A Fair Question

by Brendan Smith
Weirs Times Editor

It happens every October, the inevitable question.
“Are you going to the Sandwich Fair?”
I was first asked the question in October of 1985. I had only moved here from New York the month before.
I didn’t know what the Sandwich Fair was back then, but assumed, due to the nature of its name, that there must be a lot of sandwiches.
Still, to this day, thirty-seven years later, I have yet to attend.
When I tell folks they seem shocked as though I have committed some sort of Central New Hampshire sacrilege.
“You’ve never been” WHY?”
I have been to other New England Fairs over the years. I get the idea.
Still, I compare all of those to the first fair I ever attended. It was a great memory and one that would be hard to beat.
It was the summer of 1977, and I was working with standardbred (harness) horses on the New York Sire Stakes circuit. We took two racehorses from racetrack to racetrack in New York over the course of about two months. One horse under our care was entered in the stakes races, the other one was along for the ride to be trained and possibly entered into a few lesser contests to find out his racing level.
We were at the Syracuse Fairgrounds, which also had a racetrack. We were there for a week and would leave the next Sunday, the day after the famous Syracuse State Fair was to start.
I was working along with “Big” Dan Williams who was 6-foot 6, weighed at least 300 pounds and had no formal education, but he knew a lot about training horses. He also had a big smile and heart of gold to match his frame. Dan was also a black man. We were complete opposites is many ways, but we were great friends.
We would sleep in front of our horses’ stalls at night. Outside of the barn was a set of train tracks where at least once a night a freight train would slowly chug past on its way somewhere. The trains were long and took at the very least a half hour to complete their pass. The repetitious sound of their motion would actually lull me to sleep.
One night in the middle of the week a train approached, but then came to a full stop.
It was a carnival train and out of it poured dozens of carnival workers and actors with tents and animals and whatever else it took to put on a carnival.
It was an amazing sight. Here I was this fresh out of college kid, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism, still trying to sort out where my life might go, watching this parade of characters that seemed like they might be out of a Steinbeck novel I had read for class.
It was real life for sure. One that many folks rarely get to see.
The next morning we went about our business while across the way the Midway of the carnival was taking shape not far from where we were.
On Saturday morning the Fair opened, but we had work to do. Our non-stake horse was entered in the first race. We never expected much from him, so we were pretty shocked when he actually won at 64-1, and us with no money wagered on him. (Our stakes horse did not fare as well.)
After the races we put our horses to bed, packed up for the truck to come the next morning to take us to Saratoga Racetrack. I decided to catch the fair on its opening night.
There were the rides and the games and, of course, the food.
There were also a few minor attractions that have stuck with me those forty some odd years later.
One was the “Amazing Spider Woman.”
“Half woman-half spider, you have to see it to believe it. Only fifty cents!” shilled the man next to this box which was about ten feet above the audience. Many folks didn’t take the bait, but a few of us did.
I was ready to pay for some hokum and I wasn’t disappointed.
Those who paid climbed the stairs to look into the box to see a giant spider’s body, seemingly made out of Paper Mache, with the head of a live woman poking through a hole in the floor as the spider’s head.
“Move your legs,” someone demanded.
“I can’t,” said the human spider lady in anger.
We all laughed. Fifty cents poorer but well entertained.
Then there was the “Incredible Wax Museum” which seemed worth another fifty cents.
A maze of curtains led to a variety of old store mannequins attempting to impersonate celebrities. My favorite was one with a moustache, top hat and tux standing next to one with a blonde wig and old sequined dress. Supposedly the spitting image of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe.
It was great.
There was also the rubber man who was squished inside a very small box looking extremely uncomfortable. Another fifty cents worth of great entertainment.
The sounds and sites of that Fair are fondly stuck in my memory.
Now, some forty odd years later, when people seem surprised that I have never attended the Sandwich Fair I ask them; “Have you ever seen the Amazing Spider Woman or the Rubber Man?”
“No,” they say.
“Then we’re even.”
And besides, the Sandwich Fair doesn’t really have that many sandwiches.