This week is the Allegany County Fair in Angelica NY
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
The180th Allegany County Fair is underway this week. Like, probably most everyone who has grown up in the county, I have fond memories of attending this annual event, many of them cause me to think of my grandfather, John Ross, one of the last blacksmiths in Wellsville.
Long before I worked at the Daily Reporter, Mickey Martelle was a reporter who worked there when my grandfather retired from blacksmithing in the mid-60s. He wrote a story about my grandfather with the headline “The Last Blacksmith in Wellsville Retires.” I still have the photo and the write up. I had the photo immortalized in stained glass for my father.
While John Ross was known across the county, to me, he was just Grampa. Every summer at fair time, he would pile a pack of kids – my cousins, my sister and me and the neighborhood kids in the back of his pickup truck and take us to the fair. Gramps would spend the day talking to the farmers and horsemen because he knew most of them, and in the evening he would watch the horse pulling contest.
One of my oldest memories of going to the fair is cuddling next to my sister in the top far corner of the old wooden grandstand with the dusty track below illuminating the brawny horses pulling weighted sledges. I kind of remember the rides, the carousel and the giant Ferris wheel from which you could see not only the fairgrounds, but also the parking lot, the field, hills and the village. And I recall some rides where centrifugal force thrust you into the corner of the seat or pinned you against a metal fence.
I was never much for playing games. My father always cautioned me to be aware of the carnies. He also warned me about the sideshows. When I was young, the fair still had displays of shrunken heads, lady snake charmers and giants among other more adult entertainment.
One of the biggest treats for me was going through the horse barns. It’s still something I do to this day. While I always loved eating in the school booths – Belmont, Bolivar-Richburg or Friendship, depending on the day’s special, I also loved fair food – sticky taffy, hot, red candy apples, pink cotton candy and pizza. The only place I could get pizza as a kid was at home or at the Ponce de Leon in Hornell.
It wasn’t until I started working as a journalist that I realized how much work goes into organizing the fair. I got to know the fair directors and saw how dedicated they were and are to making “The fair with the country smile.” I first got to know John Cronk but really got to know Martha Roberts as the fair director in charge. Martha is a farm girl and never hesitated to climb onto an old tractor and ride it around the fairgrounds.
It was in the 80s that the fair brought the Big Stars to the grandstand – Loretta Lynn, Charlie Pride and Tammy Wynette, and I got to interview them all.
Loretta Lynn was gracious and as easy to talk to as my Aunt Barb. She took me aboard her Coal Miner’s Daughter bus and served me, her own home baked cookies. It was like being with an old family friend. She asked why we had our fair so early in the growing season?
I met Charlie Pride at the Wellsville Airport. He took me under his arm and guided me out from in under the whirling helicopter rotors, as if we would get struck by them. He was a gentleman.
I don’t remember much about Tammy Wynette, who I interviewed in the tiny dressing room near the fair stage. I just recall I don’t have any bad memories from my interview with the ‘Stand By Your Man’ singer.
I have lots of wonderful memories of the Allegany County Fair from my earliest days to the present. Going to the fair whether it was with Grampa, my parents or my sister has been a summertime tradition and now cherished memories. I know there will be kids walking the fairgrounds this week who will remember the Allegany County Fair long after they’ve shaken the midway sawdust from their sneakers, taken shelter in the cool shade of the exhibition halls and rested in the mini theater after catching a glimpse of the brawny horses pulling the heavy sledges in front of the grandstand, because I was one of them and still am.
Kathryn Ross is a veteran writer, columnist, and journalist based in Wellsville NY. You can contact her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
