Puyallup Fair and Balanced

The Puyallup Fair began on Friday (September 10) and will end on Sunday, September 26. I hope this is not the first you have heard of it. It is among our nation’s largest annual fairs, after all, and seems to be the excuse for a host of workday absences every autumn.

I have never been to the Puyallup Fair, though I am not avoiding it. I grew up on a small farm in Minnesota, and went to the Carver County Fair every year of my childhood. I once handled public relations duties at an ostrich farmers association booth at the Minnesota State Fair. I ate fried cheese curds and corndogs. I rode the ferris wheel and strolled the livestock barns. I went to see my friends at their 4-H shows (there was no category for ostriches in 4-H at that time, to the best of my knowledge).

One very memorable year, my family entered the county fair talent show. We dressed up like the Von Trapp family from The Sound of Music, then sang and danced “So Long, Farewell.” It was horrid, horrid. I was in my early teens – a miserable, mush-mouthed bookworm crammed into awkwardly revealing European shorts and high socks. I swore I would never set foot on the fairgrounds again. We did not even win a prize.

Of course, I went back the next year, because the notion of regional fairs is built standard into every midwestern man or woman. Some accept it. Others struggle against it their whole lives and die with a hollow in their chest where a fond fair memory should have been. Where else can you unabashedly enjoy polka music?

As I grew older and drifted toward the coast, the Fair occupied a smaller and smaller part of my consciousness. After all, there is nothing I do in my current life which could sensibly be compared to the abilities and products of others by a plaid-suited judge. I no longer make quilts, milk goats or grow beans. And even if I did, something about the social construction of urban society alters the context. The concept of competing forms of vegetable perfection or knitting precision seems absurd or unnecessary.

Perhaps that is a good reason to go to the Puyallup Fair. For those of us who spend every day immersed in less-than-rural culture, the Fair can provide a comfortable and convenient intersection with a different life. Perhaps it might be a bit commercial – yes, I’m aware Bret Michaels, Hall and Oates, Kid Rock and Adam Lambert will be performing. This is no backwater grandstand. But someone will still be there analyzing cows. Even so, it may seem garish to some – but such is the spirit of Fair! A Fair by is by definition and purpose both impractical and extravagant.

Maybe I will take the time off work to go to The Puyallup Fair this year. A fair is a fair.