Country’s in my blood, and fairs are
in my bones. I come from a long line of fair-lovin’ fools. At the time of my
birth my daddy was part owner of the Wilson County Fair, an honor he shared
with my great, great uncle A.W. McCartney, (a.k.a. “Mr. Wilson County Fair” from way back
in the 1920s). They say Uncle Andy lived and breathed that fair… he literally
took his last breath wrapping up one Saturday night. As Daddy told it, it was
the fair’s biggest attendance to date and the man just keeled over dead doing
the final count of the tickets. “Everyone should
die doing what they love…” Daddy would say. “At least the man died happy.”
While the Wilson County fair is our
state’s largest, it’s the DeKalb County fair that I knew best. This one gave me my very first paying gig of selling season passes the week prior to--money that
went right back to the fair the next week in exchange for every gold fish and
stuffed critter my little arms could carry.
They call it the Grandpa Fair of
the South. DeKalb County Fair is Tennessee’s oldest. (This year marks 158).
While Wilson’s is a much larger fair, you’ll find none more charming than the one
that rolls into Alexandria each summer. (They used to have it in October, but
one year it snowed, so that ended that. Now it’s in July.) Once privately run,
in 1994 fair ownership was re-configured and today it’s the residents of
Alexandria (population 973) that make it happen-- one of the sweetest little
hometown efforts you ever did see!
Between puppet shows, squealing
kids and the Little Miss and Mr. competition, it was a busy night for a small town.
We got our fix of corndogs, snow cones and cotton candy and threw enough darts
to win a big red velvet rose. Taking back roads home we reminisced with falling down
store fronts and old church cemeteries all that remained to commemorate the people, places and events that served to shape us into the adults we never thought
we’d become.
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