In honor of Fair Week, here's a sneak preview of York Sunday News columnist Gordon Freireich's column, slated for print publication Sept. 7.
"My brother would take one dollar and rush to be one of the first ones inside when the gates opened," a woman reminisced to me recently about the York Fair. She grew up near the fairgrounds and "my mother would take his lunch to him in a paper bag and throw it over the fence to him at noon," she chuckled.
Everyone who grew up in York has his or her personal memories of the York Fair, which runs through this week.
As a very young child, I recall my mother was in the old West Side Hospital and her room overlooked the neighboring York Fair. "Wow. Too bad she couldn't be here during the fair," I remember selfishly thinking to myself. In my child's mind's eye, "I could hop out her window, clear the fence and be on the fairgrounds." Since my mother was in the hospital with a kidney stone attack -- as she told me many years later -- she was not about ready to repeat the episode for my "free fair" fantasy benefit.
When we were old enough, we could walk from our home in the south end of York city all the way to the west end to attend the fair. With anticipation whisking us along, it didn't seem like a very long walk at all, although it was probably about a mile and a half.
Every year my zippered cowboy wallet would be firmly tied with a piece of string to my belt loop. "There are pick-pockets out there," my parents would warn me. Obviously a piece of twine would thwart any Artful Dodger who attempted to deprive me of my "fair money."
"And don't go into the sideshows," was still ringing in my ears as I left the house and went "Westward, Ho."
But who could resist the sideshows? The bearded lady, the two-headed calf (stuffed; a fair-goer rip off), the tallest man, the shortest human, and so on. The food was not the attraction to me then that it is now. However, even though my father owned a candy and ice cream store, I developed at the York Fair -- and still retain -- a passion for a slab of three-flavor ice cream on a freshly made waffle.
We indoctrinated our children into the York Fair when they were young. (Not quite as young as some of the infants we see at the fair these days; it looks as if the parents stopped at the fair on their way home from the hospital delivery room.)
One fair weather evening this coming week, my wife and I will head out to the York Fair. We figure that is equal to the several-mile walk we would take if we stayed home. Of course, rationalizing walking off the chicken barbecue dinner, fresh orange drink, and ice cream waffle is a bit more difficult.
Mike Bowman, a friend and neighbor, gave me a clipping from a Fairfax, Va., newspaper that was sent to him and talked about the York Fair and fairs in Virginia and Maryland.
The author -- obviously suffering from some form of jingoism -- said the York Fair could not lay claim to being the oldest fair in the nation (1765), because the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair was established in 1738.
Sometimes I'm surprised that Plymouth, Mass., doesn't try to one-up York and claim the first Thanksgiving was actually a county fair !
Here's hoping that all your York Fair memories are sweet as ice cream on a waffle.
Gordon Freireich is a former editor of the York Sunday News. E-mail: gordon@newtongroup.com.
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