Late every August, my family performs a sacred ritual. We get up early, eat a stout breakfast, then drive east from our urban homestead in Joliet out into the countryside. Our destination: Peotone, Illinois — home of the utterly splendid Will County Fair.
From the vantage point of our little bungalow on Joliet’s near-West Side, just getting to the fair is half the fun. We always cut through downtown Joliet, then take country roads out toward Peotone. Minutes after threading our way through the most urbanized part of Will County, we’re whizzing by fields and farms on the outskirts of the Big City. We slow down, open the car windows, breath in the fresh country air, and take in the view of a huge expanse of blue sky.
Though big as the world to a child’s eye, the Will County Fair is a small and wholesome event that looks and feels like a journey back in time. It features all the classic Midwestern fair elements — deep-fried elephant ears, carnival rides, a baby contest, live music, a rodeo, tractor pulls, magic shows, a demolition derby — without the aggressively seedy atmosphere created by over-the-hill 80s rock bands or, worse yet, grandstanding politicians.
Best of all, Will County’s fair puts agriculture front and center, as it should be. From the fairground’s main parking lot, you can buy your admission ticket and walk right into the Swine Barn — an arrangement both excellent and deeply symbolic.
The Will County Fair is where city kids like our two girls can get up close and personal with goats, chickens, dairy cows, beef cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, ponies, turkeys, geese, and pigeons — wonderful livestock all.
Airy old barns dominate half the fairgrounds, and we strolled through the long corridors of stalls for several hours to see the animals, scratch their heads, thump their bellies, take in the pleasantly pungent smell of manure, and chat with the farm kids who tend these beasts with skill and devotion. This is 100% fun, and the type of education you can’t get in school or from a book. A few years ago our then 40-pound daughter Lily got to hop into a farmer’s hog pen to help herd several 250-pound swine through the barn to get their baths. She slapped those hogs on their muscled rumps and barked out “Away, pig!” — and by golly, they moved.
And the food? Boy, oh boy. We ate burgers and fries from the 4-H stand run by an enthusiastic squadron of teenagers, portabella mushroom sandwiches and marinated veggies expertly grilled by Farmer John Moore of Wind N’ Oaks Farm, ice cream from the Peotone United Methodist Church ladies, and some sinfully delicious corn dogs.
I wonder how many city folk head to Peotone each year to connect with Will County’s still-thriving but increasingly pressured rural heritage. Year after year our civic leaders race to pave over our fertile farmland according to the economic gospel of “development.” From the vantage point of the county fairgrounds, though, the foolhardy and state-sanctioned land grab called the Peotone Airport looms as an exquisitely ironic example of misguided priorities.
Maybe more of our urban and suburban citizens, and especially our politicians, should spend some quality time in the livestock barns visiting with farmers and the 4-H kids who live and work on our county’s farms. It might provide some much-needed perspective on balancing economic development with the preservation of rural culture.
The only bad thing about the 108th Will County Fair? Having to leave. We’re already looking forward to next year.
A print version of this essay was published on Sunday, 4 September 2011, as “County Fair a Crucial Connection,” my monthly op-ed piece in the Joliet Herald-News, p26. Also see the online version here.