A Fair Fortnight
Monday September 21st was BIG E day, our day at the New England Eastern States Exposition. Though similar in many ways to Sydney's Royal Easter Show, it's different in that the Big E combines the element of an agricultural show (the country coming to the city) with the element of a commercial expo. The Big E runs annually mid September into October, this year Sept 18 thru Oct 4.
We headed off into the morning, north on the interstate from Connecticut towards Springfield, Massachusetts. Springfield itself is not far inside the Mass border, and as such is only a short drive from CT. We arrived a little after 10am and went in and it wasn't long before we were sampling the delights of the place as we all got our drink of choice (mostly coffee) and went in search of Big E fun.
Our first moment of excitement came at the giant slippery slide..Paul & Jack could not resist temptation and grabbed a sack and headed up the stairs beside the slide, and set their sacks down...it wasn't long before they came sliding down, Jack initially ahead with Paul gathering pace. In the interests of true reporting it should be revealed that Jack won.
After that, we headed along Industrial Ave, all of us taking time to poke our noses into whatever stalls took our fancy. It was interesting at one point to see some people in one stall- both customers & staff alike - watching the presidents testimony, which was live on TV at the time.
We continued along, entering the Hampden Avenue part of the fair, still looking through stalls seeing this and that, buying one or two things as we went...
The idea for the Avenue itself came from one of the early administrators for the fair who in 1916 decided that an Avenue of States would give the fair a truly regional flavor.
While there we decided we could really could do with a drink & so without any further ado we headed into the Sam Adams beer garden (coincidentally right opposite the Connecticut house across the street) and ordered a few drinks..we sat under a nice umbrella watching the people go by as we talked.
After a suitable rest we headed further down the Avenue of States. During the duration of the Big E fair a day is allocated to each of the New England states or something of New England significance, and on that day usually that house or place puts on it's best face, outlining the best of it's food and geographical features. It's similar in many ways to the great hall at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney that displays different farming regions.
September 21 was West Springfield day, but it didn't stop the Maine house from turning on a show, lots of people out the front eating a baked potato meal.
Feeling hungry ourselves, we headed down Commonwealth Avenue where the food stalls were...we ended up at small chicken stall that sold spicy chicken strips which were like nothing we'd ever tasted.
We then headed down to the exhibition areas - one thing is for sure, if you like arts & crafts, the Big E is for you!! Jenn went to work looking for the cross stitch stall. Jenn was able to find lots of cross stitch patterns & books at a very reduced rate.
The exhibition hall is like a sort of enlarged home shopping channel, people all hawking wares mostly for personal & general home use.
Of special interest were the chamois sellers, of which there were a few in various halls around the fair. They were great to watch, as they drew a crowd, interested in the chamois and it's ability to absorb large amounts of diet coke (the in thing to demonstrate chamois with we guessed). After that it was off to the Horse and animal display.
One of our favourite moments there was the baby chicken display. One part of the farm hall has a display of baby chicks hatching in an enclosed hatching incubator. A decent sized crowd is always gathered outside watching. As we found, it's very easy to spend considerable time there as you wait for your "favourite" egg to hatch.
The chicks would hatch out of their eggs and stand or lie wonkily till they stood up. Just across from the hatching room is the incubator where the hatched chicks were held. It was amazing the amount of noise 50 or so baby chicks could make as they moved around in there...definitely a real favourite with little kids!
After that it was off to the dinosaur exhibition. Sponsored by the hardware retailer Sears, the exhibit brought out the children in everyone as all types of hand crafted, computer controlled dinosaur models moved around & growled. The complete dino range was there, from the T Rex to the much loved 'raptors.
Other Dinosaurs exhibited included the Triceratops (known as one of the last dinosaurs alive) and the Corythosaurus, complete with nest with eggs and hatchlings!. The piped prehistoric jungle effects really rounded out the display - we ended up going through twice!
After that we headed out to the horse display. One of the real big attractions at the B/E this year was the Budweiser Clydesdale horse team. In their 65th year of existence, they were the first team to carry post-prohibition beer from Budweiser's St Louis brewery way back in 1933.
For the Big E, they had a team consisting of 8 imported Clydesdale horses standing some 17 hands high. They were over a four hour period, "dressed" and readied for their part in the Big E fair parade later in the afternoon.
Because of the lengthy process this took people would come and go out of the pavilion as this went on, but we stayed to watch the stablehands tie up the manes and tails, a process that was a lot more involved than you would think.
As the parade time got closer we went outside to secure a good position. People lined the main avenue of the fairground from one end to the other and, right on 5pm the parade started.
The parade was great, consisting of marching bands, cheerleader groups, old style fire trucks, baton twirlers, and of course the Budweiser Clydesdale horse team, proudly passing by, their heads head high pulling a cart (& some very lucky people).
After that we headed down towards the exits, albeit slowly, it had been a long day!!. On our way out we decided to go into the animal pavilion.
This was where the BIG E & Sydney's Royal Easter show are most similar. We entered this huge hall, virtually a Noah's Ark for animals, a place that held so many animals it looked like they were judged right in their pens!!!
While there we saw a sculpture of a horse & carriage made purely out of butter which was different, cows being milked in a fully working milking facility, some 6-7 cows all lined up giving their daily milk (with more in a line waiting to be milked along the side wall).
Then as we passed further on through we saw other animals that were either being held for later showing or were preparing to leave, having completed their part of the competition.
After all that we were dead beat...we left for the car with our bags of bounty tired but very happy, looking forward to next year!!
The second part of the fair fortnight occurred September 27, our day at the largest Connecticut state fair, the Durham Fair, runs annually the last weekend in September.
Durham is a a small townlet situated some 20 Minutes outside New Haven in what is very agricultural countryside.
The fair is very popular, not only because of it's status as a full blown State fair, but because of it's proximity to the New Haven region. This year the fair expanded in size to include a full concert stage, on which Country singer Loretta Lynne performed on the Friday night, drawing some 15,000 people.
The trip to Durham from home base was only some 10 minutes, unlike the journey the prevouis weekend. We parked very close to the fair and walked down the main street to the entrance, and after paying our $7, went in.
Upon entering the site (which is on a slope downhill) we immediately we were hit with the sights & sounds of the place...stalls everywhere offering food of all kinds, but Paul & Jack were not dissuaded - they headed around to the corn stand.
It must be pointed out here the late summer fall period here means one special thing to corn lovers here...NATIVE CORN!!
The native corn in Connecticut is beeeeutiful, but only in real season for a very short time, starting from late July thru to late September, with the the Durham Fair generally being regarded as the end of the corn season...the corn at the fair may well have been the last of the season, but we can attest to it being pretty well the best.
The corn at the stall was "shucked", & cleaned and cooked all on site in large pots and served piping hot. A little investigation revealed that the helping hands behind the counter had shucked close to 1,000 ears of corn just for the day
We arrived a the stand,paid our $1.50 and recieved our corn (with dash of pepper is to die for BTW) As you can see, a good time was had by all here as we ate...your reporter was to return later for further sampling and analysis of the product.
From there we moved on to check out all the local crafts available. There was such a wide assortment of things for sale, from photos of wild animals to sounds of the ocean tapes to lull you to sleep.
After we had made our buy for the day we went to look at all the things people had entered in the fair to win blue ribbons (first place). We saw a lot of wonderful crafts, cross stitch patterns, quilts, and many flowers, fruits, and vegetables that people had grown. Paul was pretty taken with the large pumpkins that had been entered in the fair.
After that it was time to head down to the show ring, & probably the most exciting part of the show - the horse pull. All through the weekend trials and eliminations were held in the horse pull..
But, I hear you ask, what is the horse pull?
The horse pull is a competition of brute strength (with just a little brawn thrown in.) Some thirty teams of two horse pulls, usually with 2-3 men driving them would endeavour to pull a sled like structure called a "boat" that concrete blocks would be laid onto, over a qualifying distance of 6 feet. *smile* so now you know.
Progressively the competition rounds went on and more concrete blocks would be added. It got to be just as intriguing to watch the horses get hooked up to the load wondering if the horse teams would start pulling before they were hooked up,thus dragging these grown men over several feet.
After a while we thought we'd have a look around through the fairground part of the show, so we left the ring to look around.
Down we walked into sideshow alley, which was interesting - all these game stalls offering a teddy bear or some such article for competitions of skill that were differing but the same - nine times out of ten they all wanted you to shoot at or hit something to win.
While there we played a game or two of skeet ball, which is very simliar to ten pin bowling except that the lane is shorter and the target area is on an angle to the rest of the lane,and the balls are no bigger than say a cricket ball or baseball.
After that it was back to the horse ring to watch the wrap up of the horse pull before heading back up the hill to the arts & crafts tent to purchase those articles we'd spied on earlier in the day. Paul meanwhile took another opportunity to have that last piece of corn for the summer.
While at the arts & crafts tent we purchased a nice wall hanging photo frame set to hang some precoius moments on..
Dog tired, but very satisfied, we all headed back out to the car.
The Fair Fortnight was over....till next year!
