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Show I THE BULLETIN THE OLD-TIM- COUNTY FAIR E c i III By ELMO SCOTT WATSON T WON'T h. Inns nnuf I until some of us will H I be enjoying one of 1. - wuiuai cvcuui I tuuin Thwi, alter several years in AlLany, he suddenly put adven ture behind him by moving to I 1 which as are dis- tinctively American as baseball or playing celebrating the Fourth of July or observing Thanksgiving day. No, we don't mean i going to the circus or attending a Sunday school picnic or "getting ready for the first day of school" or even taking part in the of the Presidential campaign which comes to its climax on November 3. We mean going to the county whoop-and-hur-r- ah fairl For the last week in August and the first two or three weeks In September is county fair time and somewhere in a county seat .town or some other trading center of rural America this 'great American festival is in full swing. There are not so many of them as there once were. Back in 1927 it was estimated that nearly 3,000 . district, state and county fairs were held .on the ' Jllf ELKANAII WATSON, "FATHER OF THE COUNTY FAIR" make you drunk'." And then as continent of' North America!' jThat probably represented the' ' you stroll along you find yourself in the hog barns where that peak In numbers. Then along came the depression and the i "litter of sucking pigs seems very interesting. Come, let's county fair, along with other have a look. . . . And as 'American institutions, felt the of the you lean on the d pinch of hard times. pen and look down at them, you business men could no can picture in your mind, withlonger continue to "go in the out much effort, ham, and red" to support them. So in and bacon, and spare-ribhundreds of communities school and smoked shoulder, and headchildren (to whom "county fair cheese, and and time" was one of the high spots sausages, and glistening white of the year) looked in the home lard for crullers and piecrust-Y- es, town newspaper for the anI think pigs are right innouncement of the dates of the teresting." nearest county fair and they After you've done such things looked In vain. What they found at this old-ticounty fair (if Instead was an announcement you're lucky enough to find that "the annual county fair at Jonesville will not be held this year" and that temporary suspension became a permanent one. Along with the reduction in the number of these annual events has come a change in their character. Like so many other American institutions it has "gone modern" in more ways than one. "Gasoline combustion engines have so radically changed the picture of the county top-ra- il Public-spirite- side-mea- t, s, liver-wurs- t, fair that have difficulty in reconciling themselves to the great agricultural shows of the motor age," says observer. "Instead of a fair ground at every hamlet, our county fairs have become centralized, thanks in large part to motor cars. Hitching rings and posts have disappeared from the neighborhood. In place of- long lines of box wagons and car riages are serried ranks of motor cars. "The radius of attraction or 'drawing territory' is no longer limited to ten or fifteen-mil- e 'drives.' A hundred miles in all directions is now covered by a county fair's advertising. Patrons come by automobile or airplane in thousands and stay for the night show before they start home again. The modern fair is made by electricity and gas- old-time- rs - ' " wl ' t Sf will make you drunk' " powered machinery . . . Thanks to human and metal machinery. It is the acme of variety and efficiency." Despite the swift modernization of this American institution in recent years, It Is still possible in many parts of the country to find the county fair as it was described thirty years ago by Eugene Wood in his "Back Home" sketches in the old McClure's magazine and illustrated by A. B. Frost (some of whose sketches are reproduced in this article). There you can join a group of "good judges of hossflesh" as they "hang over the rail beside the racetrack and yell: 'Go it! Go itl Go it! ye devil, you!' with your throat all clenched that way and your face as red as a time-honor- ed turkey-gobbler's-." Or you may find yourself "kind of half listening to the man selling Temperance bitters, and denouncing the other bitters because they have in lliem and will "Go It! Ye devil, yon!" one!), "there are two things you simply have to do or you aren't right sure, you've been." So says Eugene Wood, who continues: "One is to drink a glass of sweet cider just from the press (which, I may say in passd ing, is an luxury. Cider has to be just the least bit 'frisky' to be good. I don't mean hard, but 'frisky. You know) and the other is to buy a whip, if it is only the little, kind. On the toy fifteen-cenext soap box to the old fellow that comes every year to sell pictorial Bibles and red, albums, the old fellow in the green slippers that talks as if he were just ready to drop off to sleep on the next soap box to him is the man that sells the whips. You can buy one for a dollar, two for a dollar, or four for a dollar, but not one for fifty cents, or one for a quarter. Don't ask me why, for I don't know. I am just stating the facts. It can't be done for I've seen it tried and if you keep up the attempt too long, the whipman will lose all patience with your unreasonableness, and tell you to go 'long about your business if you've got any, and not bother the life and soul out of him, because he won't sell anything but a dollar's worth of whips, and that's all there is about it!" So says the "Back Home" writer, but in these modern days of the automobile, with fewer whips being used than in the days when the horse was king, maybe he'd be glad to sell you a whip for a quarter! If you find the whip-ma- n there, ask him and see if he would! over-rate- nt plush-cover- ed When you go to the county fair this fall, you might give a thought to Elkanah Watson who was its "father" and whose persistence in promoting his idea more than a hundred years ago resulted in this American institution becoming so firmly established that it survives, even though its form is somewhat modified, to this modern day. Incidentally, this institution, which had a particular appeal to rural America, was founded by a city man. But he was a man who, tired of city life, retired to the country at the age of fifty years to enjoy "rural felicity" and, failing to find it, conceived the idea which resulted in the county fair as we now know it The first fairs of any sort held in this country were those sponsored by Dutch governors when New York was New Amsterdam, but they were modeled on the European plan. In 1641 Governor Kieft established two fairs in New Amsterdam, one on October 15 "for cattle generally," and the other on November 1 for hogs. In 1648 there was also held in the Dutch colony, late in August and at the beginning of September, a Dutch "kermess" which was strictly commercial, where the burghers met to exchange commodities. The custom was continued even under English rule and as late as 1676 had the sanction of Gov. Edmund Andres. But the county fair of today is not a lineal descendant of the Dutch "kermess," although it may resemble it in some of its features. It grew out of the interest in agriculture which began to manifest itself early in the history of the new nation. The leaders of that time, such men as Washington and Jefferson, were farmers and farming was the most important business in the country. Between 1785 and 1792 agricultural societies sprang into being in Pennsylvania, Maine, New York, Massachusetts and South Carolina as evidence of the organized interest in agriculture. These societies began offering prizes for superior farm products but they held no fairs or exhibitions and really did but little to stimulate better farm production. The principal interest seems to have been in live stock and in 1804 and 1805 three live stock exhibitions were held in Washington. At the second one members of congress began to take an interest and subscribed half of the $100 fund which was raised and distributed as prizes for "the best lamb, sheep, steer, milch cow, jack, oxen and horses actually sold." In 1809 the Columbian Agricultural society was organized in Washington and held an exhibition in the city of Georgetown nearby. But this was not the. sort of thing a firm near Pittsfield. tut the country life experi ment came too late, his habits, as he said, being settled for city life. "To fill up the void in an active mind led me first to con ceive ths idea of an agricultural society on a pTan. different from all others. "In the fall of 1807 I procured the first pair of merino sheep that had appeared in Berkshire, if not in the state. I was in duced to notify an exhibition of there two sheep under the great elm in the public square in Pitts- field on a certain day. Many farmers and even females were excited by curiosity to attend this first novel and humble ex hibition. It was by this lucky accident I reasoned thus: 'If two animals are capable of ex citing so much attention, what would be the effect of a larger scale, with larger animals?' But Elkanah Watson soon dis covered that it wasn't as easy as all that. The farmers would come to see, but feared to ex hibit lest they be laughed at. Finally, after three years, he got 26 of them to sign an "appeal" for a cattle show. "The ice," according to the Pittsfield Sun next day, "was now broke all squeamish buried." The show feelings came off. An agricultural society was formed, with Watson as presi dent, and next year he began o 0 "Hornets and Bullets By FLOYD GIBBONS boys and girls, and make room for a new CROWD over there, Adventurer in this club of ours. He is Ralph Gewehr of South Orange, N. J. I've got to admit, right at the start, that Ralph's yarn is a stinger., It' happened to him in August, 1934, up in the Adirondacks, when; Ralph and. his pal, Billy, started out with a couple of .22 calibre rifles1 to hunt eagles. Well, sir, that's a good enough start for any adventure. An eagle is a pretty tough proposition, and a JtZ calibre rifle Is a pretty small piece of hardware to try to handle one with. If they'd found any eagles on that little hunting trip of theirs, they'd have bad plenty of adventure. And I guess if they hadn't run across anything more dangerous than a cottontail rabbit they'd have had an adventure, too. Those lads were slated for trouble. Their numbers were especially Ralph's. Anything they did that day would have been' wrong, and when Billy took a pot shot at the only game in sight,1 he started something worse than a whole flock of eagles and a couple " of buzzards thrown in for good measure. Boys Find Hornet's Nest Is Dangerous Target. With their rifles in their arms, Ralph and Billy headed up the trail on foot. They trudged up to the top of Blue Ledge, a distance of tea miles from the summer camp of Ralph's folks at North river. The boys planned to spend the night in the mountains, like real hunters, and ' look for adventure. They were too tired to go after eagles by the time they arrived, but hornets were another thing. Now a hornet is pretty far from an eagle, but a hornet's nest ' makes a nice targetif you don't care what you shoot at and Billy didn't care. He let fly at that hornet's nest and hit it smack In the center and then adventure began in earnest. Ralph says those hornets came out of that nest like a cloud of bussing smoke. lie thinks all the hornets In the world must have been In It from the way they went for him. He took one look at the flying circus and then hit the trail as fast as he could go. But it wasn't fast enough. They dove at him In mass formation and kept right on his tail. . He got a glimpse of Billy tearing through the woods with a million or so of the enemy on his shoulders and the next second tripped and fell. up; - . "Pigs are right interesting." the fair with a parade and closed with a "pastoral ball. There were prizes to the amount of $70. ay tne next year the pre miums had risen to (208, and Watson, having made the fair popular, now proceeded to seal it with respectability. He had conceived the shrewd notion of enlisting the clergy and women. Jaut neither clergymen nor women were obtained without a struggle. In 1811 no clergyman could be found to officiate for fear of being ridiculous. ' The women were still more coy, Though they sent in exhibits of weaving and sewing, no woman appeared to receive "the seven valuable premiums of silver- plate" to be awarded. "This was the crisis," wrote Watson "and I was extremely agitated lest the experiment should fail. Native timidity and the fear of ridicule restrained them (the women). To break down this feeling we resorted to a maneuver which in an hour accomplished our wishes. I left Bang! Went a Shot Right in Ralph's Ear. Bang! went a shot right in his ear. He thought it was Billy's rifle for moment because his had fallen out of his hand. Then he felt a stinging sensation in his side. That must have been a big hornet, he thought, from the way it felt. Ralph Is Shot by His Own Rifle. The hornets were stinging him everywhere, but none of them hurt as much as the one in his side. Hi nut hi hand h. Laway covered with blood! Ralph was shot! His own rifle had exploded vu uA.iaiig uic gruuiMi tuiu uie DUIiei IX1USI De in HIS DOdVl . .. " uorncis were iorgonen in tne lace of this discovery. The situation was deadly serious. Here was a boy shot in the side and he was ten miles from civilisation. Besides, both boys were already tired from their long walk. And, to make matters worse, the only doctor was eight miles more beyond Ralph's cabin. They could make that last eight miles in his mother's ear, but how would Ralph ever survive the walk? Ralph says their Boy Scout training came immediately to mind. The thinS tO do in Case of a midden ahrwk thaw wMu,m11A i &. nm. k..;u m heat, externally,- - internallv and .ternailv . w UCalCU uc, j the coffee,uiuii some water and made coffee. Ralph drank which heated him . nen mm in tne blankets for the external Mireiuuujr oiuy wrappea heating. The boys washed the wound with hot water, bound it uo as Well as they COUld with their hanHk.rxlif.fW -- J un il. ,lon ' trek back home. Wounded Lad Makes Heroic Trek. Did -VOU Ver trv tn walk tan 1 mila. niuj .:k a- U..11-...ukb uuuei ... .in , your .Bluer. Ralnh . t vmi nnt tn" . advises l w uic menial tenure 01 not "'uu ,7 knowing how badly he was wounded, Ralph suffered intensely ... T . . from tne neat. It nraa ...... iujii cum ViT tne wiuioui Dlankets ciiuugn and the coffee, and he had to trudge along bundled up like an Indian papoose. That walk, Ralph says, wss a nightmare. He figures he must have lost at least ten pounds and laid the foundations for a headful of gray hair. But he kept on going, even If he did think that each step would be his last. Finally they got back to the eamp where Ralph's dad had a car. . . i It was lata at niirht urh.n fh. knm (Snail. office after a ride that shook the daylights out, of Ralph. The doctor looked at the wound and ordered him to the hospital Then began another ride that Ralph will remember all his life. It was forty iniles. but Billy drove it almost as fast as those hornets could fly. State Troopers Ask the Boys Searching Questions At the hnsnital another " - ur 7 aiaie . . called DV the. drvtnr am thav alumna w :111 uiem. cases 01 eunsnoi. nova i and nn.ctinnBd woundsmet the p.i.l to think that he and Billy had been shooting at each other or holdin But somebody up. they cleared themselves of that suspicion and Ralph went on the operating table. An operation is an aaventure in itself, but Ralph's was one with a happy ending. The bullet which, fortunately, was not a' high powered one had entered his side, and, striking a rib, had off and missed the vital glanced organs. The doctors, after an y had been taken, picked the slug out of his shoulder and when Ralph woke np there was his mother, more seared than he was. Billy had found her and told her "Ralph had been shot." . v- Ralnh was nut of- the hnsnital .nJ uic jr tn- -a four Ha. wuuna neaiea iuu up in a few weeks, but. he says, he hasn't been eagle hunting since. j WW 4 A a- u-- - ... ut mid-AiiHii- lJi ... 10-Mi- le ... 1 A COUNTY FAIR IN THE "GOOD OLD DAYS" From a Drawing by A. B. Frost that appealed to the average farmer of the day for it was more or less a society event and, as some one has said, "Its attendance list reads more like the social register, headed by the President of the United States and his lady and the cabinet members." It remained for Elkanah Watson to originate a fair in which the commdh farmer would be interested because he could feel that he had a real part in it. Watson was a Yankee, born in 1758 "within rifleshot of Plymouth Rock." His shrewdness was enlivened by early travel and adventure. At twenty-on- e he was entertained by Benjamin Franklin in Paris, and later at The Hague by John Adams. He made a tour of Europe and traveled in Eastern America, setting down his experiences in one of the most important memoirs of the time. natural 00 the hall, and with no small difficulty prevailed on my good wife to accompany me to the house of exhibition. I then disto the patched messengers ladies of the village, announcing that she awaited them at the Cloth show. They poured out, the farmers' wives and daughters, who were secretly watching, and the hall was speedily filled. This was one of the most grateful moments of my life." For twelve years Watson labored endlessly to "put his idea across." By 1819, with the aid of Governor Clinton of New York, he had induced the legislature of that state to pass an annual appropriation of $10,000 to aid the new societies. From that time on the idea spread rapidly and, the county fair became an established America institution. -- C Wtiirrn Nvwiiaprr Vn'.ut o 0 tkn X-ra- -- -- Darwin's Early Life Darwin's father was a physician and wished him to adopt that profession. At the sge of 16 he entered the University of Edinburgh. but disliked medicine, and later entered Christ's college, Cambridge, to prepare for the ministry. There he became acquainted with Henslow, the professor of botany, who did much to shape his career. The proficiency that Darwin displayed in every department of nat ural science won him such distinction that he at last obtained his father's consent that he should not enter tho clr.irch. --- 1 Comets Return to Sun Most comets return to the sun after a period of years. Biela's comet, on its return in 1846, slit into two parts, and on its next visit came back as twins two comets were traveling in almost the same orbit formerly occupied bne on the same time -' schedule. There are several records of such multiple comets. The converse of this phenomenon is even more common. They break up. What causes this is unkrtewn. Disintegration probably is caused by the same forces that cause fhem to split. o |