Tunbridge fair turns a corner
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Euclid and Priscilla Farnham take a break for a quick lunch. The Tunbridge World's Fair opened this week. Jennifer Hauck / Valley News |
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By BOB HOOKWAY VALLEY NEWS STAFF WRITER - Published: September 19, 2009
Tunbridge — A few days ago, the weekend before the Tunbridge World's Fair, Euclid Farnham somehow had a couple of hours to talk. This was very odd. The president of the fair association could rest assured — well, maybe not rest — that those hours of leisure would be among his last for at least the eight days to follow.
The fair opened this week, but the trucks were already rolling a week ago from all parts, the last leg of their trip being the steep hill from Route 110 that dropped them in the 30-acre bowl alongside the White River's First Branch. Concessionaires of everything from cotton candy to shooting-gallery prizes arrived steadily, many intending to camp out at the fairgrounds for another week when it's time to haul their gear to the last country fair of summer in Fryeburg, Maine.
But this is the final time Farnham will keep such a close eye on the arrivals, departures and everything in between.
The first eight fairs were held in North Tunbridge. The following 130 here. This is No. 138 and the 31st and final that Farnham will oversee. He's 75 and, as his gnarled hands and titanium knees attest, milked a herd of Jerseys for decades.
"I told the board last year after the annual meeting that I would serve one more year and that would be it. Thirty-one years is a long time, and it's time for somebody younger with fresh ideas to take over and oversee the fair. I loved it. I have loved every minute of it — well, I won't say every minute of it — when we've had hurricanes go through."
In the summers of his youth, Farnham toted a large-batteried, first-generation portable radio around the farm with him so he wouldn't miss any details of Red Sox games. He watched as his farm steadily became the last on Whitney Hill. He juggled his fair duties along with milking and haying, then stopped farming 11 years ago.
There can't be anyone who knows more about the Tunbridge World's Fair than Euclid Farnham. He and his wife, Priscilla, own one of the fair's 100 shares. It's the one his great-grandfather, J.L. Farnham, bought for $5 in 1902. Three generations later, this Farnham can tell you why there had to be shareholders at all. It had to do with the fair's long history of horse racing.
"In 1900, there was a bicycle race on the race track, and there was a dispute over who finished second. Not first, second. A Bethel man became angry and apparently deliberately drove his bicycle into a moving sulky. He was quite badly injured, and the next year sued the fair."
The trial in Woodstock, according to Farnham, drew quite a crowd. And though it seemed the fair had a good case, the judge awarded the plaintiff $1,500, a ruling that threatened to bankrupt the fair.
"That's a joke now, but $1,500 was no joke in 1900. The judgment took all the money the fair had. They were not sure they'd be able to put on a fair in 1901."
So shares were sold the following year to raise cash. While family continuity regarding their possession is the norm, occasionally someone not related can pry one loose.
"Yes, it happens. One was just sold within the last month. There's no set price. It's what a willing buyer and a willing seller agree to. The board members don't know what the sale price is unless someone happens to tell them." Farnham said the "rumor" he heard about the recent transaction cost: four figures.
"That gives you 100th ownership, a vote for board members, and a chance to be on the board," said Farnham, but not any portion of the fair's revenue, most of which goes back into operations as well as maintenance of the fairgrounds' 65 buildings.
"It's a totally nonprofit venture," he said.
The uninitiated who enjoy the annual fair these days might be surprised to learn of its wild and wooly history. As recently as the early 1970s — just prior to the start of Farnham's tenure — the event's Dodge City reputation made it a must to avoid. For a long time, there were many area residents who wouldn't be found anywhere near Tunbridge — with its unsupervised beer tent and strip shows — at this time of year.
Farnham doesn't flinch when recounting that period.
"Thirty-five years ago, it was a wild event. I'm not denying that, and I will never deny that. We had unlimited camping during the same time period. It was so rowdy. All they had to do was stagger back to the camper. It reached the point where the police wouldn't even go to the area anymore," he said, out of fear they'd be forced to tangle with the wild revelers.
"They would throw stones at them. The fire department wouldn't go either. They burned a camper in the parking lot, and the police wouldn't go, nor would the firemen, because they threw things at them, like full beer cans and beer bottles, and anything else. And so they just let it burn. You're not going to save it anyway, and you can't hazard your personnel.
"Plus, we're talking about a large group of individuals, all pretty well snookered, that are ready for anything. So, that's the kind of situation. Over here for years, we had this group of men from Massachusetts who rented a car, and came up every year and smashed it. I'm serious. They brought hammers and sledgehammers, and they always had it up on the hill over here, and you would hear hammering, and they were smashing the car. The car would come in, and you knew its days were numbered. It was a ritual. They smashed the car and then left it for us," Farnham said.
"I'm saying all this because it's not an exaggeration; it's the way things were. And it reached the point, very bluntly, that the board of directors either had to change the course of the fair, or we were going to lose it. There's no question about it. It had reached the point of no return. And the board did it, and they deserve a lot of credit for doing a lot of different things and changing the complexion of the fair.
"I think the thing I'm happiest about and proudest about is the conversion of this fair. Now, it's become a family event. You can bring grandma and the kids, and nobody's going to be embarrassed or in danger or anything. We have camping now, but it's by reservation. We bill Sunday as family day, and that's just exactly what it is. Thousands of families just having a wonderful time."
There's still a beer tent, but it's closely supervised and no one can walk around drinking beer on the midway. It's no coincidence that the strip shows were invited to leave at the same time.
"Every fair in the state of Vermont had strip shows. This one had two of them. Up in Orleans County Fair, there were six or seven of them. There are none left anymore in Vermont. The Orleans County Fair thrived on all those girlie shows; they paid them big rent. It was a huge money-maker."
And while Farnham said he doesn't miss those attractions, their atmosphere, or some of the clientele they drew, he does say a strong source of the fair's revenue disappeared with them.
"They paid the fair good bucks. When we eliminated them — that's something that nobody thinks about — we lost a lot of money because of that. The replacement did not pay us anything close to what they paid."
Due to factors such as liability insurance premiums that Farnham has seen rocket from $400 to $40,000, and a $32,000 annual insurance bill, the fair is no longer self-sustaining. It relies on events that extend throughout the fall such as the upcoming Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival, to help pay the freight.
The wild days may be over, but Farnham still worries about the future of his world's fair. Now it's for reasons tied to his observation of steadily evaporating ties to our agrarian past. He knows that the push that succeeded several years back in doing away with dog sales at the fair, and the elimination of goldfish as concession prizes starting this year, were well-reasoned moves. But he also fears the possibility that someday soon it'll be considered dangerous for kids to pet farm animals. Or maybe the practice of keeping cattle in pens during the fair will become an issue.
"We still bill ourselves as an agricultural fair, and we are. And we want to keep it that way. This year and every year, we have a great problem here at Tunbridge: Our barns are overflowing with animals. That's a great problem to have; I love it. We'll probably have to put up a tent over here to house some overflow of cattle.
"If you're going to have an agricultural fair, you've got to have some semblance of agriculture, or we'll no longer be a rural, agricultural fair, we'll be a carnival. So, there are worries about the future."
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