A Trip Back In Time

Saturday, August 25, 2007, at about 7:00 p.m. I boarded a time machine and was whisked back over 4 decades.

Travis and Laurette provided Melinda and me with this nostalgic trip. Our adventure back to years past began as Travis piloted the machine through a time warp at the gates of the Wilson County Fair in Lebanon, Tennessee.

I had not been to a county fair since I was in my late teens and had been a regular at the now defunct Clay County Fair in West Point, Mississippi.

I can only say that it was a most enjoyable trip as I yearned for those simplier days of youth and slathered a freshly-fried corndog with mustard and relived the sights, sounds and smells of days gone by.

With the big ferris wheel turning over and over in the background of the midway, Melinda and I stopped for a while at the cattle barn, grabbed seats in the grandstand and watched the judging of some beautiful white Charloias heifers and bulls. Then on to the poultry and rabbit area to view some chickens, ducks, turkeys and some strange-looking fowl and rabbits. Purple, blue, red and white ribbons hung from some of the cages as these animals had been judged to be the best of the lot.

I took a little walk of my own wandering through replicas of old businesses and shops of times past on to a vegetable garden maintained by the Wilson County Master Gardeners.

On the grounds were old farm tractors -- ones that I had not seen in years -- the John Deere A, the Farmall C and the International Harvester Cub. I was disappointed -- I did not see an old Ford or Ferguson -- the type of tractor that we had owed at our farm. These would have completed my trip to old farm equipment.

We visited the pavillion where baked goods, canned fruits and vegetables, quilts and other handiworks had been judged and were left on display for fairgoers to marvel, or in my case to sometimes say, "I can do better than that." No, Travis' apple pie was not there because officials had thrown it away earlier in the week when it did not garner one of the coveted ribbons.

About 10:30 Travis drove the time machine back into the present completing a journey of three and a half hours or so into a time long held dear to me.

Thank you Travis and Laurette -- I had a most wonderful time, and I hope this is a part of Americana that will not soon disappear as have so many of our other institutions of the past.