Fair Pranks

Stephen Nelson recalls going with his farming father to the fair each year to exhibit their livestock. One year, his dad pulled off some fair pranks to add levity to the event.

Many memorable moments and practical jokes made people laugh at the fair. When a person asking a question to someone who has known the answer since they were a child, the “expert” forgets at times, it’s because the questioner is seeking an answer. The only time a person who grew up in a city or even the town a few miles from a farm would see the farmer with his cattle might be at the town fair. When a fair was held in a large city, even though the farming community called it the fair, it was advertised and called an “exhibition” by the city. It was a much larger exhibition of produce, livestock, poultry and amusements like the midway and games.

We’ve all been teased about something because our ignorance of a subject. Even though we may poke fun at people as farmers tell possible exaggerations of the truth regarding farm-related questions, city folks could do the same to a farm-raised person who was visiting a city for the first time. As said before, going to the fair to exhibit your livestock was a social gathering for the farmers. Dad used to call it his “vacation,” even though it was hard work to take the cattle to the fair and show them and manage his farm chores as well.

One early morning, Dad returned to the fairgrounds after going home to do the morning chores carrying an open cardboard box. I couldn’t understand why in the world Dad had the box. I was more confused when he let me peek in it to see the package of wieners and some toothpicks. Maybe as a 12-year-old, it was the lack of sleep from spending the night at the fair, hearing sounds of mooing cows, farmers clipping their animals and milking them to get ready for exhibiting them the next day, I thought Mom had sent them as my breakfast.

Without answering my questions, he took out his jackknife and opened the package. He told me to take a bite of one wiener and not swallow the bitten off piece. Using a toothpick, he attached the small piece to the front of the wiener from which it was taken. Four other toothpicks, two in the front and two in the back, angled like sawhorses let the wiener stand up. Another toothpick was stuck in the end of the wiener.

With others wondering what he was up to, he got an old rough board and nailed it to the beam of the barn, placing the cardboard box with the tooth-picked wiener in it, over the rough board. A bale of straw was put near the board for people to climb to look in the box.

What’s going on? Come and see the hairless dog!! I stood there and asked people if they wanted to see the hairless dog for free. We told those who did not to frighten it and worded our conversation so those fooled wouldn’t give away the fun. Hundreds came to see it. Some folks were afraid to look. The midway vendors came because they thought we were charging, and apparently many midway patrons were talking about the hairless dog.

Stephen Nelson is self-publishing his experiences growing up on the family dairy farm from the 1960s to the 1980s. This story, “Fair Pranks,” is included in the book, entitled “Down on the Farm, Way Back When,” which will be published in March 2025.

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