This isn't one of The Enquirer's gallery images;
it's a photo of my grandfather, Johnny Applegate,
on the old Carthage track.
Cincinnati.com has a glorious photo gallery of images from past Carthage Fairs. Some images are as recent as the 1980s, while others appear to go back to the '30s or '40s, with everything in between. Not only do these images show what the old fair used to look like physically, including the grounds before they were diminished by Cross-County (now Ronald Reagan) Highway construction; they show how popular the fair was, and the kind of enthusiasm shared by crowds in the multitudes. There are several good shots of the old grandstand as well as vintage midway rides and attractions.
Image from a vintage souvenir pennant
from Carthage Fair.
From my journal that summer:
August 5, 1969 I still can't believe tomorrow is the big day. I'd better go to sleep, because I have to get up at five-thirty.
Somehow I wound up going to the fairgrounds with Grandpa first thing in the morning all three weekdays of the fair. I don't remember exactly how this came about. Possibly I'd been working myself into a frenzy about wanting to get over to the fair as early as possible to check on my entries. Mom, who was in the early weeks of her pregnancy with my sister, probably wanted to wait until afternoon or evening to attend the fair. I don't know if I asked Grandpa about going along, or if Grandma asked him, or if Grandpa came up with the plan himself. Maybe I was supposed to go along on the first day only; and when Grandpa saw my enthusiasm and cooperation, he invited me along all week.
August 6, 1969 There's positiviely nothing like Carthage Fair early in the morning.
It feels so nice and cool now you can't believe it's going to be hot this afternoon. Maybe it won't be. There's a cool breeze blowing.
It was just getting light when Grandpa drove us into the fairgrounds in his powder-blue pick-up truck. He had tasks to attend to immediately, especially feeding the horses. He also put food out for the crowd of cats that lived in and around the barn.
I had almost no experience with horses of any kind. Sometimes Grandpa had allowed me or my eldest younger brother to sweep, help carry buckets of water or wheel loads of manure to the manure pile when he was mucking out the stalls. I probably did these chores as well at some point that week. What I remember very well was rolling bandages on a contraption Grandpa had made out of an old manual can opener attached to the wall. You simply inserted the end of the bandage under a clip and turned the handle. The bandage rolled up in no time, then you slipped the roll off the spindle.
August 7, 1969 I enjoy walking that horse. You sort of get hypnotized because you look at the ground as you circle, and it looks weird.
What I enjoyed most, and what gave me the most thrilling sense of actually doing something, was walking the horses all by myself. Grandpa showed me how to hold the lead, how fast to walk, and when to stop and water the horse. He was fussy about his horses, and he could be short-tempered around the barn. However, he was very patient with me that week, and he trusted me enough to go off and let me handle the walking chore alone.
As the morning went on and Grandpa ran out of things for me to do, I was free to wander the fair. At lunchtime, Grandpa and I climbed into the truck and went to either the nearby Country Kitchen or a small old-fashioned restaurant on the main street in Carthage. I think I had liver and onions for the first time at the restaurant.
I don't think I stayed around the barn while Grandpa was preparing immediately before a race. It was always tense, and I knew I'd probably be in the way. I know I saw the races that week, but they kind of blend together when I look back. For at least one day's races, I watched with other members of my family. My grandmother may have brought my brothers and cousins, and Dad brought Mom.
I don't remember how many horses Grandpa raced that year or how he finished in all of them, but he did win at least one race. Each race took two heats to determine the winner. I was awestruck when Grandpa was presented with a big silver tray down on the track. Back at the barn, though, Grandpa wasn't that thrilled with his trophy. He said he preferred receiving blankets, huge, scratchy thick coverlets lettered with the name of the sponsor of the trophy for that race. Many times I'd watched him drive a horse back to the barns at various fairs, a new trophy blanket fluttering around the horse's legs.
On one or two days that year at Carthage, Grandpa's brother, my Uncle Frank Applegate, visited at the barn during the races. I recall him gazing at the silver tray, etched with the fair name, date, and the race. "That's really nice," he said with approval. No one seemed quite as impressed by the tray as I was, though.
August 8, 1969 When the Western horses come, they take over everything. Traffic, horse barns, racetrack, etc.
I'll take a harness horse over any other kind of horse any day.
If I can't get by on six dollars today I'm not doing so well. I have four from yesterday and Grandpa just gave me two for walking Huckleberry Boy yesterday.
I wonder why there was a cop in the back of the Country Kitchen?
I made a new friend in the past couple of days in the form of Ole Yeller the cat.
Late Friday afternoon, long after the races were finished and everything was in order around the barn, Grandpa took a walk up on the midway with me. He treated me to something new that year that we had both developed a taste for: the lemonade shake-up, a large cup of cut lemons, sugar, water, and ice shaken together like a cocktail. We sat at the base of one of the tall old trees on the hilltop. Grandpa didn't talk much, and I was comfortable with silence. Nearby the merry-go-round played--on a real mechanical organ, not recorded music--a tune I'd heard often that week. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't identify it. Later, in the fall, I heard the song on the radio. It was "The Old Lamplighter." The original recorded version sounded nothing like the calliope rendition, with its tinkling rhythm, heart-thumping drum and tinny cymbal, yet when I heard it, I got a lump in my throat. Forty-two years later, I can still hear the merry-go-round's playful echoes. I can taste the clear, tart lemonade and smell the smoke from Grandpa's cigarette.
Carthage Fair midway, 1932--the year my mother was born.
I got my mother to start a blog for her 70th birthday, just before I started the first of my blogs. Lillian's Cupboard is filled with posts about family (including lots about the Applegates), quilting, World War II, and best of all, cooking and recipes.
She's written specifically about Carthage Fair, or Hamilton County Fair, and then county and state fairs in general. With her permission, I'm reprinting her post, "Fairground Food," below. If you'd like to see the original, including larger photos, go to this link. For Carthage Fair-related posts, go here. For those and all county and state fair posts, click here (be sure to scroll down).
Fairground Food
My grandfather, John Black Applegate,
and my father, John Alonzo (Johnny), ca 1914
When I was growing up in the 1930s-40s, the fairground was a fun place to go with the family in the summer. Fairground food was cotton candy, fried fish sandwiches, taffy apples, and ice cream candy. When my father was growing up in the 1920s, a fairground was his home for much of the year. My grandfather was a blacksmith and horseshoeing was his trade…
Grandma Lillian (Illie), Annie, Frank,
a neighbor, my father--Johnny
He took his business on the road during the county fair season, and his large family came along.
Grandma Lillian (Illie) Applegate,
Frank Applegate in lower foreground
My grandmother (the original Lillian) did the laundry in a washtub outside the barn, and cooked the family meals on whatever kind of stove she could rig up.
Martha (Mount) Applegate, Johnny Applegate
My father brought along the memories of fairground meals when he married my mother, Martha Mount, in 1932.
I still make these two dishes today at age 78.
FAIRGROUND PANCAKES
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. sugar
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tblsp. vegetable oil
1 cup milk
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the oil and milk, mixing well. Cook on a hot griddle until bubbles form on the surface. Flip and continue cooking on the reverse side. Serve hot with butter and syrup.
This makes six 4″ pancakes, or, as my father would have made them, two large griddle-sized flapjacks.
My father would have used bacon drippings or lard instead of oil, and the milk would have been diluted evaporated milk. He made syrup by mixing the right ratio of dark brown sugar and water (which I’ve never perfected) and boiling until of syrup consistency. And the meal would not have been complete for my father unless there were two sunny-side-up eggs on top of the pancakes, everything liberally sprinkled with black pepper.
My oldest daughter and I always have a pancake and egg breakfast, called our Fairground Breakfast, before we start out on a long trip. It’s sure to hold us until lunchtime.
Another of my father’s fairground favorites was his chili.
FAIRGROUND CHILI
1 lb. ground beef
1 large onion, diced
1 large can of kidney beans
1 medium can of tomato puree
Water to fill one kidney bean can and one puree can
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt
Grating of black pepper
In a large pot, brown the ground beef and onion until no pink shows in the meat and the onion is tender. Add the kidney beans, puree, and water from the two cans. Simmer on the stove for at least one hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot--4 servings.
My father liked his chili with lots of chili powder and saltine crackers. He usually broke the crackers up in the chili. One of the favorite aromas of my childhood was of beef and onions frying in preparation for chili.
I continued to take my children (and now my grandchildren) to county fairs. Back in the 1960s, I took my three young children to the Owensville (Clermont County, Ohio) fair and stopped in a trailer parked on the fairgrounds to visit my father’s cousin and his very large family. Bill Applegate was also a blacksmith and hauled his family around the fair circuit to make a living. Inside the small trailer, five or six little kids were seated at a table and Bill’s wife, Mary, was at the stove frying mush in a big cast iron skillet. She would slice the mush, throw it into the hot grease, flip it, and then put it on one of the kids’ plates. For the 15 or 20 minutes we were there, she never stopped flipping and serving slices of hot mush; there was always an empty plate with a hungry child yelling for more. She invited us to have some, but we said no thanks and left her there to feed her kids.
So, when you hear the term “Fairground Food,” it’s not always an expensive treat out on the midway--it could very well be somebody’s favorite meal.
NOTE: If you also have memories of Carthage Fair you'd like to share, add them to the comments. Or contact me about a guest post. I'd love to hear others' tales of enjoying Carthage Fair.
I'm re-posting the piece below from comments. I was hoping my friend Amy and her mother would have something to contribute about the fair. Amy and I worked at Gibson Greetings, where she was a writer, then editor; I was a writer. I was delighted when I found out her mother worked at the Hamilton County Fair. When I went over to the fairgrounds to enter my needlework and crafts that year, I stopped by the manager's office to introduce myself. Amy's mom is so sweet, and Amy used to share bits of background about Carthage fairgrounds that her mother had told her.
I'm delighted to share Amy's memory of the fair:
Hi Nancy,
My memories of Carthage Fair go back to 1976. My mom worked in the office every summer with three of her teacher friends. We'd go to the fair for hours with my dad while she worked. We'd check in at the air-conditioned office, which always felt so glorious in the early-August heat. Mom seemed to be having a lot of fun, and there was always something interesting going on. I'd go by at the end of the night and listen to my mom announce on the loudspeaker that they had a lost child. They had several every night, the parents would lose them and take their time finding them. I guess they knew their children would be looked after in the office. Although some parents were truly concerned, I loved the reunions when the mother would run up to the office practically sobbing to find her child happily eating candy oblivious to all the fuss.
My favorite memories are of walking along the fairway with my girlfriend, Judy. We both had long, straight hair (hers was red and mine was blond), short shorts and tee shirts cut off to show our flat bellies (those were the days). The carney boys flirted with us to get us to play the games, and we loved the attention. We'd walk down the fairway and have our handwriting analyzed to see what kind of people we were, because at 13 we really didn't know. Being a city girl, I always marveled at how big the cows and horses were and how soft the bunnies. I couldn't get over how funny the chickens were and I loved playing with the kittens. I always went on the nights of the Demolition Derby and tried to pick out which car would be the winner.
I am also saddened by the slow death of the County Fair. But I am as much to blame. I haven't been there in about 10 years. It just didn't seem the same when I took my kids back. I wish I could give them those same wonderful memories.
Thanks for a wonderful piece, Amy! Please share any other remembrances and I'll post them to the blog.
My mother's beloved postcard of early Carthage Fairgrounds, long before either one of us had been there.
It's because the Greater Cincinnati Carthage Fair is nearly forgotten that I wanted to post memories about it. The sad truth is, its current incarnation, the Hamilton County Fair, isn't in great shape. Just this morning I read a local news article that 4-H has broken away from the traditional fair on the old Carthage fairground for a new venue in western Hamilton County, Stricker's Grove. Someday I might attend. Right now I'm too bitter.
Even though I haven't been a resident of Hamilton County, Ohio, for almost a decade, I've tried to support the Hamilton County Fair by at least attending. Last year even that was a challenge. My mother (who hasn't missed a fair in Carthage in her nearly 79 years) and I went over to the fair midday last August. Things looked disturbingly quiet and shut up. Even the doors to the exhibit halls, where we had each won so many ribbons during our heyday, were closed to us. I ducked into the manager's office and asked. Somehow I'd missed the news that the fair would open only in the evenings. I was stunned.
I told Mom. We sat disconsolately in the empty entertainment tent for a few minutes, then wandered back between the buildings. We looked at the garden exhibits by local growing clubs, tried to peer through the paint-smeared windows of the arts building, dragged down the hill and through the mute midway, then climbed in the car and went home. We both counted it as our annual visit. It was too hard to fight traffic to return to the fairgrounds that evening, and we were in the middle of a blistering heat wave. Neither one of us felt up to the strain.
I told my mother I regard missing Hamilton County Fair as bringing the kind of curse they talk about regarding ravens and the Tower of London: Legend has it if ravens aren't kept at the Tower, the Tower itself will fall and England will suffer a terrible misfortune. My superstition is that if Mom misses a fair, something will happen to her and I'll lose my last link to both her heritage of harness racing and Carthage Fair as our family shared it. (Naturally, I'm more concerned about losing her, period, but she understands.)
Sadly, the fair I fell in love with as a child is long gone. The current fair is on life support. What else is left but to turn my vision back in time to Carthage Fair as I experienced it with my family, so many of whom are now gone.
NOTE: If you also have memories of Carthage Fair you'd like to share, add them to the comments. Or contact me about a guest post. I'd love to hear others' tales of enjoying Carthage Fair.
