It’s hard not to be happy about the world and our community when you walk through the Southwest Washington Fair.
This week, I had the chance to spend some time at the fair, and I came away energized and optimistic.
I strolled through the barns and was just delighted to see the kids with their cows and goats, pigs and chickens, rabbits and horses.
I watched as these industrious kids scrubbed and scooped, smiled and snoozed, brushed and bridled, laughed and lounged, cuddled and cradled. I saw in their proud care for their animals and delight in their fellow livestock owners the mix of hard work, practicality and sociability that hearkens to Lewis County days of old.
These kids might be dwarfed by their cattle or their hogs, yet they are fully in control. They have competence and accomplishments that already give them an air of adulthood. They’ll sell their animals at the livestock auction for maybe $10 a pound and pocket a few thousand dollars. They’ll feed someone and earn money through their honest work. There is good even in the tinge of sadness they’re likely to feel as they know that their animal’s life is ending in the way that farm animals always have. More modern and squeamish sensibilities might squirm at that, but not these youngsters. Lewis County still produces farm kids, thank the Lord.
The fair is a chance to connect with my own kids as well, via the carnival rides. My kids are still young enough (barely) to really want their dad to ride with them, and I’m still young enough (barely) to be foolish and hardy enough to say yes. At least for a couple go-arounds.
Time takes on new meaning at the fair.
I happened to meet up with an old acquaintance, one I’ve known for decades but haven’t ever really talked with. We ended up walking the Midway and talking about kids, jobs and where life has taken us. We talked for what could have been half an hour or an hour and a half. It’s hard to tell when you’re on Fair Time.
Likewise, when you run into someone alongside the Saloon Stage, with nowhere else you really need to be, there’s the freedom to just park yourself and chat. As I did that with a friend, another came by to thank me for something sweet that one of my kids did for one of hers. It was a simple moment, but the thick tapestry of our rich community life is made up of a thousand little times of connection like this.
The fair brings together the lives of both old and young. On stage to open the fair were stalwart volunteers Jerry Owens and Lee Coumbs, who together have well over a century of service bringing the fair to life.
The timelessness of the fair also showed up at the evening’s caping of the new Little Miss Friendly. Owens was able to introduce two young women who have taken over leadership of this fun program.
The good times go on as new generations take up the mantle of servant-leadership. This is why we can have nice things!
Whatever the ups and downs of the economy, of politics, of social issues and social media, the fair reminds us that we are bigger than all of that.
We still have these old-fashioned events, as some might see them, and we still love them. We have princesses from all over the county (from Onalaska’s Apple Harvest to Morton’s Logger’s Jubilee) who show up in their tiaras and sashes — little girls and young women who carry the love of their communities, emboldened to dream and anointed to carry the hopes of their elders and peers. These smiling youngsters give out waves and stickers. They carry legacies of timber fallers and apple trees planted generations ago to feed these kids to come.
At the fair, we catch sight of old friends and, outside the urgency of the daily rush, we have the chance to truly see each other. Through a relentless flowing of years, the fair is a rock in the current that comes round again and again. You can never stand in the same river twice, the old saying goes, but the endless one-way current of time seems to take a circular detour when it comes to the fair.
There’s a whole lot of life in this old fairgrounds. It’s old-fashioned and yet formational for the future. It’ll be here, I hope, more or less unchanged, long after I’m gone.
I’m grateful to step onto the Midway and out of time once again.
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When he’s not at the fair, Brian Mittge can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
