By Paige Ransbury
I’ve been going to fairs for years. My parents would take me to the Del Mar Fair when I was younger, and around the time the name changed to the San Diego County Fair, I started going with my friends instead of my family. What mattered the most then was who I was with; I wasn’t exactly oblivious to my surroundings, but to my 13 year old self, they only served to provide entertainment for me and my friends. It wasn’t until last year when I visited the North Carolina State Fair as a sophomore in college that I really began to look at fair culture. It helped that I brought my camera along to document the event; your eye narrows in on things you wouldn’t normally notice when it’s behind a camera lens.
Trying to imagine what it would be like for a first-time fair-goer is entirely overwhelming. I’ve been to a fair nearly every year since I was in middle school, and entering the fair grounds still feels like being hit with a train – the bright, flashing lights, the spinning, swinging, twirling rides, the sheer amount of people pinballing their way through the crowd, the sounds coming from a variety of sources all overlapping and building to a rich, symphonic cacophony, and, of course, the smells. There aren’t many other places where your nose can be tantalized by the rich aromas of fair food seconds before being hit with the stench of cow manure.
Food, animals, and rides that make you check if you still have all of your body parts afterward doesn’t seem like a winning combination when you really think about it. The greasiness, the dirtiness, the stomach-churningness….somehow it works. People flock to fairs every year; both the San Diego County Fair and the NC State Fair had around a million visitors each last year.
Although I had only ever been to the SDCF, I assumed that all fairs had the same elements – rickety rides, overpriced games, funhouses, musical entertainment, packs of tweens, and women who think wearing heels to the fair is a good idea. There’s also a certain griminess that settles into your hair and clothes, and a playfulness that perhaps finds its root at its temporary nature. Fairs know they don’t live long, and thus they are free to create the chaos that comes to define them. The NC State Fair was no different.
What I was most interested in, though, was the characteristic food of fairs. I can find crowds of people at the mall, rides at any amusement park, and animals at a petting zoo, but the food is, for the most part, unique to fairs. Besides, I had never before taken advantage of the availability of such unique creations. My friends and I walked in and immediately were met by a wave of smells and sounds. On our right hand side was a man making and selling homemade old-fashioned ice cream. Tempting, but we were at a fair and that required a certain amount of what I’ll call reverse fussiness. Anything that under normal circumstances was socially acceptable to eat was now a no-go; anything that caused us to question how many years our lives would be shortened by ingesting it was a resounding yes. This is because entering the fairgrounds is like entering a kingdom where right is wrong and wrong is right. At the fair, it’s acceptable – nay, encouraged! – to slap a slab of meat between two maple flavored donuts and sell it for less than it costs to trim your hair. How many people have been dared to eat deep fried butter at the fair? And how many people have taken that dare up because they’re at the fair?
For those who with allergies to anything fried (or fun), there are of course “normal” foods available. We found pizza, steak sandwiches, fries, and smoothies there. We even passed by a Chick-fil-A stand at one point. But the longest lines at any food stand at the fair are without a doubt going to be at the stands offering gimmicky, unusual, slightly gross, slightly wondrous, morsels of food that are most likely fried.
Which is just the kind of stand I eventually found myself at the end of the night. Really, there was no other way to wind down my experience than waiting thirty minutes in line for fried something. And there were a lot of fried somethings – pickles, hamburgers (entire hamburgers!), pecan pies, Oreos, Kool-Aid balls, Ho-Hos…even deep fried mac and cheese. Faced with all of these options, my friends and I chose to buy one thing and share – a “take one down, pass it around” method that proved disastrously effective. Every one got the chance to try the pickles, pecan pie, Kool-Aid, Oreos, and, my personal favorite, the deep-fried Klondike Bar.
The pickles were advertised as being spicy, and, having a rather low spice tolerance, I took one nibble before passing them on. This was a smart move on my part; while not immediately hot, they had the kind of slow burn that you don’t realize until you’ve eaten ten and the spice factor becomes magnified by the amount you’ve eaten. The fried Kool-Aid was actually fried dough balls infused with the popular kids drink, and they reminded me of cherry cough syrup: sweet to the point of being saccharine, and mostly unpleasant.
The Oreos were literally and figuratively golden. The fried casing added a crispiness to the softer insides, which were deliciously warm and practically melted in my mouth. Frying the Oreos heightened their flavor; somehow they tasted more like Oreos now than ever before. The pecan pie was even better: served on a stick, it didn’t look very appealing but it tasted incredible. With a powdered sugar dusting and a warmth that spread through my body, this pie had me coming back for second and third and fourth bites.
This brought me to the Klondike Bar. This masterpiece had me puzzled – how did the ice cream not melt? – but I didn’t ponder the question for long. Perhaps it is my bias towards food that includes chocolate, but this was my favorite. The simple flavors of the Klondike Bar were elevated once fried; it was a warm, sticky, partially melted mess that swirled together in its tray to create perfection. I didn’t let this creation out of my sight for long.
It was the first time I had allowed myself such an indulgence at a fair. Part of me wishes I had never opened this particular Pandora’s Box, but the stomachaches that inevitably accompany such feasting are worth every grease-covered, flavor-infused, chocolate-dripping, powdered sugar-dusted bite.