XXXV

THE side road leaves Route 1 at the top of a wooded hill. For a few level miles it leads on through a ragged farming country, then climbing a steep knoll, presently opens on a great and widening view of mountains, a blue pond, and an agricultural landscape set about with thriving farms. At one end of the pond is a pleasant, old-fashioned village in its elms, and about a mile beyond, its location marked by rows of parked autos massed in a trodden field, is the Fair. It is only a small fair but it is our fair, and already the distant squeal of mechanical music floats to us across the green meadows and the rural scene.

The farm family has long had a warm place in its heart for the fair at Union Village. Our smaller fairs have been one of the casualties of the war, either ceasing to be or dragging on a poor existence as horse races tied to shabby carnivals, but the Union Fair has kept its popularity and retained its standing as a genuine old-style agricultural show. It has its horses and its cattle, its great yokes of oxen and its bulls with nose rings and blue ribbons, its handicrafts and quilts and jars of vegetables, its horse races and its contests, its gypsy fortune tellers, and its giant swings.

Well, let’s go in. “This way, please. Easy now. OK.” A pleasant, well-mannered Boy Scout with various Scout badges and a very grown up and professional police badge, shows us where to park; the doors slam, and away to the fair we go.

Almost at once there is something fine to see. The great teams of farm horses which are going to enter the dragging contests are coming down the field from their quarters with each owner standing on the stoneboat dragged behind, and holding the reins with the look and assurance of a Roman charioteer in overalls. The brass harness studs and buckles shine like brazen gold in the beautiful morning light; gaudy plumes bob on the huge heads, and the brushed tails have the grace of waterfalls. A fine pair of strawberry roans take my eye as down the slope they go to the little grandstand and the dragging area.

“Hello, George. Showing here?” “Yes, got a first prize yesterday for the Guernsey bull.” “Hello, Randall, I suppose you’ve brought your steers?” “Yes, going in this afternoon. The kid here got second yesterday with his yoke.” Yellow-haired Ordway, aged nine, grins shyly. “Ordway, you show Mr. and Mrs. Beston your red ribbon.”

The oxen are all of them in their shed. There are many yokes, for the country round Union is one of the last regions of the republic to rear and use these great Virgilian beasts. They handle better than horses when our winter comes with its deeps and drifts of snow. Going to the dragging contests for oxen, we see the real thing in drivers, a country boy about fifteen years old who looks as if he came from some small farm. When his steers pull, he throws, as it were, his will in with theirs, and placing his hand on the flank of the nigh ox, drives forward not only with his urging voice and his eagerness but also with his leaning body—the boy and his great creatures all in one rhythm of work and rustic ambition.

It is interesting to watch, and I am glad when he carries off a prize.

Such a medley of impressions force themselves all at once on the senses that it is hard not to be a bit confused when strolling about in the heart of the fair. The smell of popcorn and the din of loudspeakers. Other smells of coffee urns and frying hamburgers. The rustic smell of farm animals, and the smell of trodden grass and earth.

On the midway, I see some gypsy women with beaded purses at their hips, standing by the entrances to their fortune-telling booths. I always wish them a polite “good-day” in Romany, a friend once having taught me certain greeting words. The stunt at first silences them with an immense suspicion, and then they all laugh merrily and wickedly, and give Elizabeth and me special recognition when we pass. We have one gypsy word well established in the English language—our word “pal,” which is the gypsy for comrade.

So sauntering about, we reach our car, and drive off full of plans for the next fair.

FARM DIARY

Our friend and neighbor John Buchan comes with his trowels and mortar, and repairs the back of the great fireplace, neatly setting in new bricks. Three chimneys get cleaned in the afternoon, the dust and crumbs of acccumulated soot filling pail after pail, and, last job of the day, John checks all five chimneys at the roof. / Summer camps closing up everywhere, and great truck-loads of camp trunks and heavy suitcases are rolling down our country roads to the small town railroad stations. / Another bear reported seen on one of the nearby saltwater peninsulas. / Blue jays are leaving the pasture woodlots and coming down towards the farmhouses; I counted five this morning stirring about in our biggest apple tree, and we hear an unusual variety of calls. / What a good dish a “summer cabbage” makes when properly cooked and properly buttered and flavored! / Lawrence back with us for a day’s work, bringing with him not only his shock of sunburnt yellow hair and his cheerful self, but also a great two-handled basket of his own vegetables as a present for the farm.

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Every once in a while, when one lives in the country and observes wild animals, one is sure to come upon dramas and acts of courage which profoundly stir the heart. The tiniest birds fight off the marauder, the mother squirrel returns to the tree already scorched by the on-coming fire; even the creatures in the pond face in their own strange fashion the odds and the dark. Surely courage is one of the foundations on which all life rests! I find it moving to reflect that to man has been given the power to show courage in so many worlds, and to honor it in the mind, the spirit, and the flesh.