Growing up as a fair kid

As do most long-term residents of the Midwest, I can easily feel the sticky heat clinging to my skin when thinking about summer. Growing up in southwest Ohio, there was always a reason to enjoy summer. Despite the suffocating heat and my actual true enjoyment of the school year, summer meant one thing: the county fair. Living less than a mile from the county fairgrounds and having a horse trainer for a father made the concept of "fair life" second nature. Before I was old enough to join 4-H, I still found ways to stay at the fairgrounds from dawn to dusk during fair week. Some nights were spent sitting outside horses' stalls trying to calm them down during a fireworks show or the demolition derby, while others were spent looking for a particular corn dog stand (which was arguably the source of the best corn dog you've ever tasted) in the sea of fried delicacies that filled the west side of the fairgrounds every year. By the time I was old enough to join 4-H, I had already watched countless poultry, cattle, swine and horse shows. My grandfather — a well-known auctioneer in the city of Lebanon, Ohio — would either be in the ring auctioning off the animals at all the sales or sitting on the bleachers waiting to bid himself. You'd think this would make for a great advantage when your first project as a 4-H kid is raising and selling market turkeys and chickens. However, the concept of sending my animals, my turkey mainly, to the mill to become thanksgiving dinner was something I had purposely ignored up until the day of the sale. As a fair kid, it's never easy to give up your livestock the first time around, especially if you form a bond with the animals, as so many of us do. All the 4-H advisors and all the project books say the same thing — you have to connect with the animal to make them successful during showing. I could always tell which animals had been worked with the most compared to the animals that clearly weren't messed with until the week before the fair. Those animals were always the ones that ignored their handler in the show ring and would try to run off or just plop down in the dirt and call it a day. I was always told that by connecting with the animal, you are showing them who's in charge in that show ring. When a 4-Her goes to hook the cane above the breast of their turkey, or the whip lightly taps the side of a hog, the animal should know what to do next. Now, if I'm being completely honest, it's possible that I took the connection element of caring for my animals to an extreme in my first year. My turkey, cleverly named Dora Lee after Dolly Parton's character in the 1980s classic "9 to 5," followed me around like a dog. I would sit outside the turkey barn, dressed in my showman wear (jeans, cowboy boots and a white button-up) with a book in my hands and read to Dora Lee. Dora would stand in the scorching sun, wattle bobbing up and down in the heat before walking over and sitting in my lap. It may sound crazy, as many other 4-Hers continued to remind me that year, but in the end, that turkey did what it was supposed to in the show ring. After every year of fairs taking place during the hottest week of the year, the months of preparation that led up to showing animals and the heartbreak of having to give them up in the end, the week of fried fair food meals, the long days and even longer nights and the constant hustle of people in and out of the gates, I still catch myself missing it this time of year. Stephens is an editorial intern at The Courier.