Evening star., 1947-09-01
Revisiting a County Fair
Vacationing Reporter Finds Things Have Been Added
To the Scenes He Used to Know
By George Kennedy

since 1868 on the same site near the village
of Hamburg, 16 miles south Of Buffalo. The
fair was started around natural spring and
pool used by the Senecas and Eries two CEN
turies ago. Shading the spring and the nearby
picnic tables stands grove of tall elms. silver
beech and maple with an occasional towering
white pine. The big grandstand Is of brick and
steel. Exhibition buildings are all about the
half mile track. This year there were four
Ferris wheels on the Midway and 10 shows
as taudry as those to be seen in any fair or
carnival. The leaders of the county agricultural
society, which conducts the fair, believe that
it is the biggest single county fair in the East.
The famed York fair in Pennsylvania is larger
but it is a tricounty project. The fair at Ham,
burg is bigger than many State fairs.
The older sheds housing the cattle, the
horses and the swine are the same ones that
were there when I was boy-but many more
have been added. We village boys did enjoy
inspecting the live stock-after we had spent
all our money on the Midway. This time
found myself going to the cattle sheds first.
There's nothing new at the fair" everyone
always says come fair week. But we never
had those rows of black Aberdeen Angus beef
cattle at the fair when was boy-or in the
period between the wars 1t is post OPA
prices that have beef cattle invading this
dairy country-eating grass along one of the
important pipe lines of the New York City
milk shed. Leo Winter of North Collins told
me he had got the record price in the East
Buffalo stockyards for year-old beef-$2510
a hundred for his herd of Angus steers. Four
teen-year old Howard Able of Eden won the
blue ribbon for his 840-pound Angus steer in
the All club show 1t was bid in by Buffalo
NJ of r1oIlp6-cI,ch q
as cattle men used to read with incredulity
when the Palmer Houses top bid would take
the prize two-year old steer at the Chicago
livestock show. Young Able goes back to
school with $500 for his skill in feeding a calf
worth $35 year and half ago.
Something New at the Fair.
AS usual, the big interest among the city
folk looking over the dairy cattle was in the
gigantic bulls whose weights, always in the
.1eighborhood of a ton, are posted outside their
big box stalls. A black and white Holstein
seems to be the biggest but the most beautiful
is an Ayershire. With wide spread Of horn
and only an occasional tan splotch on his
white coat, he looks like the artists concept
of the bull that carried away Europa.
eThere's nothing new at the fair!" Over
the door inside the cattle shed is a sign that
probably means the days of the bull in the
family farms pastures are numbered. why
keep a bull that may MAIN or kill members
of your family" it reads. The sign is selling
artificial dissemination. The farmer who raises
his own bull must feed the animal for more
than four years (and they have good appe-
tites) before ne knows whether ne has a sire
whose daughters will be up to standard in
producing milk.
We remember the academic speculation of
a generation back on the possibilities Of ap-
plying the eugenic principles of animal hus
bandry to human beings. Perhaps there's too
much new at the fair.
(This Is the first OF t,Do articles. The
second 1riH appear ton,orToD.)