The Fair - then and now

When I was a kid, going to the Grant County Fair was the highlight of the summer. From my childhood perspective, everyone in town went to the fair to socialize and it was a perpetual party. Our normally quiet and very small town seemed more festive and fun during Fair time.

I was very involved in the fair from an early age, entering sewing projects and participating in 4-H public speaking and cooking competitions. It was fun to earn blue ribbons and all year long as I worked on a project I would evaluate whether it was something I could enter in the fair. I loved to walk around all the exhibits and to see all the proudly displayed projects. I even tolerated looking at the animals, even though they smelled and I wasn't much of an animal lover. And nothing could be as exciting as the carnival rides at the fair. I spent my babysitting money on an all-ride-ticket but could never get myself to go on the Zipper ride.  

I could imagine myself daring to ride the crazy swinging upside down contraption someday in the future, maybe when I would attend the fair with friends as an older teenager, but what I really hoped to do someday was go to the fair with a date.

A lot happened to derail my plans and tarnish my view of fair utopia. We moved away from Washington before I was old enough to go on a date to the fair.  In fact, once we moved from Moses Lake in 1986 I never went to another fair for over 20 years. This fact would have shocked my 12-year-old mind.  Even though there were county and state fairs held every year in our communities, we weren't interested and it wouldn't have been the same. Whereas in Moses Lake the Grant County Fair was the town's claim to fame and the social event of the year, in other places I have lived the county fair is dwarfed by all the other enticing entertainment options and was not well-attended by anyone I knew.

The exception to this would be the community in which we currently live. When we moved to Vancouver 8 years ago I realized that the Clark County Fair was a sort-of-big-deal. 

Many people attended the fair every year in August and the Fairgrounds is a short drive from our home. The first August we lived in Washington I took my four kids to the fair so they could experience my childhood utopia.

So did it live up to my memories?  No, not really. As an adult I saw the fair through different eyes and it wasn't really magical at all. Granted, part of this might be because in Moses Lake the fair really WAS a big deal. I really think it truly was a big deal and that this wasn't just my childhood perception. But, there are (and were) evident down-sides to the Fair that I can see much more clearly now:

1. The fair is incredibly expensive.  Just getting our family through the gates was $40 and every single ridiculous game or food item costs at least $5.  There is a reason that there are ATMs all over the place at the fairgrounds - money flowed through our hands quickly. In fact, the price of an all-ride-pass was about 1/3 the cost of an entire day at Disneyland.  Without buying a pass, the rides were $5-10 each.
2. And these weren't any Disneyland-quality rides.  I can see now that the carnival rides that so delighted me as a youth are rickety, unthrilling, unimpressive, and overpriced.  But, because I remembered how much I loved them as a kid I grit my teeth and shelled out money for them to have a momentary thrill.
3. The fair is kind of dingy and is filled with zillions of people trying to sell their stuff, which is really not all that charming. 
4. It is still fun to look at the animals and they still smell. 
5. It didn't seem like everyone knew each other at the Clark County Fair, which was definitely a disappointment in my eyes.

Was most of this true of the fair of my youth and I just couldn't see it because of my skewed childhood perception?  I don't know.  

After our one foray into fairdom we were content to skip the fair for many years. In recent years the older kids have each used their own money and gone to the fair with friends as teenagers, just as I had hoped to do. And I think they had a pretty good time. But Joseph was only 2 on his only trip to the fair in 2007 so he had no memories of it.

This year he started talking about how all his friends were going to the fair and how much he wanted to go. And I knew that it was time to try again. 

So, we did. Bailey had attended the day before with friends and wasn't impressed enough to return so we took Joseph and Aubrey and Aubrey's friend on a beautiful August evening.

Did my views about the Clark County Fair in the past 7 years? No. I still felt the same. It was expensive and moderately entertaining. But I loved seeing the Fair through the eyes of Joseph, who was entranced by the experience, much as I was at his age.  He enjoyed the animals,

liked looking at the displays of photography and art, wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel with me

 and really wanted to play a carnival game and win a stuffed animal.

Dan and I both knew what Joseph did not. The carnival games are set up to take our money with very little chance of reward. But our greater insight did not dim his enthusiasm in the least. So
Dan used his superior knowledge of carnival games to choose one with the best chance of success and he and Joseph both tried to shoot water at a target to pop a balloon and win a prize.

Dan was successful in being the first to pop the balloon!  Miracle of all miracles. He let Joseph pick the stuffed animal. Joseph was over the moon thrilled to choose a new friend, Stampy the Wolf,

 and he was so proud of his new friend and kept Stampy close by his side for the rest of the day.

We all ate delicious homemade ice cream shakes and then Aubrey and her friend Laura spent a few hours going on the rides 

while Joseph, Dan and I peeked at the monster truck show and watched a few minutes of the hypnotist. We also enjoyed the main exhibit about the history of toys.

I felt pretty nostalgic when I saw the classic toys from the 70s and 80s.

We had every one of those games in the display, other than an Atari.  We weren't quite that cool.  We also found some classic arcade games such as Pacman, which cost the retro price of a quarter to play,

and I demonstrated for Joseph and Dan how truly amazing I am at playing Pacman. My skills have slipped a bit in the last 30 years, but I still was able to get to level 4. Yes, I know, pretty awesome.

We ended the day tired, dusty, poorer, but satisfied. The County Fair may not live up to my rosy childhood nostalgia, but it was fun to experience it again through the eyes of our children.