If you’ve got any country in you at all, you’ll agree that there’s nothing like the magic, the excitement, the rush and the heartbreak of the county fair. It may be upstate New York, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, western Kansas, central Wisconsin, the Texas Panhandle or southwest Idaho’s high desert country, but if it’s country at all, come late summer and early fall, it’s all about the county fair.
When I was a kid, the main focus of my summers, if not my entire life, was preparation for the fair. And I don’t just mean the actual physical work and planning that was required to show livestock or exhibit any project at the fair; I’m referring to a unique state of mind and ethos that influenced nearly everything I did. For better or worse, that angst and obsession not only carried on into my adult life, but it also probably became more intense as I raised my kids and instilled in them that very same passion, if not enthusiasm, for that greatest of all rural spectacles.
From the time we’d pick out steers for the next year’s fair at weaning time to the planned matings at breeding time, I couldn’t fully extricate myself from the foolish race for the elusive purple banner. We were usually relatively competitive in the show ring with our homegrown ranch calves. We’d quite often win a class or a division here and there, but as time wore on and the show industry separated itself more and more from the real, practical, efficient “using kind” of cattle, the gap between my dream of winning a grand championship with one of our own calves and reality widened annually.
Because the prize of that ultimate goal would apparently eternally elude me, so too I thought would the ultimate joy of the youth livestock show world forever remain out of my grasp. I had neither the time, resources, wherewithal nor inclination to effectively chase that fantasy to the end of the rainbow. And how selfish was it of me to force my dreams, unwittingly or not, onto my children? The answer: very. Like many a jilted teenage boyfriend at the losing end of a weeklong county fair romance, I’ve come to realize that a crush is, in large part, the absence of information and common sense.
As the sand steadily and invariably slips to the bottom of the hourglass, I seem to eventually learn – or at least be taught – with each of life’s lessons that time coupled with experience lends itself to wisdom, or at least a higher level of comprehension. I’m a firm believer that if you choose to compete, you should also do your level best in whatever field of competition you’ve entered. As a coach and sports junkie, I think that means you prepare and compete to win, no matter what the odds. That definition, however, doesn’t directly translate at a youth livestock show, and especially not one at a county fair.
Over the years, I’ve judged hundreds of classes at county fair livestock shows. One of my overarching messages to the kids who compete and to their parents, who so often misinterpret the whole fair experience and consequently misinform the succeeding generation, is that it’s impossible to win an opinion contest. And frankly, that’s all a livestock show evaluated by a single person is. The placings, from top to bottom, are dependent wholly upon the opinion of that one person at that particular time. Doesn’t it seem, then, to be the height of foolishness to hitch the wagon of your happiness to such a faulty star? It’s perhaps even more foolish to hitch the direction of the entire meat animal industry to such a temporary flashing meteorite, no matter how brightly it may blaze across the sky for a few fleeting seconds. But that’s an argument for another day.
At the risk of diluting the depth of the message by reducing it to one simple trite statement, the message I’m trumpeting here is that genuine joy can only really be found in the journey. Nowhere can this statement be proven more true than in a youth livestock program at a county fair. Winning the purple is a spectacular achievement and a noteworthy accomplishment, for sure. And it’s an accomplishment that deserves its proper accolades in its proper place. However, don’t mistake the former sentiment for an empty platitude. To place a greater emphasis on the destination than is placed on the journey as a whole, especially in the context of a county fair, is to simply and unfortunately gild the lily.
