Fair History

I have not visited my local county fair since my local county was Van Wert, OH (a smallish community that was mostly a farm community in western Ohio thirty years ago). We did go to the fair when we lived there.

What I remember most is getting a close look at large farm animals and the one magical time Mom bought an airplane ride for us. A local pilot was taking folks for rides in his little three-seater aircraft. My brother was small enough to ride on Mom's lap, so we were able to go. It was very exciting to see the landscape and clouds appear alternately as we turned and dipped and circled above the fair grounds.
Just before I wrote this post I checked out my local county fair on the web. It will be running next week. I perused the listing of events and decided we will not miss anything if we don't go. I'm not really into spending extra grandstand admission to see demolition derbies or motorcross runs. Nor am I keen of letting my children ride rides that are frequently taken apart and reassembled. Some of the bands sound nice, and watching harness races can be fun, but probably not too exciting for the kids. That would not leave us with a whole lot left to do but eat and say no to a multitude of midway games. The flier does briefly mention "face time with cows, horses, rabbits, and roosters" in passing on the flier--but nothing about the judging or on which days which animals will be shown.

All this reflection about the fair comes from the Engineer's last day of story hour last week. The story was about the fair, and the teacher gave each child a book to check out. Unlike last time, when my son was given a really stupid book about a picnic, complete with poor grammar, this time he got a really good book.

It is Country Fair by Gail Gibbons. The book didn't just provide words for a child to pass his eyes over. It imparted interesting information, attractive illustrations, and left my young reader with an intense desire to go to a fair.

My favorite part of the book is the last page, A History of Fairs. It illustrates one of the benefits of home schooling. Even in teaching the youngest grades, I get to learn new things too! For instance, the word fair comes from the Latin Feria, or festival. The next six tidbits give a chronological history in simple terms. I'll paraphrase Gibbons' research:

In ancient times, people traveled from distant settlements to come together to worship their gods at festivals and they brought along goods to sell. This is how fairs began.

Between 500 and 1500 AD many fairs were held in Europe. Often they were held in honor of Christian saints.

The first fair to have circus acts was the Bartholomew Fair (England). That fair began around 1200 AD.

The first country fair in the US was in New Haven, CT, in 1644.

The first time prizes were given for crafts, goods and animals was in 1810 at a fair in Pittsfield, MA.

And finally, today more than 2000 fairs are held in the USA each year.