There’s been a snippet of song running through my head all week. It’s the most annoying song in the world, next to “The Song That Never Ends.” The chorus—the only part I remember—goes like this:“Goin’ to the fair, fair, fair,
Hope to see you there, there, there,
‘Cuz we’re goin’ to the fair, fair, fair…”
I’ll sing it for you in person one day and you’ll be able to fully appreciate its catchiness. I learned this song in kindergarten back in California, and it’s stuck in my mind because this is fair week. The Fair. The Only Fair That Matters. It’s the Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee! Commonly known as “Frog Jump.”
It’s funny how the farther away you get from things the stranger they seem. We took it for granted that we got a Thursday and Friday off school each May to attend the fair. If you were in 4-H you got Wednesday off, too, so you could prepare your animals for selling (read: slaughter). Then everybody drove out to the dusty fairgrounds amid golden hills and ate curly fries and flipped around on the Zipper and threw up on the Gravitron and cheered for the demolition derby and nurtured giggling pre-teen romances. Just like every other county fair you’ve been to.Except ours had amphibians! Strange that a festival in a hick town like ours would have a literary basis, but there it was, Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” written from a tale he heard in a saloon in town. Now, the fair attracts competitive frog-jumping teams from around the world, as well as tens of thousands of cityfolk up from the Valley and the Bay Area. (Flatlanders.) Yes, I have jumped a frog. They are huge and they’d rather just sit there.
I went to the fair every year of my life until I left for college, and I haven’t been back in twelve years. Now, those friends I giggled with are taking their own kids to the fair. And every year at this time I get a bittersweet nostalgic ache for sitting on a blanket on a warm hillside surrounded by greasy napkins and just-won stuffed animals and watching the moon rise over the stables. But I know it could never be the same.
Frog Jump photo by Jim Wilson/New York Times
14 comments:
Flatlanders, eh? Hmmm, I guess that's "technically" correct.
Your fair sounds actually fun. The Merced fair is thugs vs. ags, with some carnies thrown in for good measure.
'Flatlanders' I'm obviously using in a historical sense. Once I started meeting some of these people myself, round about age 17, I realized some of them weren't so bad.
Good post, Carrie! What are you, a writer?
For the record I am probably your typical Flatlander, since I hail from San Francisco. But keep in mind that San Francisco is a topographically diverse region, with seven famous hills and 43 officially named hills, the tallest of which is 1,000 feet. Not bad, considering we're at sea level. So I may be a Flatlander, but the land I come from is not flat.
Man, you guys are touchy. I said other things in there, too!
In Gainesville, we just had the Mule Camp (nee Corn Tassel) Festival. There was also a Hall County fair, but no one went to that.
You pretty much have everything right. What you missed were the smells. Dust, cotton candy, cinnamon rolls, the Chinese food wagon, grease, and the barns. Do people realize the cow barns smell different than the sheep barns? And the weather. Almost always too hot. Going to be in the high 90's this weekend. And freezing, when the sun went down, during the queen contest. By the way, it isn't The Fair, it is just Fair. As in, "Are you going to fair tonight?"
We have the Tennessee Valley Fair--a regional fair much like yours, I think, with animal shows (no, I haven't participated, even though I was in 4-H), fair rides, arts & crafts shows, music, carnival food, and whatnot.
Then there's a smaller festival in my home county to celebrate Grainger County tomatoes. [If you've ever had one, you know why they deserve their own festival!] This is just regional artists, craftsmen and musicians, good food, a 5K race, and the tomato wars. I haven't been to either the fair or the festival in several years. Your post is making me nostalgic, Carolyn!
And yeah, the smells! They're one of my strongest memories from the fair. Cotton candy, funnel cakes, spicy sausage dogs, hamburgers, and all the different smells from the livestock barns. I'm fine with the smell of beef cattle, sheep, and horses, but pigs and dairy cattle are awful.
Shawna, it sounds like you would fit in just fine here.
There are good photos from Fair on thepinetree.net if you want to feel at home. A lot of goat pictures for some reason.
I'll go find somethnig to do now.
Oh my gosh - I can't believe that I forgot it was fair weekend! How could I possibly forget that?!... We took the kids last year to jump frogs. They talked about it for months, literally, asking when they could go again. We had a good time and they loved it. I'll post some pictures on my blog if anyone wants to take a look and if I can tract them down.
Yeah, the smells. I can smell the delicious aroma of cinnamon rolls that overwhelsm you when you walk into view the exhibits of Tom Sawyer Hall. Okay I'm hungry now and a little nostaglic. LOL!
Great pics, by the way.
“Goin’ to the fair, fair, fair,
Hope to see you there, there, there,
‘Cuz we’re goin’ to the fair, fair, fair…”
That made me laugh. I can't believe you remember that.
I still like fairs. I don't care what anybody says.
Brian, would you prefer the term, lowlands?
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