The people of Petunia Valley are fractious and disputatious by nature. The only thing we can agree about is Toronto. However, we rarely take up weapons and kill each other. We consider it much more sporting to wear an opponent down slowly over half a century.
This is one of the reasons we have a fall fair. Competition is bred into us, it seems. Whenever two or three are gathered together from the same denomination of livestock, field crop or tuberous begonia, it isn’t very long before comparisons are made, challenged and submitted to arbitration.
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Our fair has been held every year since 1833, although not always in Port Petunia. A strong rivalry between Port Petunia and the town of Larkspur, 10 miles south, punched a number of gaps in our record. These occurred in 1862-65 and 1880-83 and 1908-10 and were all due to arson. It is an undisputed fact that the residents of Larkspur burned our fair building down three times. However, we burned theirs down four times and put them out of the fair business permanently. People often ask why the Petunia Valley Agra-Culture Pavilion has never had any alteration in 90 years. The answer is that it is constructed of brick, steel and asbestos and the bill for tampering with it in any way would bankrupt the fair board.
I took a walk around our fair last weekend. In the cattle barn, old Owly Drysdale was leaning against the show ring fence, scowling at his nemesis, “Radical” Jack McCausland, the beef judge from Larkspur. Jack is a Hereford man and Owly hails from the Shorthorn tribe.
“What does he know about cattle?” fumed Owly. “He’s put five rabbits ahead of a rhinoceros in that class!” The rhinoceros in question was, of course, a Shorthorn.
I moved on to the sheep barn, where another pair of mortal enemies, Wilf Smalley, the chair of the sheep show and Jimmy Lafferty, another leading local shepherd, stood eye-to-eye over a pen of market lambs.
“You can’t judge market lambs properly on the hoof,” complained Jimmy. “You have to offer a carcass class to tell which one is best.”
“The kids don’t want to look at dead sheep,” snapped Wilf.
“So why do you give first prize to that ropeylookin’ Suffolk?” asked Jimmy.
“Because the judge thought he looked better than that overfat Dorset you brought.”
Over in the Homecraft Section, Vera Humphrey scoffed at a very complex double Irish chain quilt submitted by nine-year old Penny Pargeter.
“If that little girl made that quilt by herself, my ass is a star!” she fumed. I saw Penny’s two aunts rise up on the other side of a macramé display, like two hooded cobras. I jogged towards the exit and made my way out into the horse ring.
There, in the frail afternoon sunlight, I held my breath as a beautiful four-horse hitch of glossy Belgians thundered past like a shower of gold. “Aren’t they beautiful?” I asked out loud to no-one in particular.
“Hmmph!” said a voice behind me and I turned to see old Garn Pargeter, the retired teamster. “They’ll ruin the breed with this foolishness. They’ve got them so tall they couldn’t pull a soother out of a baby’s mouth.”
I gave the Baby Contest and the Junior Fair Ambassador elections a wide berth and went straight over to the Antique Tractor tent where I sat down heavily beside my old friend Vern Bunton. For years, Vern has brought the only 55 Massey Hillside tractor to the fair.
“Why is it that they all fight so hard?” I asked him. “Well, you should know the answer to that,” said
Vern. “It’s because the stakes are so low. The important thing is, everybody’s having fun.”
“I suppose,” I said. “But you know, I’ve always liked the tractor guys because they don’t hand out ribbons or prize money. They just sit together with their medications on a card table and talk about train wrecks from the past.”
Vern chuckled and nodded. I glanced at the lineup of tractors and noticed a shiny red newcomer at the end.
“Say, isn’t that another Massey Hillside?” I asked. Vern’s eyes narrowed. “That’s my brother-in-law’s, the insurance guy…Nick No-Fault…” “It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”
“Nah, he used the cheap paint, put the wrong tires on it and he even screwed up the decals. It’s a disgrace!”
