Fair Weather

"Do you think we'll see anyone we know at the fair?" I asked Howard as we set out to Blackwell, 15 miles away on this fall-feeling September evening. Our granddaughter, Allison, who had gone with her family last night, had posted a picture on Facebook of the Ferris Wheel lit up in all its grandeur against the night sky, drawing me like a magnet to go and experience the fair for myself.

Immediately on entering the fairgrounds, a man spoke and tipped his hat to us. "Who was that?" I asked my husband. It was the owner of a hardware store in our town. After a cursory glance around at the throngs of people and varied vendors, we sat down for a bite to eat at our customary church stand.

As soon as we finished and walked toward the midway, we met our former pastor from home! Next, I recognized a beautiful young woman as my hairdresser! Then we bumped into two of our neighbors, one living across the street from our house, and one in back of us. On the way to the exhibit buildings, we glimpsed a couple through the crowd that we used to know from church.

"Look, they have popcorn," I said as we came to a snack bar in a Homemaker's craft building. They also had tea for 50 cents, and we bought a small homemade pound cake loaf for $1. Browsing further, past a Tupperware dealer's counter, my eyes fell upon a lovely stoneware casserole dish displayed with other attractive pieces.

I inquired about it and found it was for sale, and at a reduced price, too! I loved it! A creamy, covered pot with a hand-painted bird design on the front, with pink flowers and edged in brown. It was beautiful. I showed it to my husband, and he said we might stop on our way back after we'd seen the animals.

There were only a few left at the petting zoo, but the small ponies were darling with their long lashes, blinking as children stroked them, and two little pigs were replicas of Wilbur in Charlotte's Web. A couple of llamas and an immaculately groomed cow, plus some frolicking young goats, made up the remainder of the animal exhibits.

We decided to go back to the Homemaker's building to check on the dish. Going in, I saw a familiar-looking face and couldn't believe my eyes when I realized it was a friend from childhood whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years when we'd re-connected at a Bible Study! She invited me to come to the current Bible Study formed after the other one closed, and I might just do that!

Turns out the woman selling the serving pieces was a cousin of hers, and we had a delightful time unraveling threads to other cousins and relatives of theirs that we had known! What a small world! We have felt a bit like we've been set down in a strange land since we moved back here a few years ago after an absence of nearly 40 years. But we are finding we have been surrounded by (or at least the descendants of) many people from our past!

The smooth, gleaming surface of the stoneware pot that now looks perfectly at home in front of a platter on my dining room hutch feels like a touchstone to the past, a little of which I found tonight at the county fair.