Summer’s Finale: the Fair

  Fairs have been much anticipated highlights of every summer for at least three generations of my family, a grand finale to summer freedom before school starts. 

   Kids worked hard all year on 4-H projects and looked forward to displaying them at the county and state fair, winning ribbons (and prize money!) if we were lucky.

  Then last summer, the summer of 2020, the unthinkable occurred: all over the States, fairs were cancelled, casualties of the Covid epidemic. 

 The frantic carrousel music, barkers chanting, “Step right up! Win a prize every time!”, the screams of teenage girls stuck at the top of the Double-Eight Ferris Wheel: silenced!  

  The aromas of hotdogs, burnt-sugary cotton candy, mini donuts, cattle barns, hot dust and horse sweat: gone!  

  The shivers of fear, rushes of adrenaline engulfing riders of the Zipper, the Hammer, the Riptide: unreachable for another whole year.

In St. Stephens, South Carolina, carnival rides looked lonely 

all last summer in the town park. 

  This week, however, the fun returns. “The Great Minnesota Get-Together 2021”, the Minnesota State Fair, is back. 

  I’m pretty sure I know where my daughters and grandchildren are this weekend. Eating Aunt Martha’s Cookies and drinking chocolate milk in the dairy barn!