Carthage Fair 1969: Part 1 -- How I Got Started

Early photo of the Arts & Crafts Building

I first entered the arts and crafts competitions at Carthage Fair in 1969. I was extremely excited. All my life we'd gone to a number of county fairs around the region to see Grandpa race, and I'd always gazed upon the exhibits, especially the 4-H displays, with envy. We didn't have 4-H, and I never realized that anyone could enter the regular competitions at the county fair.

My big discovery came one day when I was looking through a basket of horse magazines next to Grandpa's chair. What we referred to as "Grandma's house" (Grandpa wasn't there much during the summer because of the races) was just around the corner from our house in Oakley. That year Grandma still lived on Marburg Avenue, and we were in and out of the big house almost as often as our own.

Sometimes old kids' magazines or interesting horse equipment catalogs were mixed in with Grandpa's copies of Horseman and Fair World and The Harness Horse. That day I discovered the 1969 premium list for Carthage Fair. I started reading through the categories and the rules, and the light dawned: I could enter something at the fair. Never mind I wasn't proficient at anything. I studied the listings closer to figure out something I could make.

I was 15, and I'd done a little embroidery over the years. I'd learned some basic stitches from a small sampler kit I got for St. Nicholas when I was 12; and last Christmas I'd ironed some chicken transfers onto dishtowels and embroidered them as gifts for Grandma. I'd also learned basic crocheting when I was nine or ten. Mom had taught me how to start a round, increasing as I went so the piece wouldn't curl. I'd made some uncomplicated throw rugs using colorful, heavy yarn, although I had yet to follow a pattern.

I decided I could embroider a picture and crochet a throw rug for the fair. I asked Mom if I could do this, and she was wary. She was afraid I'd be disappointed by the experience. "You'd be competing against all those old ladies who enter every year," she said. I was stubborn, though. I got permission to take Grandpa's premium list for my own, took money out of my limited savings, and sent to the agricultural society for an exhibitor's ticket.

Looking back, I almost have to admire my potent combination of chutzpah and optimistic naivete. I forged ahead planning my entries.

For my embroidered picture, I dug out a scrap of some kind of heavy evenweave fabric; I think it was left over from the latest curtains Mom had made for the living room. I contrived a drawing of some of the Peanuts characters based on posters I had hanging in my bedroom. I had Linus holding a newspaper with the headline "Peace." Above and below I scrawled open letters spelling "Happiness...is getting along." (I'd become enamored of the You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown soundtrack over the winter.)

I filled in the characters and letters solidly with embroidery, either a close outline stitch or chain stitch, with outlines in black. I blistered my fingers trying to poke the needle through that dense embroidery to add details such as facial characteristics or lettering on the newspaper. My embroidery hoop was one we simply had lying around, and it was poor at holding my fabric tight while I worked. I finished the "wall hanging" by pulling threads to fringe the edges of the fabric around the embroidered image. I might have devised loops of embroidery floss for hanging, but I never even considered a frame.

The rug was easier. It was simply rounds of different colored rug yarn. It was probably less than a yard wide when finished, but it lay flat.

I worked steadily all summer and probably finished just before I was due to take the entries to the fairgrounds in early August. That established a pattern I followed for decades: Stitching my summers away, a little panicky that I might not finish my entries in time.

Mom drove me to the fairgrounds the Sunday before the fair opened so I could enter my embroidered wall hanging and crocheted rug. I'd fantasized all summer about impressing the judges with my handiwork and how wonderful I'd feel having finally won a ribbon of my own.

Later that day when I was talking to Grandma, she said, "You must have felt like you were leaving your babies behind." She also repeated the comment I'd heard so much: The same old ladies entered the same things every year and always won. Nobody believed I'd win. I did.

UPDATE: I was looking through my journal from summer, 1969, and discovered a quick sketch I'd made of the design for my embroidered wall hanging. It was "Shroeder" who held the newspaper. Charlie Brown and "Snoppy" are hugging on the left; on the right, Linus and Lucy are holding hands (I think).

I also came across the following journal entries about the fair:

August 3, 1969

The banners were put on the grandstand. A lot of the booths were put up and the rides were packed in the trucks. The Daily Donuts booth was putting up glass, and there were some kids fixing wiring in the demonstration tent.
 

I've never seen the crafts building empty before. It was unusual to look at the glass-enclosed shelf and not seeing any cakes.
 
I know I'm going to get a ribbon, but that's stiff competition. But I know I'm going to win. One old lady had a whole suitcase of things she was entering.

Next: Part II - The Fair, Grandpa, and Me