Fair Days Revisited

By Chris La Tray, 8-13-08

	Caption: Mmmm . . . tater pig. . . .

In my youth, the Western Montana Fair was the pinnacle of the summer. I was a 4-H kid (I even remember the pledge, for crissakes!), and my sisters and I always had projects to enter; mostly animals, but some other stuff too. I did okay with a couple cooking entries, was mediocre when I tried my hand at photography, got reserve champion one year with my dog obedience entry (an Irish Setter named Mandy) and failed miserably with veterinary science. I always had a pig to sell, had a sheep one year, and a steer another. In those days kids could enter more than one animal, so we always had quite the menagerie in our little barnyard at home.

The fair was more than the culmination of a season of 4-H activities, it was the social event of the year. There were friends from other clubs around the area that we only saw for these few days in late summer. My folks would park a camper in the camping area – the upper NW corner of the fairgrounds – and my sister and I (Mitzi, who was closest to me in age, as my oldest sister, Nikki, had moved on by the time I got involved) would live there for the week. My sister had her own pack of friends she ran with, and I had mine: Mark and Gina Cranston, friends I had come up through the 4-H ranks with. Others were part of our little crew that hung out in the pig barn; we’d joke around, hang out with other kids from other clubs, fall in and out of crushes, and basically just have a ball. Our domain was the dust and dirt of the barn areas – from the pig barn to the 4-H Café and beyond to the cinderblock building that housed the restrooms, and sometimes even into the stands to watch the horseracing. Rarely did we venture into the carnival, though the main thoroughfare of food stands and booths that ran between the 4-H building and the commercial building saw our grubby faces from time to time.

Despite how much I hated the last day/night of the fair, and the realization of where our animals, pets by now, were headed, I have nothing but fond memories of my years as a 4-H kid and a participant in what made the fair so awesome. One of my regrets is the moving around we’ve done did not allow me to get my son into 4-H, though who knows if he would have been interested in it. Times are different now.

Which is why I have mostly avoided going to the fair at all over the last decade or so, and why, when I do go, the experience is at best bittersweet.

Julia and I entered the fair Friday night through the gate that faces Russell Street; we were hardly 20 paces in when we started encountering tents peddling obnoxious commercial shit. I passed it all, passed the obnoxious Rock Band booth (Rock the Game. Get the Look. Live the Life.), and finally emerged into a familiar place: the hallowed ground where the Sons of Norway have long been selling their delicious Vikings and Rosettes. I took two, thank you. And of course we had to sample a mouthwatering tater pig from the Rocky Mountainaires booth. From there, we caught the last couple events of the rodeo and enjoyed ourselves immensely.





With greasy fair food in our bellies, we walked through the exhibits in the various buildings, eyeing flower arrangements, photo essays, brownies on plates and vegetables floating in liquid. Familiar sights all, if somewhat sparse from what I remember. It seems to me that, back in the day, these rickety old buildings were bursting with offerings vying for the coveted purple and blue ribbons, but not so much now. Who knows, that could have just been the sensation of things seeming smaller than memory provides, when one “grows up.” The commercial building seemed most down in the heels, but in kind of a quirky, “this is how a fair is supposed to be” kind of way. McGowan Soft Water was there – they have been there as long as I can remember, only they didn’t seem to be giving out the little Indian headbands with their logo emblazoned on them that I remember.

It is an odd collection of vendors in the commercial building, where you have the Pro Choice Montana booth right next to the Right to Lifers, and the pro-gun lobby. Plenty of Jesus-loving folks too, offering us literature and promises for eternal life if we’d just stop and listen. SHEC had a replica of The General Lee, Bo and Luke Duke’s hotrod from The Dukes of Hazzard TV show. What that has to do with Jesus, I don’t know. Upstairs, Julia got a 10 minute Chinese massage; we never had those back in the day either, that I recall.

Moving over to the barnyard, I proceeded to get pretty bummed out. Back in my day we had a separate beef building, separate dairy and sheep buildings, and the beloved pig barn stood off by itself, just at the bottom of the hill that led up to all the campers and trailers. Besides barn-side camping being long abolished, those buildings are all gone, replaced by two hockey arenas. Tearing out all the old barns and putting the ground under ice may make for a better use of space year-round, and also bring something to the city that is pretty cool (no pun intended), but it definitely doesn’t feel like fair space to me anymore. Now, with the indoor arena still resounding to the smack of skates and sticks, the outdoor arena is converted into one large barn for all of the animals to be housed, with few exceptions. And what about the barns to the south, where the poultry had been, and the wash area, and the goat barns? Given over to more obnoxious commercial booths. The only commercial operation on this side of the grounds back when we ran roughshod over the place was the 4-H Café!

I expect the 4-H kids today are having as much fun as we did, why wouldn’t they? It just seems like there are fewer of them, and that the elements of the fair that I loved most – the parts that deal with 4-H and FFA exhibits and animals and all that – are being squeezed into smaller and smaller pockets by commercial peddlers. Maybe this is just an example where in our adulthood we look with dismay at changed versions of things we loved in our youth, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels somehow reduced, less innocent, perhaps.

I don’t know if I’ll go next year. It’s hard to avoid, given that from Tuesday until Sunday the sounds echo in my house like it is all happening right next door, because it practically is. Despite the fun of the early part of the evening, I returned home glum and thoughtful. I missed the old vibe, the old feeling that this week was one big shindig where country folk all came together to kick up their heels a little bit. It could be it is still like that and I was just missing it, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bummed because I forgot to get a big chunk of fry bread. That, and that I didn’t go back for more Vikings.








For more fair pictures and anecdotes, visit La Tray’s almost daily Stumbling the Walk blog!