Why do I bring all this up in a blog where many of my readers are from distant lands and may never get a chance to experience the Big E personally? This is NOT an advertisement for the Big E (they do enough of their own - lol). This is to simply share some of what my husband and I do there that makes it a very special time of year. For us this is more than just attending a local fair...
For the past nine or ten years, my husband and I have purchased season ("17-day") tickets for the fair and spent much of our spare time there, including evenings on some work days and taking at least one vacation day to go during the week when the crowds are thinner, like we did yesterday.
We spend the majority of our time talking with the people there - the vendors, the performers, the volunteers - the people who spend the 17-days there trying to make it a wonderful experience for the rest of us, the fair-goers. By now, each year is like some giant family reunion. Vendors and volunteers know each other, and they know us too. We spend time each year catching up with each other on stories about what has happened near and far over the past year.
I remember in 2001, the International (Young) Building was mostly vacant for the first half of the Big E, especially as the Big E opened just over a week after 9/11. The travel restrictions - especially international - impacted many of the vendors. When they arrived, the stories of the 9/11 impact in their own home country was shared in their own words, through their own eyes.
There is a broomsquire that hand-crafts brooms, using broom straw he harvests himself, working in one corner of the village green. On the year he didn't make his appearance, many were concerned and called him up. You'd be amazed how much it feels like family when you take the time to know people who attend year-after-year. And when something is amiss - there is compassion and a need to reach out to them.This year, my husband and I were greeted with some sad news. One of the crafters who has a booth behind the Connecticut exhibition hall/building had passed away November 2, just after the close of last year's Big E. This was a kind, loving and lovable man with white hair, white beard and crinkles that followed a generous smile behind his glasses. He was beloved by many of the displayers and vendors in that exhibit hall as he would always give them a hand building and tearing down their booths as well as his own. He even played Santa Claus in the neighboring (New Hampshire?) building. Many called him "Santa", though his name was Bob. Though, I admit, walking away from the subdued booth that more than seemed diminished by his lack of presence, I commented to my husband, "I feel like a kid who has just been told that Santa died..." May Bob rest in Peace for all the good he has shown in this world over the years.
There are many happy moments too. There's a vendor who befriended us a few years back and with whom we spent many hours bailing out her tent last year after she was assigned a location where the rain runoff formed a stream right through her shop. :P Over the course of this past year, she found a way to combine her love (and talent) of photography with her bread-and-butter business, the online/fair-attending boutique. She now has her own photographs on purses and handbags and is able to color-coordinate these with the shawls/wraps that is her mainstay business. We're happy for her!
Yesterday we also had an opportunity to spend about an hour or more speaking with syrup producers in the New Hampshire building. These people actually trudge out in the deep snow, tap the trees, haul the sap, spend days boiling it down, etc. - not simply sell the maple products. We learned a lot about the production, the difference in grades, how the sap changes early to late (more milky) in the season. One learns many things that is not the "by the book" but "by experience" when time is taken to listen to people. They know that "sugar time" (when the sap runs) is about to arrive when they start seeing the red-winged blackbird in their area. The end of the season has arrived when they start seeing moths in the buckets beneath the tree tap; when it's warm enough for moths to emerge, the season is over. The most explicit description was when he demonstrated the human yoke with which maple producers haul buckets of sap through the woods to the sugar houses to be boiled down. He added, "You know you've experienced it all, when you fall with these. There is no other experience like it. You are trudging through knee-deep snow, you trip on some unseen tree root and fall. Now you are wet from the snow, as it rapidly absorbs into your clothing, and sticky from head to toe from the sap that has now spilled all over you. Worst of all, this always seems to happen within a few feet of your destination. So you are not only wet and sticky, your are darn right pissed off because all the work and effort you just put into hauling that sap all that way is now wasted!" A snapshot of a life completely different from our own, shared for the mere cost of taking the time to listen. :D
After years of buying cheese from them, my husband and I had the opportunity to speak at length with some of the people from Cabot. They are usually swamped with visitors, especially since they give out free samples, but yesterday the crowds were lighter. It turns out that Cabot is actually not a company, per se, but a cooperative of several Vermont dairy farmers. The farmers get 100% of the income. For those who do not know, this is unusual in America. Save for local farm-stands, farmers received approximately 19-cents on the dollar. I'd rather the money go to those who work the land, get up early every day - even weekends and holidays - to care for the farm, the land, and/or the livestock rather than some corporate executive who sits at a desk or makes calls on his mobile device on a golf course pushing to buy-low/sell-high to keep the profits for the corporation.
While I often get my kettle-corn from the vendor behind the New Hampshire building - as they are the best kettle-corn at the Big E and well worth the line on weekends - I discovered yesterday that they are not some organization that goes fair-to-fair selling popcorn. These are people from the NH Department of Agriculture who does this as a fund-raiser each year at the Big E. They don't sell popcorn anywhere else. Each year, they greet you with a smile and a shovel the product hot into the bag from the kettle before you. That this is was a volunteer fundraiser, makes me all the happier to buy their product and recommend it to others.
For the second year in a row, we've seen a new addition to the International (Young) Building: Silk-Thread paintings. For those who have the opportunity to go to the Big E, I recommend just stopping by the booth. What looks like a painting at first glance is actually an awe-inspiring work of several layers of silk-thread embroidery - no paint whatsoever is used. This is a traditional form of artwork from China that was once only available to royalty. For those who do not have the opportunity, here is a website that explains a bit more.
There are many other snapshot moments I recall from yesterday. A young girl shyly held onto her grandmother's hand as she walked beside the wheelchair gazing at the wonders around her, hesitant to stray into new territory. A couple ate lunch out of cooler from the open end of Jeep in a grassy field turned parking lot. People who haven't seen each other for a year warmly shook hands and even embraced, slapping each other on the back, on the first day of the Big E. A child was fast asleep in a carriage by late afternoon, a partially eaten bag of popcorn was tucked into the back to be shared later. A father held his young son on his hip pointing and explaining the different sights. An old man nodded and smiled in a friendly way to a young woman a short distance away; he was waiting for his group to gather before the tour bus left and she was waiting with the pile of shopping bags for others from her group group to emerge from the restrooms before they continued their day at the fair. A fair-goer entertained kids big and small with the chipmunk puppet on his hand for nothing more than a smile. A family of five shared their surplus of Mardi-Gras beads from the parade that just passed by with vendors sitting inside who had no opportunity to try to catch the beads themselves. A group of friends called out "Marco" and "Polo" across the dimly lit parking area as they walked further and further apart to their separate cars. Many more beautiful moments of humanity were observed when I step back from my own thoughts to see what is going on around me. :D
We spent the whole day there, my husband and I. And we plan on attending other days this year too. There are those we have yet to see after the year's interlude, stories we have yet to hear, new people we have yet to meet. One thing I look forward to tomorrow - a tradition that we started last year - Sunday Mass under the Big Top. I will write about that later.
I know I rambled all over the place and this was quite lengthy. I thank you for reading this post and for the opportunity to share this experience with you. My closing thought is simply this: what can you receive when you open your eyes and your ears? What can you give another when you open your heart to them and let them share with you some of their life? Both can be far more precious than we realize.
-ESA
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Wow! Sounds like a very memorable time and how lovely you guys keep going back and catching up with the vendors you've befriended over the years. No wonder you are so keen on going each year - now I "get it!"
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