The Fall Fair.
The smell of candy apples, popcorn and cotton candy are immediate and conjure up images of ferris wheels, the funhouse and the tilt-a-whirl.
Yes, it’s time for the fall fair, whether Coldwater (this weekend), Elmvale (Thanksgiving weekend) and, at one time, Midland. CNE or PNE, they all mean exhibitions.
Kids love a fair, and when I was young, entering a prize collection of something actually meant something to us. It didn’t matter if you came away with the blue, red or white ribbon, but you sure as heck hoped to place. Such were the old days of the 1960s.
Fall fairs were an integral part of a farming community and the changing seasons, with their stock barns filled with lambs and little pink piglets, calves and chickens clucking about in every variety.
The real fun as kids was of course, the midway, with its crazy rides and games galore. Remember the little cranes you wound wildly as the bucket skated across silver dollars and other coins, while you tried to pick it up, swing it and dump it in the hole? You won just enough to keep you at it until your quarters had all been vacuumed out of your pockets.
The ever-present clicking sound from the wheels of chance spinning and tapping out the risk equation….all weighted in the houses favour as we later learned.
The sights, the sounds, the feeling of fall, are all still with us as we grow older and watch it all repeated again for our children.
Who can resist a parade? Who can resist the Fall Fair? It is a right of passage to attend Friday evening's demolition derby at the Coldwater Fair.
René Hackstetter September 23,2022.
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