The Fair and the Olympics

This year the Olympics and the Hamilton County Fair coincide, just as they did in 1984. That was the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. It was also a big fair for me. I won two Best of Show rosettes (one for crewel, one for huck towel embroidery) after not having won any since 1973. I felt like a champion myself. I'd also won a number of other ribbons for various things. I was quite pleased with myself.

Me, a lot younger and a lot thinner, but deliriously happy with my prizes.

Also, Mom won the pie contest for the second straight year. That silver bowl sits on a shelf in the kitchen every year during fair season, along with the brass tray she got for her first win and a second silver bowl she won for the fruit pie division a few years later. (In 1985, the fair expanded the pie contest to three categories.) Mom also won a slew of ribbons in 1984 in canning and baking, including Best of Show in preserves.

The promotional photo the fair sent out the following year of Mom and her prize-winning pie.

However, I do have a lingering regret from that fair: I was at the fairgrounds the Friday evening Mary Lou Retton got the women's all-around gold medal in gymnastics.

Two good friends and I had a tradition at the time of attending the fair on Friday night so they could see my entries as well as the rest of the attractions. Our visit included a thorough tour of the livestock barns, and I have a distinct memory of seeing portable televisions set up in the "housing" areas along several animal pens, each one tuned to the Olympic games and Mary Lou Retton. I saw her accepting applause for one of her feats, but I'm not sure which one. I don't remember if I knew at that point that she was winning the gold medal.

I wouldn't have traded that night at the fair for anything, especially considering the changes in the fair and the fact that my friends and I stopped attending together almost two decades ago. It always nagged at me, though, that I missed such a historical night at our home Olympics. Whenever the gymnastics are broadcast, I think of that August evening in the dusty livestock barns and of a small TV sitting on a hay bale with a grainy, possibly black-and-white image of Mary Lou Retton.

 What I missed the evening of August 3, 1984.