I don’t recall attending many county or state fairs when we were kids, although my parents claim that every trip we ever made in that old station wagon of ours qualified as a bona fide rodeo. When dad transferred overseas in the military in the early ’60s, we took up residence in a couple of small villages in southern France and spent three years there experiencing the culture, food and lifestyle of which I still have fond memories.

The French (at least in the villages where we lived) didn’t hold many fairs like the ones we’re used to here in the West. Oh they had open air markets all the time with plenty of fresh produce, breads, meats, housewares and animals wandering about, but those pretty much happened on a regular basis in the middle of town, and it seemed like every day was market day.

For us kids, the big attraction (similar to our Cache County Fair) was the food and watching the animals. With four boys all under the age of eight, mom easily could’ve held her own against any pig or sheep herder around. Her specialty when it came to getting us dressed and into the car on Sunday mornings was bulldogging and calf roping/hog tying.

The closest event we ever witnessed with animals in a ring was a bull fight we attended while visiting some of my parents’ friends stationed in Madrid, Spain. As a kid it was hard to understand all the pomp and circumstance that preceded the deaths of six or eight bulls that bucked and charged about the ring, anxious to mix it up with anyone or anything that moved. As enamored with swords, spears, and barbed skewers as boys can be, I still felt sorry for the bulls.

As an older youth I much preferred the storybook tale of “Ferdinand the bull” who relished sitting peacefully under a cork tree in his pasture, smelling the flowers and contentedly watching the other bulls frisk about in the meadow. Ferdinand’s eventual appearance in the bull ring had a much happier ending than the one we witnessed in Madrid. Check out the story if you’ve never read it; it’s a classic.

About the only kind of parade we witnessed in France was the weekly sojourn of gypsy wagons and herds of cows making their way up the road right past our house from the river banks. We all watched anxiously, hoping for and usually getting a bird’s eye view of the cow pies as they exited the disinterested cows and plop-plop-plopped onto the street. It was almost as exciting as finding a dead squirrel in the woods! We were so easily entertained.

I vaguely recall going to a world’s fair in New York after we arrived back in the U.S., and of course my brothers and I were most interested in the exhibits that moved, spun, whistled, gyrated, soared, flew and spewed smoke.

The parades that I remember the most other than the constant takeoffs and landings of cargo planes returning from Vietnam over base housing where we lived were the parades where I marched with our high school marching band. The only thing close to a fair we attended was the National Scout Jamboree in Moraine State Park in 1973 and various scout encampments and scout-o-ramas.

Our visits to my grandparents dairy farm in Trenton and subsequent outings over to the neighbors dairy across the street fulfilled much of our hankerings to be “cowboys,” and we loved watching grandpa start the big tractor and drive up and down the fields. I still remember the musty smell of oil soaked dirt in the tractor shed and manure in the milking barn and how those familiar scents permeated the mudroom on the back of the farmhouse where grandpa hung his work coveralls.

Funny how smells have a way of launching us back through time to specific experiences we had as kids and adults. We always knew when we were approaching the Western plains as we viewed the majestic purple shapes of the mountains in the distance and breathed in the familiar dusky scent of sagebrush drifting up from the flats along the foothills.

The sights, sounds and smells of the fair only came to us every few years as we lived in states far away from Cache Valley and Bannock County, Idaho, where my dad’s parents lived. Other than fishing, the fair and rodeo ranked number one and two in our list of things to do when visiting Utah and Idaho. Of course buying penny candy from Merrill’s store in Trenton with the bags of pennies my grandma saved for us between visits was a highlight as well.

Having lived in Cache Valley for the past 48 years, the fair still commands a lofty place in my childhood memories. The fair has changed with the times and is now partially housed in a new building and improved stockyards. I miss the numerous community displays created from vegetable and flower gardens representing the best Cache Valley agriculture had to offer along with the hometown feel of living close to God’s beautiful handiwork.

Of course when I really want to experience some deja vu, I head into the cow barn and listen for the plop-plop-plops.

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