SE Folk
North Carolina
The County Fair: Another COVID Casualty
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mong the many casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the events I’ve most looked forward to, ever since I was about 10 or 11 years old— the county fair. When I was younger, it was all about the fun games and riding the rides, squealing with my friends in the cool night air. Most, if not all, county fairs have been canceled this year, due to the lingering pandemic. Luckily, we’ll still all have our memories, even if we can’t experience the gut-busting fair food and feel the thrill of tumbling through the air at high speed. When I was a teenager, I went to every fair in the neighboring counties with my friends—I remember going to not only Duplin County’s fair, but also, Lenoir, Wayne, Pender, New Hanover, Onslow… wherever we could get to within reason.
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Story by Abby Cavenaugh It was one of the few places where we could be let loose at a younger age, as long as we stayed together and met one of our moms at 10 or 11 o’clock, when the fair was over. I’m not sure I could count how many crisp nights I spent at the fairgrounds, walking around with my best friends, daring each other to ride the rides and possibly checking out cute guys, though we never had the nerve to talk to them back in those days. It’s one of the things that says fall to me—the lights of the rides twinkling into the sky, the screams of delight ever so often, the scent of frying dough and hot dogs, an autumn breeze that causes you to hug your jacket closer on top of the Ferris wheel. As I got older, I visited neighboring county fairs less often, but, even as an adult, it’s an event I always look forward to. I can’t ride as many rides as I used to,
but the ones I do still ride make me feel like a kid again, even if only for a few minutes. It’ll be sad to miss my yearly funnel cake, but I suppose my waistline might thank me for that one. If there’s one positive of this pandemic, maybe it’s that it has made us appreciate the things we can no longer do—like go to a county fair, eat in a restaurant with friends without worrying about getting too close to someone, attend your favorite band’s concert, go shopping for something other than groceries and necessities. Here’s hoping that next year, COVID will be a thing of the past, and we can all get back to normal. I, for one, will go on the TiltA-Whirl, even if I have a vertigo flare-up afterward. It’ll be worth it to experience one of the best rites of fall again. SE
