Editor’s note: The 144th annual Whiteside County Fair has concluded, Here is a look back at this attraction from one who admits, “I loved that fair!” While reminiscing about Whiteside County Fairs of his youth, Paul Schmidt wrote this essay on April 13, 2014.
When I was young, I always thought that I had a real[ly] neat advantage in life. You see, I lived my formative years just two short blocks from the Whiteside County fair grounds. When not much was happening, you could wander around the grounds and usually find something of interest….First, you started noticing the fair banner bumper stickers on cars (maybe even stuck one on your bicycle fender) and other fair advertising around town….Then, you noticed the increased traffic headed into the area. Then, finally, there was that special period every August, just before school started, when the place really came alive with what it was designed for–the County fair!
Numero uno was the fact that this wonderland was not free. No sirree. You had to pay to play. So the first order of business was to sock away a little fund specifically for the fair. I mean, who could separate you from your money quicker then those colorful carnival folk? Secure a money-making endeavor that paid cold, hard cash. Deliver a paper, do some extra chores around the house, bale some hay, mow a lawn. Be creative, because that corn dog/lemonade combo and a spin or two or three on the Tilt-a-Whirl and Scrambler was going to take some green. Skip that model car kit or a shake from the Dari-Joy and build up the old fair stash. The fair itself even presented some possibilities. There was always somebody looking for set-up help in the days leading up to the opening…. All you had to do was puff yourself up and look half- ass capable, and you had work. You were exactly what they wanted–cheap labor that didn’t complain.
Everything and its a wonderment comes together finally, and it looks like there are a lot of new features this year, maybe even a new ride or two added to the Marvel Shows line up. Some of the old rides were looking like they had definitely seen better days last year. The excitement is building….The idea is to always be bigger and better than last year, even if it is just illusion, or a least be bigger and better than the Milledgeville[, IL,] fair. The evening before the opening day nearly all is ready, and things are given a kind of preliminary run through with an open midway. Because the gate is free on this night, it has the reputation as the time for the more spend thrift fair-goer to get a taste of the action….The real hard core fair junkie has already purchased a season pass. Kids under 12 and parking are always free (as well for those who sneak in.) But late comers have to park out on the streets and walk, or pay at someone’s close-by yard-turned-parking lot.
I’m going to freely admit here that I loved that fair! For me, it was get there early in the day….I don’t leave until around nine or even ten at night, if I pushed it. I’m not sure what the big attraction was, in retrospect, but I just never tired of it. The lights, the smells, the people. I looked at everything in every building at least twice; toured every livestock barn; played (and lost) every carney game (except the ever-popular “cigarette” game, that had an unspoken age limit I had not reached.) “Everybody down, everybody ready, and the color is gaaareen–green, green in the washing machine!” [I avoided] the spin-to-win-a-knife game that I’d had a previous bad experience with–about ten stitches worth. I rode every ride multiple times except the obvious “kiddy” rides; sat on every new tractor and behind the wheel of every new car, although I was a long way from driving; ate every conceivable junk food imaginable.
I will make some exceptions here and say Middleton’s, [with] the aroma of Gene frying onions, [and] a couple others, may be one of my favorites. The salt water taffy place, with the apparatus that mixed the taffy, I would not classify as junk food.
I even went to the harness racing speed show (“Get your ice cold pop!”) or one of the other big grandstand shows: Joey Chitwood Auto Thrill Show; Tommy Cash country music (Johnny’s brother); the guy who sat on a heavy steel plate with dynamite underneath [that] blew him and the plate 30 feet in[to] the air. Imagine doing that at a different county fair every night! A guy…jumped about 50 feet into a little tank of water. Mules…did the same. (I don’t think they had much choice.) Once they even had Doc and Festus from “Gunsmoke” doing their banter!
These were the days before the big demo derbies and the hot rod truck and tractor pulls. They did have a tractor pull (mostly working tractors) in the infield, with a big, stone boat that men loaded, at intervals…for weight, as it moved to a measured stop. The big Minneapolis Molines and Internationals were the favorites. The heavy horse show…was endless good entertainment.
Before I left–maybe after once more on the Ferris wheel–I always made one last stop and bought three foot long hot dogs with the works and headed home: one for me…one for Mom, and one for Dad. I always bought them from the guy who also sold “Pomac,” the champagne soft drink…yuck. Did anyone actually buy any? Maybe [I] even [bought] some Hick’s caramel corn–the best! What a bittersweet feeling to walk through the gates and away into the dark and listen to the sweet sounds of the fair recede. But, hey, there’s the next day and the next.
But as they say all good things must end, and it was always the same, kind of a magic act, “Now you see it, now you don’t.” It [would be] humming and swaying that last night in all its glory, when I reluctantly [had] to leave….When I return[ed] the next morning [it would have] nearly all disappeared and abandoned! The carnival people and midway, of course, are long gone in the night. The implement dealers, farm supply and car dealers, the displays of beauty aids, the Ring the Dinger, and Otto Kerner for Governor headquarters [disappeared]. The miracle of soft water, Wynn’s Friction Proving display, the Wonders of Magnetic Healing tent, the “lightning rods can save your barn” folks, and the 4-H and show animal owners are all either packed up, loaded up, and moved on or in the final process.
Two days are then devoted to picking through the detritus and debris of the aftermath. As if anything valuable [were] left in that wasteland, but we were dreaming still, and we pressed on. It’s like looking for survivors of a flash flood; we left no stone unturned. How about a stack of slightly soiled “Build your own Fallout Shelter” pamphlets? (Got to be good for something.) An antenna gizmo that brings in 20 stations to your T.V…. accidentally got run over by a truck and left behind. It might still work! Always a little alarming would be a few stray nuts, bolts, or cotter keys on the ground and in the grass, where a ride had been set up. [It was] easy to pick these areas out, because they were perimeters relatively untrampled. Here and there were crews raking and gathering the crap and burning.
“Need a job, boys?”
“Yeah, sure, we can make a little coin; put it into our next year’s fair savings account. It’s going to be bigger and better we hear.”
Donations to my 2014 fair fund can be wired to Etrade Bank account #1579037826 or email me if you have a lawn to mow. Thank you.
Added side note of interest: A few years ago I was in Morrison, IL, at fair time. I took a walk one morning past, but not into, the fair grounds….I noticed some goomers, clearly not Whiteside County people, hanging around the gates looking suspicious. They looked like “Men in Black” talking into their collars, but I did not think much about it. When I got back to my parents’ house they were all abuzz. [President Barack] Obama had dropped by the fairgrounds! Damn….I could [have] had a couple of questions for him.