A lifelong a-Fair

On the way to fair Sunday, I decided I’d be a little ornery with Lila. 

“I thought you didn’t like the fair very much,” I said, as she gathered up her hair for a “ready-to-do-some-serious-work” ponytail.  

She looked over at me, incredulous, as she let her hair drop. 

“What!!? I LOVE the fair!”

That exchange left me thinking about why so many people have such affection for the fair. A lot of my friends have this deep love for the Kansas State Fair. They have had it for as long as I’ve known them. They go, if not every day, most every day. They seek out the oddities, the lesser-knowns, alongside the big, visible attractions that even a casual fair-goer will find. And many of them love different parts of the fair. It could be the food, the people, rides, exhibits, entertainment, or some incalculable combination of all the different parts. Some who have moved away, or who have always lived far away but have a history of attending the fair, make at least one annual trip to the fair – treating it as a sort of annual pilgrimage. 

But that doesn’t quite explain this sort of deep love that so many of us have for this annual event that, to me, truly marks the end of summer. That brought me back to my earlier conversation with Lila, and prompted me to pay a little more attention to the way people interacted with the fair. 

I most noticed the children and families. There are kids of every age at the fair. All the time. And sometimes different ages at different times of the day. Go to the fair on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and you’re likely to see more families roaming around, in line for rides, or enjoying the sort of food most moms would never let set foot in their homes.  

Pay really close attention, and you’ll notice that all these kids are in various stages of emotional chaos. At one point, there’s the excitement of being at the fair, the overwhelming interest in everything, the exhilaration of the rides, the manic desire to do EVERYTHING, and, also, the collapse into despair. Because there are no more ride tickets. Because “I wanted a purple cup and this one is blue.” Or because they’ve been tired for two hours, but were too amped up on sugar and adrenaline to stop doing all the things. 

I thought about this afterwards. And I went back to my original question of “why?” The truth is I don’t know. I can only guess, and for that I largely have to rely on my own experiences. 

I think it’s a connection to a multi-generational collection of uniquely personal experiences, at once shared with a community of people. If I walk around the Midway during the day, and hear children laughing with delight and crying in despair, I start to remember. The time I screamed in terror riding the “Octopus,” or the first time I rode the roller coaster – which at the time felt so big and so scary that I felt I had accomplished some great feat.

If I wander to that same area later at night, I’ll see that small children have been replaced with bigger children, who are starting to look and act like adults. And I’ll remember the nights we came in after 9 p.m. so we wouldn’t have to pay. I’ll remember roaming the grounds with friends, most often hoping to run into that girl I had a crush on. Because asking her to share a scary carnival ride was much easier – and less terrifying – than telling her how much I liked her. 

I also remember taking my children to the fair, all through the various stages. From the days of keeping them close, worried they’d wander away in pursuit of some shiny object, to the ages I’d let them roam for hours on their own – with an agreement to meet at Ye Old Mill by a set time. And, the times when those same children might indulge their parents with one shared day at the fair – if only to get their favorite foods for free. For them, like me at that age, the fair held more interest in the cooling hours of late evening, when their friends gathered on the Midway. 

Now I reside on the closing end of this loop. 

My childhood relationship with the fair transferred to my parental relationship to the fair. My son and daughter’s childhood relationship has transferred to an adult, and in my daughter’s case, a parental relationship with the fair. And her children are in the beginning stages of their childhood relationship with the fair. That too, will one day transfer to their parental relationship with the fair. And so it goes. 

The fair lasts 10-days during the unpredictable month of September. But it begins as far back as my memories reach, and goes on as long as there are children in my family.