Ming The Merciless. These diminutive Art Deco space cruisers each sit at the end of a long arm attached with hydraulic lifters to a central vertical shaft that spins them in a circle. In each ship there is a control stick that you can push forward or pull back. Pull it back, and your ship rises to what I guess is twelve, maybe fifteen feet above the ground. Push it forward, and the spacecraft floats gently back down. It is this element of control, I think, that my daughter enjoys so much.
While we wait patiently on line with four or five other children for her turn to fly to the outer reaches of the cosmos, I catch a glimpse of the young man who is operating the ride. He is of medium height and very thin, but very muscular, and seems to be no more than 20, or 22 years old at the most. His hair is long and black, a bit greasy, pulled into a loose ponytail; his face thin and somewhat drawn, with a sparse goatee. He is dressed in a black Lynard Skynard tee shirt and tight-fitting jeans. Rolled up in the sleeve of the tee shirt is what I can only assume to be a pack of cigarettes. There are several tattoos on both of his arms, the most prominent of which is a mermaid, topless, with large, round breasts. When the time comes, he flicks a switch and the rockets glide slowly down to earth. He goes around to each ship and carefully unbuckles the safety chain holding each child, watching as the older ones scramble out on their own, or gently lifting the littlest ones out and into the waiting arms of Mom, Dad, Grampy or Grammy. During this whole operation, the young carney has a smile on his face that lights up his eyes and showcases his two missing teeth. My daughter lets go of my hand and runs over to the ship she has picked out. Before I can catch up with her, the young man has already stooped down to pick her up, not saying a word, and places her in the rocket. He draws the safety chain tightly around her waist and clasps it to the eyebolt welded to the inside wall of the ship. She is nothing if not a polite child (we have raised her well), and so she thanks the young man, grinning broadly at him. He replies “You’re welcome, sweetheart, you have fun now”, and moves on to buckle up the next Buck Rogers wannabe.
I stood there and watched her, smiling and laughing while she flew her rocket ship up as high as it could go, shouting all the while “Look at me, Daddy, look at me!” In that moment I was struck, and struck mightily at the time, by the contrast between our day here at the fair and our recent sojourn to Disney World which I mentioned above. On reflection, I suppose the whole business is much too obvious and that additional comment would be (or, at least, should be) superfluous. In each case my child had a wonderful time, and so did my wife and I, for that matter, and perhaps that’s all that needs to be said about it. However, it seems that I am bound and determined to make a comparison here, so I’d best get to it.
Both places exist to entertain and, to a certain degree, instruct you. Both places are, at their base, trying to sell you something. Disney has its enormous media empire and symbiont tchotchkes; why just buy a copy of the movie The Lion King when you can also have a Simba plush toy, or pencil, or cup, or porcelain figurine, or snow globe, or. . . well, you get the point. The county fair exists to sell things too; first and foremost is agricultural life itself, along with farm equipment, vegetable peelers, Ginsu knives, Nelson’s Fudge, miracle oven cleaners and other wonders of the modern world too numerous to mention. And let’s not forget the tastiest food in the universe that is, at the same time, the worst for you by any nutritional criteria you care to name. Despite all this, however, I think it’s safe to say that state and county fairs, wherever you may encounter them, are quite possibly the antithesis of the whole Disney experience. First of all, they sound like a cross between a heavy-metal concert and a monster truck rally, and smell like an Italian street fair held in a dairy barn with a generous shot of eau du Diesel mixed in for good measure. Where the folks at Disney exercise total control to deliver a carefully crafted, slick experience calculated to thrill and delight, giving fun to all and offense to none, with no detail too small to be overlooked and everyone involved on their best behavior, the county fair is, by comparison, an orgy of chaos. There is, for one example, the whole business of manure. Now, something you simply cannot avoid running into at a fair is animal excrement in its many forms, from cow patties to mounds of horse manure to the hundreds of little pellets left behind by goats. In the Magic Kingdom horse poop, largely generated by the draught horses that pull loads of picture-taking tourists in quaint little omnibuses up and down Main Street, seemed to almost, well, magically disappear the moment it was produced.
Disney’s Main Street, for those of you who might be unfamiliar with the park, is a fascinating introduction to the wonders to come; an idealized re-creation of fin-de-siecle small-town America, an architectural as well as cultural illusion that suggests friendly neighbors waving from their porches, church suppers and socials at the Grange Hall. The irony of all this is delicious, of course, since this back lot simulacrum leaves out or simply ignores all the messy bits that are at the core of small-town life, like manure; bits that are by comparison reflected to a great degree at the fair.
Perhaps, by way of a clearer explanation of what I’m getting at, another illustration is in order. Our first day in Disney World was a fairly typical one. We had arrived at the park around one o’clock in the afternoon, and made our way up through the entrance gates to the head of Main Street. We pass through Cinderella’s Castle into the Magic Kingdom proper, one of the many parks-within-a-park, which unfolds before us like a pop-up picture book. Cheery music emanates from hidden speakers everywhere, just loud enough to be heard over the babble of the crowds, not so obtrusive that it distracts your attention. Everything is clean and bright, scrubbed to within an inch of its life. A small army of men and women are discreetly sweeping sidewalks, emptying trash barrels and tending to the flower beds, trees and shrubs planted in beautiful, eye-catching arrays all along the walkways. Characters and images from the cartoons and movies our daughter loves are all here, incarnated in brightly colored steel, wood and fiberglass, as rides and attractions. She is immediately drawn to the Dumbo ride; a whirling group of miniature elephants that can be raised and lowered at the riders’ whim. We join the end of a tightly compacted line that snakes back and forth through a maze of metal gates. There’s a sign featuring a smiling Mickey Mouse which helpfully informs us that the wait from this point is approximately 25 minutes. All of the other rides we can see from where we’re standing are continuously moving cars or boats carrying two, four, six, eight or even twelve people at a time through It’s A Small World (After All) or Peter Pan’s London. This gives their patrons at least some sense of forward progress. The Dumbo ride, however, must be stopped and its human cargo emptied out and refilled each time. Patience is a virtue, I remind my daughter. We will get there eventually.
I watch the small human dramas playing out in front of us; a child in a stroller clutching a newly-purchased Winnie-The-Pooh, newly-married young couples clutching each other (you can tell they are newlyweds because she is wearing a white headband with mouse ears and a veil; his mouse ears are perched upon a black top hat), an older couple puzzling over a map of the park, wondering aloud about the best route to the Tiki Birds attraction. Several yards away there erupts a loud wail that distracts us from our vigil. A young father, standing smack dab in the middle of the hurrying crowd that glides almost smugly past those of us waiting in line, is holding on to a child of two, or three at the oldest. The little one is making the kind of crying noises any parent would recognize as the sign of a worn-out child, who had obviously had his fun quota for the day and was more than ready for a nap. A bright, well-manicured, clean-shaven young man sporting the uniform of a Disney cast member approaches the poor, harried parent, and in the brightest and cheeriest tone I’ve ever heard come out of a human mouth, says to the child “Hey, don’t you know that there’s no crying allowed in the Magic Kingdom?” It was immediately apparent that the child, tired and irritated though he was, knew full well he was being patronized and his intelligence insulted. It was also clear that the young cast member had absolutely no grasp of the psychology of cranky three-year-olds; either that, or else he had been duped by someone into believing that telling a child he wasn’t allowed to cry would actually make him stop, because he kept repeating this sentence over and over like some mystical Mickey Mouse mantra, which only served to annoy the child into further squirming and screaming. The parent, seeing a bad situation rapidly escalating into something much worse, rips off a barely polite “excuse me” to the young man and hightails it out of there, only just able to hold on to the child who is now wailing like a banshee and actively kicking his father square in the left kidney.
Now don’t get me wrong – I love Disney World. I’m still enough of an eight-year old myself, with a vivid memory of the longing I had as a child to visit Disneyland – fueled, I know now, by Walt’s incessant marketing of the place to my impressionable mind every Sunday evening via his television show – even though I knew full well that my parents could hardly afford a real vacation anywhere, let alone the trip across country to Anaheim. Now that I was an adult with the means to travel, it was great fun to go ride the rides (I once rode the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride twelve times in a row) and watch the Audio-Animatronic Presidents and buy my daughter that Davy Crockett coonskin cap my folks could never afford to get for me. Where some see the heavy hand of American cultural imperialism, frankly all I see are some damn funny cartoons, many of which border on Art. And even the most unsophisticated visitor to the place understands on some level, I think, that a trip to the World Showcase in Epcot Center is not a substitute for spending a few weeks in Spain, Morocco or Italy. But I suppose, if one had to put a label on it, the county fair has by virtue of its chaos what I guess you’d call character, or perhaps charm or quirkiness or something, which the Disney parks lack. The desire to please everyone by filing down all the rough edges creates an experience that, while entertaining, isn’t quite as exciting or immediate as the kind of experience you get on the midway. It’s the difference, I guess, between spending an evening at a friend’s house where everything is just so, right out of Martha Stewart Living Magazine, every detail thought through and the whole place “design-schemed” to a fare-thee-well, where you are afraid to sit on the furniture lest you knock a pillow out of whack and ruin the whole mise-en-scene; and going to another’s home where the place actually looks lived-in – books and magazines scattered in piles hither and yon, the smell of the last meal cooked in the kitchen still hanging in the air, and a large dog (or two) curled up on the comfortable chair or in the middle of the living room rug. Is one better than the other? What do you mean by better? Is it unreasonable to think that some people might be put off by a young man with a tattoo of a half-naked woman coming into contact with their children? Perhaps not, but I have to say that the tattooed young carney at the fair just might be more likely to ask a small child who was crying what was the matter, and actually listen to the answer.
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