County fair memories of a 4-H veteran

County fair week always brings a flood of happy 4-H memories. I joined 4-H the second I turned 9 years old. They didn’t have the Cloverbud program back then or I would have pestered my parents to join sooner.

4-H was one of the first “organized” things I did. I wasn’t old enough for school extracurriculars yet. There was a dance and gymnastics studio in my small hometown but after a couple of ill-fated classes, it became clear I was not destined to pursue that particular route.

I did the Brownie Scout thing and eventually grew into a Girl Scout. I have happy memories of camping in tents and learning to carve bars of soap into unrecognizable shapes and incinerate marshmallows over a campfire but was not destined for a future in Scouting, either. My parents told me to pick one — Scouts or 4-H — because they weren’t driving me all over the county trying to do both.

The choice was a no brainer. I was willing to forego all the Girl Scout Cookies in the world to be a member of the Wapello Willing Workers 4-H Club. The Willing Workers later merged with the Busy Bees when the membership of both clubs dropped to dangerously low levels.

I love county fair week although today’s programs are different from my 4-H years in Louisa County.

Back then, there were boys’ clubs and there were girls’ clubs. There were, however, project clubs (horses, dogs, etc.) that claimed both genders as members but true co-ed clubs were a long way in the future. As a member of both a 4-H “home ec” club and the dog project club, I felt like I carried dual citizenship.

Girls could take livestock exhibits to the fair but they were also required to be enrolled in home ec projects. There was no such requirement for boys.

There were also emphasis years for girls that rotated between cooking, sewing and home furnishing. I was a lukewarm chef and an indifferent (polite word for awful) seamstress but I loved the home furnishing years. Back in the 1980s, the girls’ exhibit hall at my county fairgrounds abounded with refinished antique furniture. Such pieces seem rare now. Did everyone’s grandma’s attic get cleaned out?

Before the county fair, we had an achievement show. (I have it on good authority this tradition still exists.) About a month before fair, all of the Busy Bees gathered up their projects, which were expected to be completed (our mothers would have none of that final-coat-of-varnish-the-night-before-judging nonsense), and hauled them to a church basement where they were evaluated by someone who told us how to make the best better. When it was all over, we hauled everything home again and spent the next month improving our projects so they would be spectacular by fair week.

The cooking emphasis years meant repeated rounds of baking cakes or bars or bread. We learned to deal with pressure at an early age when baking the final fair exhibit (the only acceptable finishing-it-the-night-before-the-fair activity). I’m sure the winning contestants on those stress-filled cooking shows are probably 4-H veterans who learned early how to make uniform drop cookies and tip a hot loaf of quick bread out of the pan without it breaking or sticking.

When the fair started, we hauled our projects to the fairgrounds, where they were judged, whether we’d improved them or not. We called it conference judging because each exhibitor sat down with a judge and had a little conference about her projects. Now they call it static judging. Exhibitors and judges still sit down and have conferences so I’m not sure what was gained by the new verbiage.

At the end of the judging day, the exhibits chosen to go to the Iowa State Fair were displayed in the center of the building, set off by a velvet rope. It was always a thrill to see one of my projects on the inside of that rope, even if it meant I had to make that coffee cake one more time to be taken to Des Moines in August. By then, I’m sure my family was heartily tired of coffee cake. Forty-five years later, I still dust off the recipe occasionally and make it for old-time’s sake.

I hope today’s 4-H’ers smile as much as I do when looking back on their fair memories years from now.

Comments: Melinda.Wichmann@southeastiowaunion.com