A COUNTY FAIR THAT WAS REALLY BIG!

      It's County Fair time, I guess. The one here in Iowa County is under way for the rest of the week. I should attend a county fair sometime as it has been many many years since I have attended one locally. I guess living in the Des Moines area for s and o many years, I got used to attending the Iowa State Fair. That fair will spoil you, but, still growing up in the Marshall County area, I did have some fond memories at the county fair showing calves through 4-H.

      One county fair I will never forget, though, was not here in Iowa. It was of all places the county fair near Buffalo, New York during the late 1960's. I will never know for sure the exact county, but, the town was Tonawanda, New York, where friends of ours from college days at Drake lived.  One day while visiting them, we attended their local county fair.

       Two things I remember about that county fair was that it had two mid-ways. Yes, two! The population density in the area justified it was my only conclusion. Their average daily attendance was over 100,000. Our state fair averages 100,000 maybe on the week-ends.

     The other thing that we experienced for the first time was attending a horse pull. There were a pair of huge draft horses that had to pull these huge weights on a flat sled. The horses were attached to the sled with a metal ring and when this person dropped the, rather large metal pin in the ring the horses would start pulling when hearing that pin drop.

       The problem on this occasion was that the guy dropping the pin missed the ring and the horses took off at a fast pace and got tangled up in a near-by fence. It took them awhile to get those poor horses untangled. I don't believe they were injured too badly!