I’ve seen a lot of coverage from the State Fair on WRAL News this past week. They always show a lot of different food items the reporters have tried themselves, especially unusual fried items. I believe people at the State Fair would fry an ice cream sandwich if it could stand the heat. There are also cooking competitions using pork, chicken, sweet potatoes, pecans and many other products that are grown in North Carolina. All of that food sampling will really make you hungry, especially if you’re sitting there watching at lunchtime and all you’re eating is soup out of a can.
All of that talk about food at the State Fair causes me to remember the time I went there with my friend Patsy. We were both members of the 4-H Club in the Derby area where we lived and our leader, Joy McCall, always encouraged us to enter county-wide competitions. One year, when we were both teenagers, Patsy decided to enter the barbecue chicken cook off for Richmond County 4-H ers. All of the participants had grills to cook on and they brought their own chicken and special barbecue sauce. I can remember how good all that chicken smelled when those 4-H ers got theirs going on those grills. When all that chicken was done, those judges announced a winner — and that year Patsy won first place. I don’t even remember what she got for first place, I just know that, as a result of winning, she was going to get to go to the State Fair and demonstrate her cooking skills at the 4-H exhibit there.
When it got close to the date for her to go, she asked the folks at the 4-H Extension Agency if she could take a friend along to help out and they said she could. When my parents agreed to let me go along with her, we both got very excited and started counting the days. Besides getting to go the fair together, we were naturally even more excited about having an excuse to get out of school for the day. Missing school – what a shame! Right?
When the fair day finally arrived, we set off really early with the two ladies from the Richmond County 4-H Agency. Since we were so excited, it seemed like it took forever for us to finally see all those rides, buildings and people as they came into view at the state fairgrounds.
We drove inside and parked close to a special tent that was set up for the 4-H kids to demonstrate their cooking. We found out what time Patsy was supposed to cook and got everything set up. Our leaders then told us we could go walk around the fairgrounds but for us to be back by 11. We certainly didn’t argue about that, we just took off to see what kind of rides there were for us to try out.
The good thing about being at the fair early in the morning on a weekday is you can ride anything you want to and not have to wait in line. We bought our tickets and got on the tilt-a-whirl; the double Ferris wheel and the swings. Then finally, we moved on to my personal favorite — the bumper cars. I guess I just like to drive aggressively, but I have always loved to be able to push somebody out of the way without actually having to worry about hurting them. Haven’t you ever thought when you were out driving on the highway about how nice it would be to be able to give someone a little nudge and move them out of your way? If you haven’t, then you’re a better person than I am, that’s for sure!
It seemed like every ride we went on lasted and lasted and lasted. It was probably because there were no people waiting in line to get on those rides so the workers just let us ride until somebody else finally walked up with a ticket in hand. Then again, it might have helped that we were two young females by ourselves with no parents or boyfriends along and it was mostly guys that were running those rides.
Either way, we rode that tilt-a-whirl for so long that I was almost ready to yell out – “Stop” – when that worker kept us going backwards for so long. I have trouble with motion sickness if I can’t see where I’m going, so I surely didn’t want to embarrass myself by getting sick.
By then it was time to get back and start working on barbequing that chicken. We got back in plenty of time and when it was done, we gave out samples to people as they came by the tent. I couldn’t help much with the actual grilling since that was Patsy’s expertise, but I was good at giving away that barbecue chicken. After we gave it all away, our leaders told us they were going to walk around the fairgrounds and to meet them back at the tent at 4 so we could start home. We were glad they were not ready to leave because we didn’t want to leave yet either.
They took off to look at some of the exhibits and we took off to buy us some food since we didn’t get much of that chicken. We bought and ate some hamburgers and fries and then set off back to the rides. We had already decided we wanted to ride that double Ferris wheel again but the closer we got to it the more people we saw waiting in line. We bought our tickets and waited 30 minutes to finally get on and ride for what seemed like 30 seconds. When we got off, we quickly decided we were not going to wait to ride anything else we had already ridden on that morning. We knew we didn’t have too much time left so we didn’t want to waste any more of it.
I had a great time that day at the State Fair. Even though I had been before with my family, it was fun getting to do things with a friend. Even though we had to do some work in there too, it just didn’t seem like work when we did it together.
Aren’t most chores better when you have someone to do them with? It seems that working together with someone you care about makes time pass quicker and makes your workload lighter!
Azalea Bolton is a resident of Richmond County, member of the Story Spinners of Laurinburg, and member of the Historical Society of Richmond and Anson counties.
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