My stomach would get butterflies traveling from the west side to the east side just when the bluff came into view. When you’re 8 or so and a flatlander, this blue rise in the distance was our mountain.
Turn right and there was Camp Tallaha, turn left and go through Charleston and there was a familiar fairground that brought nothing but joy and excitement.
The county fairgrounds held the yearly 4-H Club fair, where all members in all the clubs showed their prize goods. Long before I was old enough to join the 4-H Club, it was a goal to belong because my brother was a member and I followed my older brother around like a puppy. He had a calf one year and then a sow named “Miss Dollie.” These blue-ribbon winners helped pay for his college; exactly how, I was spared from knowing. Once without warning, he handed me a long cane and told me to enter the ring and keep a small pig going around the ring. Piece of cake; I made him proud.
My mother was a 4-H sponsor. She taught a group of girls after school and I was very impressed. Being an artist, Mom focused on home decor type crafts or needlework. My Aunt Evelyn was a home demonstration agent and could do anything to make running a home go smoothly. When the two went to the fair, it was a daylong event. Mom and I would search out my brother in the livestock barn; to us, he was the prize of the show, our pride and joy.
I loved the smells in the livestock stalls. The feed, the hay, the other business, I grew up able to identify animals’ other business by visiting the different livestock stalls. That’s a fact I’ve always taken pride in.
One year after my brother was off to college, I found myself all ramped up to enter a greased pig contest, catch it and keep it. This was before girls wore blue jeans but I had some black threadbare slacks I changed into. I promise I jumped into that ring and grabbed hold of that pig and hung on for dear life, until this mean girl started howling at me and pointing, as the whole back of my shirt had split wide open. I let the pig go.
I never raised livestock — it was my brother’s thing — but I could sew a dress or make any arts or craft project you could name. We just loved to spend months making our sewing box or recipe box getting ready for the fair. I didn’t get a blue ribbon with my recipe box because I didn’t care to cook and the judges actually called me on leaving out ingredients. But a red ribbon was OK.
I made a blue ribbon on my aqua skirt blouse and vest. I admit it could have been neater on the inside with tacked down knots, but my mom was an artist after all, not a technician, and the outside dazzled the judges with the aqua and white polka dots blouse.
I was passing by these very fairgrounds Friday and I was carried down memory lane.
I looked up 4-H Club on the internet and it is alive, well and thriving. I don’t see any of our local kids showing off their club prizes, so I’m just hoping it’s still thriving in these parts. Head, Heart, Hands, Health; making the best better.
The 4-H pledge:
I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking;
My HEART to greater loyalty;
My HANDS to larger service to my community, country and world; and
My HEALTH to better living.
