My Colorado grandkids have traveled to lots of places and had lots of amazing experiences in their short lives. But when they visited Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised and tickled to learn they’d never been to a county fair. I would get to take them to their very first: our wonderful Putnam County Fair, which was in full swing at our dear old fairgrounds. I could watch them experience the fair just as my own kids, including their mama, had done so many years ago.
We chose Thursday for our visit, primarily because the main arena was hosting the horse show rather than an event likely to draw swarms of spectators. Motorcycle races or the demolition derby, for instance.
Crowds were small that afternoon and parking spots easy to come by. When the sun began to go down, so did the humidity. We started our visit at Grandma’s Barnyard, where six-year-old Oliver was so taken with the mechanics of how an old-timey water pump works that he had little interest in anything else, though he did give cursory attention to how to shell and grind dried corn.
Josephine was more interested in petting the animals. A burro and her baby. Ewes and lambs. Cows and calves. Pigs. Ponies. Rabbits. We saw a horse. A mule. A very noisy camel. Ducks and geese and chicken and guineas and one tom turkey.
But Oliver had eyes only for the goats. Not the giant goat—big enough for a little boy to ride—with its head thrust over the top rail of the pen, obnoxiously begging for food. Nope. Oliver squatted down beside the pen, scooped a handful of ground corn from the bowl we’d bought and offered it through the woven-wire fence to the teeny-tiny baby goats staring lovingly up at him. The little goats licked every morsel from his outstretched fingers. He fed them another handful. And another, until—sadly for everyone involved–the bowl was empty.
Then, because it was 6:00 and the midway was open for business, we left the barnyard.
Though I enjoy the lights and sounds and pulsating excitement of a midway, I don’t like to ride rides. Never have. Probably never will. Some rides make me sick. Some rides make me scared. Many rides do both. So I didn’t purchase any tickets or a ride-all-you-want armband, assuring my family I’d rather watch than participate.
The kids began with easy rides—those that do little but go round and round in circles. They and their parents rode the gentlest Ferris wheel. Then it was on to the Orient Express, a mild roller coaster pulled by a fierce dragon. Though my son-in-law had his arms wrapped tight around Oliver, I could see the terror on his sweet face (Oliver’s, not his dad’s) every time he circled passed me. After that, the break-up occurred. Nine-year-old Josephine, just barely tall enough to qualify for the big-kid rides, went one way and Oliver went the other. She rode the Himalaya and Y-Factor and Scat and Scrambler and Starship and Swinger (and maybe some others) over and over and over again.
Oliver didn’t venture beyond the circling elephants and whales and airplanes, except to wander through the Magic Mirror house once, explore the Fire House twice and zip down the Fun Slide too many times to count.
The orange crescent moon was setting in the western sky as the kids finished their cotton candy and snow cones, which I wouldn’t allow in my car because I wasn’t born yesterday, and headed to the parking lot. Jo’s favorite part of the fair—without a doubt, she said—was the Y Factor. The ride Oliver liked most was the airplanes, which didn’t even go up in the air.
But what he loved best had nothing to do with the midway. “My favorite thing of all,” he told me, “was feeding the baby goats.” Mine, too, buddy. Mine, too.
(August 17, 2024)