A fair of the heart

The transformation starts on the drive out to Bergton. Most of us have to drive 10, 15, 20 or more miles to get to the Bergton Fair, known as the “biggest little fair around.” You can be harried and hot from a bad week at work and the spell of the eastern-facing slopes of the Shenandoah Mountain range of the Appalachians begins to fall over you with the deep green trees waving a wand as the winding highway carries you back to old Virginia.

… Past Martin Luther Lutheran Church and the steep road to the cemetery where my husband’s grandparents and great grandparents and scores of cousins and aunts and uncles are buried

… Past the hollow (low place between hills where a path and then a dirt road gets beat down) where Stuart’s uncle used to live, way back at the end. All the cousins remember the fun of playing in the creek near the fresh water spring.

The “homeplace” for my husband’s  grandfather, Perry Hottinger, near Bergton. Top, Uncle George with two of his sisters, Aunt Leila  and Aunt Ressie, 2001.

At Bergton Fair, the admission price is $1 per person, paid as you enter by car.

The tomatoes and green peppers and canned goods and needlecraft are shown off in the old white clapboard school house, where some of my husband’s relatives went to school.

Privacy and prudence forbids me from snapping and sharing the best photos, such as the ones of:

… a young father struggling to pull leggings onto his toddler after her tiara competition; she stifles late day toddler crankiness with a snuffle or two, while the mother puts away a poufy blue princess dress.

… young couples holding hands or pushing a stubborn stroller over the trampled grounds.

… older couples all spruced up in their fair-goin’ best, lined up in lawn chairs as you enter the grounds and enjoying an evening’s respite from canning green beans (I remember hearing of folks canning 110 quarts, 150 quarts. I do not lie.).

And harmonies: whether it’s a soulful “Rock Me Mamma” or splendid “Bringing Mary Home,” you’re sure to find toes tappin’ and hearts lifting.

And no matter how hot you were down in the valley, there’ll be a chill back here; you always tote a sweater or jacket, just in case, and generally use it.

You have to line up for the fried chicken; tonight we’re early and lucky, the line is short. Cousin Johnny is somewhere in the booth helping but he’s too
busy and too deep among the cookers to see him just now.

If you’re from these parts you will probably sit down to eat beside a second cousin or third cousin once removed you’ve never even met and if you’ve got Swiss-German roots, way back you too are likely related.

For seconds on eats there might be a country ham or tenderloin sandwich, or a hamburger or hot dog, all the better in the crisp mountain air.

Then dessert, later in the evening, maybe right before going home: shall it be ice cream, funnel cake, cotton candy or kettle corn? I’ve long since learned to be wise in these indulgences which sometimes wake you during the night.

In earlier years of course, I’d supervise the kids on the rides, my husband chatting up the tractor, implement and outdoor woodstove dealers circling the grounds, I’d play a round or two of bingo. The coins flow at the booths and tables no matter how lean the year and who was just laid off. The money all goes to a good cause, they say, as they plunk down another quarter in hopes of winning a stuffed bear, or toss another dime for some discount store glass.

Fair season is just beginning in earnest in these parts. So go to your county fair, your state fair, your world’s fair (do they still have those?) but next year, pencil in August 5-9 in the Shenandoah Valley, just over the line from West Virginia (almost heaven), where the food is real and the people are too.

Just ya’all don’t all come at once or there won’t be room for ya’ll and they’ll run out of chicken and country ham early. That’s the only thing that will make for a bad night at Bergton Fair, our little fair of the heart.

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The beauty of Bergton Fair, along with the prices, is that there’s not even a website, but here, here and here are a few pieces and photos others have snatched at the Bergton Fair.

In my book, Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes: Finding God in the Everyday, I wrote about Aunt Mae’s “Dinner plate dahlias” in a loving tribute to Uncle George’s wife, grown at the homestead in the hollow near Bergton Fair.  In years past we would see both Aunt Mae and Uncle George lined up among the unofficial greeters you pass through when getting to the grounds.