Rockin' with the '50s: Citrus Fair 2011

Every October, when the leaves turn on Mt. Pleasant, the Fairfield County Fair, last in Ohio’s long season of fairs, spreads around the racetrack at the foot of the mountain. If you’ve seen My Friend Flicka, you know that racetrack, where Flicka proves her young owner right: she’s a winner. And you know that mountain, which, thanks to the cinematographer’s skills, never quite reveals itself as the only mountain for miles. In the West, it might be called a butte, and a small one at that. 

County schools close for three days. 4H-ers load the animals they've raised--calves, hogs, sheep, fancy chickens with iridescent feathers and show-worthy struts--into farm trucks and take up residence in the fairground barns, sleeping on the hay outside the pens. They're banking on a blue ribbon and a livestock sale for college funds. Town kids put up their projects in the display barn--maybe Girl's Room, a sewing project, with curtains and ruffled bedspread, paint swatches, and plans, or Woodworking, a footstool for mother or a tool box for dad, or the other way around.

Ride concessions rise up, great wheels and shafts of light, like a field of metal dinosaurs. Carnies set out the ring toss and shooting gallery, the cotton candy stand, plug in the Belgian waffle makers and the etching needles for the silver charms and ID bracelets they’ll engrave with initials or names.

In the 1950s, we go all three days, hang out in the barns, dizzy ourselves on the Ferris wheel, check out the art displays and our mothers’ entries in the food barn—my mother’s catsup, black with spices; pickles, dill, sweet, end-of-the-garden. Punkin pies. 

The marching bands of all twelve county schools meet for practice on the grassy infield of the race track, working out the formations for the big show on the fair’s last day. Our purple-and-white uniforms weave among the moving mass band in patterns with the school colors of our opponents in basketball. We know our Sousa fight songs. Now we have to coordinate our steps.

Every February, when the trees in Cloverdale are heavy with oranges and lemons, it’s the county fair all over again. Quilts hang from the rafters of the art building. The quilter who wins this year's first prize (and a Special Award), took three years to construct the bed of flowers, each within its own square, then quilted into unity with the stitching patterns that join it.

A girl clown wanders the grounds with an animated “cobra” in a wheelbarrow, warning passers-by not to come too close. The Senior Center offers coffee, popcorn, homemade snicker doodles and double-chocolate brownies.

A rack of bibs targets the stylin' baby.

Spring flowers in the garden patches in the great hall sport tossed-down, old-style bikes, primroses blooming between the spokes.

I teeter somewhere between high school and old age as I check out the citrus exhibits. This year's theme, "Rockin' with the 50s," reflects much more rocking than I remember in Fairfield County, Ohio. Elvis's blue suede shoes rest at the foot of a piano made of oranges. Mel's citrus-built drive-in wins first prize. The Kiwanis musical setting cames in second.

On the carnival grounds, camel rides with rabbit, giraffe with full-maned prancing horse.

The swinging, swirling, fast-track rides spin and twirl and tilt and stop to load up again all afternoon, the  "big" rides, for the brave with stomachs of steel.

At night, the two fairs could be one, if I ignore the time lapse. Merry-go-round music, hot dogs, the constant ringing win when a ball falls into a cup or a duck falls over at the shooting gallery. A sign at the cake contest that reads “Please don’t eat the entries,” just like at home. Barkers and shills. Lights. A hall of mirrors. Illusion for sale

In our small school in dairy country, we square dance on the gym floor or pile in the back of a farm wagon for a hayride. My rock experience in the mid 50s confined itself to skipping stones on farm ponds. Not until 1955, at Radio City Music Hall on our senior class trip, where we saw Bill Haley and the Comets in Rock Around the Clock, first run, did our rocking begin. 


I march a few Sousa steps between memory and the dazzling lights of the night as I make my way home

Ah, but they didn't have these in 1955...

Photograph by Luna Zeffer

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