GUILFORD — On the Sunday before Labor Day, Guilford Town Clerk Penny Marine traded her desk at the town offices for blue jeans and a raspberry-colored “Staff” T-shirt.
“It's been a great day today, been nonstop folks coming through,” said Marine, sporting a great big grin while selling tickets to the two-day Guilford Fair for her 13th year in a row.
At the entrance, where hundreds of cars parked where hay once grew, crowds of people, old and young made their way down the dirt road towards the fairgrounds, dust kicked up in their wake. High school student volunteers driving golf carts helped shuttle those with tired feet back to their vehicles.
The aroma of hot french fries, wood-fired pizza, BBQ pork sandwiches, and Jamaican specialties floated along with the light wind, welcoming visitors.
There were the agricultural favorites - cattle shows, sheep shearing demonstrations, horse shows, and ox pulls - along with performances by New England Center for Circus Arts, a classic car show, and even an outhouse presentation.
It was all here - everything that makes a sweet Vermont country fair a classic.
'It just plain grew'
It all started nearly eight decades ago during World War II. Gas rationing was in effect, making it difficult for neighbors to see one another. Guilford residents thought having an Old Home Day event would be just the way to celebrate Labor Day - and so they had one. Some people came in cars that year, others by horse and carriage.
In 1989, Guilford resident Ralph Bullock, who attended that very first fair out behind the sawmill at the Evans Farm on Guilford Center Road, told the Brattleboro Reformer that Roy Thurber and Forrest Gallup “came up with the idea for a horse-drawing event to be the focus of a town-wide picnic, something that has been the fair's main event in its history,” the article said.
“That first year started by word of mouth and it just plain grew,” Bullock told the newspaper.
In those first few years, when attendance topped 1,200 visitors, the gathering was moved to its present-day site, where permanent buildings are now perched on land purchased from the former Whittemore Farm.
While it's true that most of the founders of the event are now gone, the Fitch family continues the traditions begun by their father Bill Fitch, a Guilford resident who also attended the very first fair.
Bill Fitch, a rural delivery carrier for the post office, played outfield at another annual Fair event, the Evans Cornfield Guilford Baseball game, where two teams of local men - single men versus the married men - competed. According to news stories, Fitch, who died in 1998, the single men usually won.
Fitch was the superintendent of the produce, displayed in the former Floral Hall, renamed Fitch Hall in his memory. Today, his son Dwight, though no longer local, drives up from Massachusetts to continue the tradition, serving as the current superintendent of produce.
A tight competition
Fitch Hall was the site of the entries for dozens of contests in the area of forage crops, garden produce, canned and prepared foods, horticulture exhibits, clothing and fancywork, handicrafts and hobbies, and photography.
The hall was brimming with classic homemade quilts and sweaters, along with many other varied crafts. Representing a more modern touch, homemade knit dolls characterizing the television classic Dr. Who stood on a timeline of the show.
The hall was also packed with canned goods - dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, dilly beans, every imaginable flavor of canned jams and jellies - and prize vegetables, including a huge green pumpkin, and three spectacularly large turnips.
In fact, almost every vegetable found in a country garden was represented in a bright and clean entry sitting neatly on a white paper plate. Many of those plates sported first-prize blue ribbons or red ribbons, indicating a second-place finish.
The end of the hall was festooned with flowers galore in vases of all sizes, with blooming hanging pots of pink, red, and yellow plants in all their glory above them.
At the end of the hall sat Carla Fogg, of Brattleboro, who saw a call for volunteers on the Fair's Facebook page and came along to mind the T-shirt and poster sale table. She's only a half-hour into her new position, having just taken over from Mollie Burke, a state representative from Brattleboro and a longtime area art teacher.
“It's just nice to be out and to see all the people,” Fogg observed as she peddled her wares and waved to passersby.
She was referring to the current pause in the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed the Guilford Fair in 2020. The coronavirus is still out there, lurking over even those longtime events that have resumed in person after a public health hiatus.
Other members of the Fitch family continue to make their mark.
Over at the Bingo shed, Bill Fitch's daughter, Bobbie Fitch Haumann, supervised the games, whose proceeds benefit the Broad Brook Grange's scholarship fund. At long wooden tables with markers in piles and old Bingo cards set out in family groups, she told The Commons that she still lives on the family farm on Fitch Road.
While she chatted, the Bingo game was in full swing. Guilford resident Richard Austin sat in front of an ancient Bingo cage, selecting weathered 1-inch wooden balls and, with each draw, calling out a successive letter-and-number combination over his microphone.
Austin, who has been calling out numbers and letters longer than he can remember, held up some ancient cards.
“This set has been around about as long as the Fair has,” he said with pride.
“B-12!” Austin announced.
“Bingo!” a young adult shouted. Volunteers checked her card, and she came away with a $2 prize.
'An affordable family event'
Over at the Guilford Historical Society booth, amid books and artifacts, fairgoers could poke through a basket and pick up pieces of old ceiling plaster. As they examined the unusual artifacts, they learned the plaster came from the ceiling of the Guilford Center Meetinghouse.
The 1837 Georgian-style building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, needs a new ceiling, and the society is trying to raise awareness and at least $100,000. Fair goers strolled through their booth, enjoying the many books and artifacts on display.
Meanwhile, just over a grassy knoll, screams of delight punctuated the air as the folks on the flying swings took off and whirled through the blue sky.
Announcer Wayne Warwick - the voice of the Fair for many years - pressed the button on his microphone in the office, letting visitors know about events as they were about to begin.
Warwick also staffs the window, where he “enjoys helping out and meeting the people.” He particularly enjoys the Fair Food, having just finished a tiger roll with a filling of crab rangoon from a vendor across the way.
“It's delicious,” declared Warwick as another fairgoer approached his window.
Right behind him sat Rohan Providence, an open tablet and a laptop computer at hand, as he tallied up a stack of paper money while also trying to eat a late lunch.
Providence, in his second year as treasurer for the Guilford Fair board, noted that the fair isn't designed to make money. It is designed to make just enough money each year to cover the insurance and the upkeep of the grounds and its other expenses so it can stay afloat and come back next year.
“We get a little bit of help from the state funds that buy some of our prizes, and we have some wonderful local business sponsors who are generous in supporting us,” he said.
Mainly, the goal of the fair is to “keep the Guilford Fair an affordable family event,” Providence said.
“We haven't raised ticket prices in many years. Kids under 6 are still free, seniors are still $5,” he added. “Guilford Fair has always been a nice country fair.”
As if to punctuate that sentence, a child of about 8 years old ran by, dragging his father by the hand. He has a plastic alien, won at a game booth in the amusement section, attached to his back.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the boy shouted. “Let's go get root beer floats!”