Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa
On County Fairs, Country Living and People-watching
It is county fair season. A time I look forward to every year. This year more than most. Why? Because after a day at a fair, especially watching so many young people attend to and show their animals, it restores my sense of faith in this country’s inherent goodness and potential. I was a city boy who spent some vacations from school with a wonderful family in Quaker Street, an eye-blink of a hamlet just west of Duanesburg on Route 7. Many fond memories. Often when I drive home from Albany I stay on Route 7 just so I can drive through Quaker Street, check out the house I lived in and relive what were among the most formative years of my life. I especially enjoy driving by Gibby’s Diner, still there after all these years, where I had my first, illicit cup of coffee. Such were the devilish transgressions of my early life. I had been led to believe that coffee was for adults only. Not good for you, they said, might stunt your growth.
The family I stayed with had some land, did a bit of farming and also had two Brown Swiss cows, Josephine, the mom, and her daughter, Molly, a frisky little thing whose distaste for rules of any kind made her all the more endearing. My first fair experience was at the Altamont Fair, where we showed both Molly and Josie and did pretty well. I remember having a great time climbing up over the different tractors on display and spending some time in a stall with a newborn calf. Exciting tastes and smells for a city boy. That confirmed what I had already sensed about myself. I know that at some level my indifference to city life must have been disappointing my mother. She loved the city for its vibrancy and cultural opportunities. I was exposed to these things growing up, both by her and the excellent schools I attended. But they have never been as central to my aesthetic leanings and needs as they were to her. Solitude is my solace and nature is my preferred place of worship. I am grateful for the cultural exposures I was fortunate to have experienced. The only place in the city where I ever really felt comfortable was Central Park. It has some delightful nooks and crannies where one can at least pretend to have gotten away from the city’s perpetual hubbub.
Some summers when I happened to be at the farm I would help out with the haying. Having been a bit husky in those days, my job was to stand atop the wagon while the hay was forked up and tamp it down. We used a fork and pulley system to transfer the hay up into the hay mow, where we would shunt it off as far back as possible and then flop down on the hay, awaiting the next load. There is no smell sweeter than freshly-cut hay. A small pond lay just a few steps downhill from the barn. I remember one winter having to take Molly down to the pond for a drink and having a hell of a time sledging a hole in the ice. Other memories include wandering through the woods looking for squirrels or crows to shoot. One way of sharpening one’s future hunting skills. I’ve only hunted once since then, which amounted to sitting on an overturned blue Lowe’s bucket, rifle cradled across my thighs, sitting silently for several hours, only once catching a fleeting glimpse of a fluffy white tail on the move. Nowadays my hunting is limited to birding; the only shooting I do is with my camera or cell phone.
I made my annual visit to the Otsego County Fair and soon will drive down to Walton for the Delaware County Fair, a much bigger affair. Tractor pulls and rides and musical entertainment are fine, but they are not what draw me to any fair. It’s the kids. The animals. The people. Walk down the fairway and you will see cowboy hatted mini skirted girls walking alongside couples arrayed as if they had just walked out of LL Bean. The people-watching is as good as it gets. Anyone thinking we are anything but an extraordinarily diverse bunch needs to get to a fair or two. Of course, there is the food. It is as bad as it gets and as good as it gets. For a number of years I would be a good boy and get a veggie burger and diet Coke for lunch. No longer. Now it’s an Italian sausage roll smothered in peppers and onions and a side of fries. I figure traipsing around for several hours will trim the calorie intake.
So, I will sit for hours on a backless wooden bleacher, hard as a rock, watching kids show their cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and horses.
I will drive home from Morris and Walton to Middlefield over some of the loveliest county roads in America. I will feel very optimistic about our future and the possibility of ridding ourselves of this awful plague of greed and inhumanity that has infected our nation’s health. Time for all of us to call on our better angels.
Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.
