County Fairs in the 1930s
By Cliff Lowell
Our county fairs were held at the end of August during the week before schools started. My family went just once during the five days of each fair.
I used to go to the school exhibit first to see what the students had won on art and classwork submitted by their teachers. Since school supplies were used to create the entries, students didn’t always get to keep all their prize money. It was used to replenish the materials used.
The open class exhibits of clothing and quilts, fancy stitchery, crafts, foods, garden produce, and farm crops, and a tour of the 4-H building with similar exhibits were always interesting. New farm machinery was displayed. Children liked to sit on the seats of the tractors and self-propelled combines. A walk through the livestock barns followed.
Sometimes my family would buy lunch at a rural church food stand, but we usually packed a lunch featuring fried chicken and ate in our car.
Dad would never stay for evening events, so we watched the afternoon grandstand show. We didn’t buy tickets to sit in the shade in the covered bleachers. Instead, we watched from a fenced area beside it.
I marveled at the musical talents of small bands, the antics of clowns, the abilities of trained animals, the litheness of acrobats and trapeze artists, and the dancing girls in their sparkling, sequined outfits.
After the fair was over I tried to imitate some of the entertainers’ actions. I became very adept at balancing a jar lid containing water on my forehead while I bent over backward to lie on the floor and then get up again. (The real entertainer had used a glass of water.)
I remembered some of the comedians’ jokes. One man told how a rainstorm had come up quickly. He said, “It - got - damp - quick!” My brother liked to tell what another man shared. He asked if we knew how to get Chile when listening to a radio. “Go upstairs on a cold day, put on your BVDs, and open the window.”
As we walked through the midway before going home, we children might get to choose one ride, usually the Ferris wheel or merry-go-round. If we had any money left, we’d try our luck at one of the booths.
I won a little monkey that was placed on the top of the kitchen cupboard by the clock. “That will remind us not to monkey with the clock,” I was told.
One day when the clock was taken down to be rewound, the monkey was knocked to the floor and broken.
This is an excerpt from Clifford E. Lowell’s book, The Early Years. Cliff is a contributing writer for Lincoln 55+ magazine.