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Fair Season

As everything else changes, the fair, it seems, mostly stays the same

By Kellyn Brown

I once lived within walking distance of the Flathead County fairgrounds, so I attended its signature attraction a little more often. I still make it to the Northwest Montana Fair and view it as a necessary time capsule that transports visitors back a few decades, at least for a few hours.

Most fairs I’ve attended, in Gallatin, Missoula and Spokane counties, are like that. You enter the gates and everything seems a little older; or you feel a little bit younger. It’s the rides, the lights, and the simplicity of the place. And it’s certainly the various menus, which have long ignored diet trends and focused on flavor, which are old-fashioned and comforting.

Since I attended my first fair, it was an excuse to consume as much fattening food as possible. And while the options have expanded, the method has remained largely the same. Fry everything. While funnel cakes and Oreo cookies are still dipped in grease, more unorthodox options have cropped up at fairs across the country.

Deep-fried Kool-Aid in San Diego, chicken-fried bacon in Dallas, and deep-fried butter just about everywhere, including the fair in my hometown of Spokane.

It’s of little surprise that on occasion fair-goers get queasy on attractions such as the Gravitron, which spins so fast that the centrifugal force pins riders to the pads behind them. It’s a fair favorite, along with the Tilt-A-Whirl, bumper cars and teacup ride, all of which have turned stomachs and elicited screams for decades.

As everything else changes, the fair, it seems, mostly stays the same. It offers blue ribbons to children with the finest livestock, hosts contests for the best pies and features games you rarely see anymore as small amusement parks and arcades become more scarce.

During a summer in high school, I worked at an amusement park on the north side of Spokane. At first, I was relegated to scraping gum off the sidewalk and painting handrails on the stairs, and I hated it. Soon, following a promotion to operating the go-cart track, I approached my job with the zeal of a NASCAR promoter.

On a recent trip home, I asked about this place, aptly named Wonderland. There’s no way it could still be around, not with so many distractions available to today’s teenagers, with on-demand entertainment at their fingertips.

Well, I was wrong. Accompanied by two nephews, we headed north to the arcade of my youth. It had changed a little bit. The second floor of was transformed into a laser tag venue and most of the games now dispense tickets that can be used as currency to buy a variety of stuffed animals and bags of candy. But the go-carts and batting cages are still out back.

In fact, the décor appeared about the same as I left it, with its various shades of yellow and outdated carpet. And the sound was familiar, with the bells and whistles providing a familiar jingle similar to the tunes you rediscover walking through the fair.

But as arcades continue to shutter, fairs thrive. The Iowa State Fair, perhaps the country’s most famous, is underway in Des Moines. It draws attention because of its sheer size (annually attracting more than 1 million visitors) and because it is a required stop for presidential candidates hoping to drum up support for the state’s early primary.

There’s Donald Trump eating a pork chop, Jeb Bush throwing a baseball and Hillary Clinton posing for selfies. These visits inevitably produce awkward photos as modern politicians collide with retail politics. And the scene is as American as apple pie on a stick, which, of course, is served at the fair.