At the Iowa State Fair there are many state fairs. Some people come for the beer and the musical acts: They’ll eat funnel cake, drink, and listen to Pitbull or whoever is playing the grandstand. Others are looking for the carnival atmosphere and the rides. But the stereotypical flashing lights and tilt-a-whirls, paired with beer and live music is, to me, pretty inessential to the fair experience. At the Iowa State Fair, as at others, you’ll find a great crowd of food vendors competing with ever-more aggressive flashing lights and plastic signs to get your dollars for too-expensive corn dogs. In the Varied Industries building, you’ll find people hocking hot tubs, gutter protectors, and propane grills. Outside of that building you’ll find the farm implement companies. These at least produce big machines that are cool to look at. But, again, the commercial aspect is not, for me, the heart of the fair. The real heart of the fair, of any good fair, is an expression of the rich interior life of the people who celebrate it: At a fair of this kind you can peer into the soul of a people.
The heart of the fair is found in whatever places the people themselves have brought their very best. Skip the rides and entertainments, and look for anything that can have a blue ribbon on it. The State Fair is, after all, the culmination of a year’s worth of county fairs. All of this has roots in agricultural life. At the county fair, the heart of things is the showing of livestock. Here, people will bring their prize steers, horses, sheep, and hogs. People keep and care for and raise and breed animals well, not just for commercial reasons, but for the craft of it, for the delight of it, for the beauty of it. But, of course, this celebration of rural life is not just a celebration of agriculture, it is a celebration of all that the people have to offer. Who can sing in this county? They’ll sing at the county fair. Who can make the best apple pie? Go to a county fair, and find out. The winners will make their way to Des Moines in August.
I entered the State Fair on a hot, late summer day, a day thick, as always, with corn-sweat. Have you mingled with mullet-wearers, Sturgis-loving motorcycle riders, and Mexican cowboys? Have you chatted with a dolled-up 4H girl who has worked hard all year preparing a perfectly handsome sheep? Are you used to belt buckles, cutoff t-shirts, or embroidered jeans? If you answered no, you are missing much of your country.
Of course, the State Fair has all types. Suburban families and young professionals, black, white, Asian, and Latino. And this is part of the delight of it. It is, I think, a great achievement of civilization that millions of people, so very different in every way, will mingle and rub sticky shoulders over these two weeks with nary a conflict and little incident. I couldn’t help but think, as I entered the crowded Grand Concourse (the main street of the fairgrounds), of G.K. Chesterton’s poem Gold Leaves, which describes a crowd: “Where shift in strange democracy/ the million masks of God.”
I recently received an email from a stranger in response to an effort I was organizing in Des Moines to promote civility amongst neighbors. She didn’t need to talk to her political opponents, she said, because those people were “demons,” and they needed to be destroyed. But the people she had in mind were here at the fair, wandering around, laughing, smiling, and soaking it in. What was it about this atmosphere that made us all get along? Had these strangers started talking politics, would they have come to blows? To me, the State Fair suggests that our common humanity is deeper and stronger than our political apprehensions. We need places that put us together, in physical proximity, to remind us of that.
A friend of mine came back to Des Moines from New York City with his New Jersey wife. It was her first time at the fair, and she couldn’t believe the kindness of strangers. One fellow came to her aid when he noticed the couple sitting at a table sticky with spilled beer. He used his napkins to clean it up and then took their trash to boot. At the Giant Slide, another stranger offered her a handful of free tickets. She was wary of being taken in somehow. But my friend, her husband, assured her that people just do things like that.
In the hubbub of the Concourse, I was reminded of an exercise I used to try when, living in a big city, I rode the subway. There are often people on public transit with poor manners. I recall that one hot afternoon, there was a large man eating out of a styrofoam carton full of pungent Chinese food. I was resentful and projected all kinds of judgment on him. But I tried to see him in a different way. This was someone’s son. Someone had held him tenderly when he was a baby. Had he once made his dad proud at a Little League game? What struggles and hopes did he have in high school? As I imagined his history, his relationships, his vulnerabilities, I saw that he was something much more than just a rude stranger. Resentment eased away.
Thomas Merton, the famous spiritual writer and Trappist monk, once recorded a life-changing experience he had on a crowded Louisville street:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
I thought of this, too, as I saw the great mass of humanity at the fair. No doubt, I was looking at a great cast of sinners. No doubt they were failures like me. No doubt many of them are annoying to live with and have bad habits and have made mistakes. But I wager they also had their own unique joys, their great moments, and the places in their hearts where tenderness still lived.
One of my favorite things to see each year is the fair’s art salon. Located in a plain, concrete building at the top of the hill (the whole fairgrounds are on a great big hill on Des Moines’ East Side), the art salon is buzzing throughout the day. Photography, woodcarving, plastic arts, sculpting, painting, drawing, and mixed media all have their time in the sun. Blue, periwinkle, and burgundy ribbons note the standouts in the show.
Here, gathered together, are the souls of strangers and fellow Iowans. As I look through the photographs in one wing of the building, I see what matters to Iowans, what moves them, and in what places they find beauty. I see a great attentiveness to nature. I see calm wetland mornings with blue herons and snowstorms braved for a perfect shot of a frosted bison. I notice contemplative portraits of the lined faces of grandparents and the smooth ones of babies. Each photographer has brought a little bit of their own treasure and shared it. Why? I doubt many covet too much a little blue ribbon. I suspect that they do it for the joy of seeing, making, and sharing beauty.
I am encouraged by this in the age of artificial, automated “art.” There are still those who cherish the human. In a world obsessed with political posturing, there is a place for the delight in nature’s beauty, in the creativity of the human hand. The spirit of this humble amateur art show feels so contrary to the rancor of our public life. As long as Iowans are still taking their time to do things like this, I think, all is not lost.
At the heart of the Iowa State Fair, for me, is the work of farmers. In the old world and the new, farmers have gathered each year to proudly show their animals and their most beautiful produce. Since I was a little kid, I’ve loved to see the big pumpkins and the big boar. Huge, flabby, flowing gourds mesmerize kids still. The big boar in the hog barn huffs and puffs under his gargantuan weight. You would be shocked, if you haven’t been to a state fair like this, to see a pig that is almost as big as a compact car.
But what impresses me now that I am older are the people who show the animals. You can watch with what special, focused care a 12-year-old grooms and primes his goat or his lamb. Considerable attention has been paid to the human’s appearance too, whether that’s a new pair of bootcut jeans and the best jewelry they own or a smart riding outfit or dress. To watch the focus in the faces of young people as they guide their animals around the arena with switches or trot astride them or clip along in little carriages is also a moving thing. Just like in the art salon, here are Iowans giving their best, doing things of beauty.
There’s a note of sadness, for me, too. If art is threatened by automation, so is farming. Industrial hog barns, autopilot combines, and robotic milking have meant that much of the work of humans on the farm has been eliminated. That’s not all bad. Innovations have removed a good deal of real drudgery. At the same time, it means fewer and fewer people are growing food, and farm country empties out. So it goes as farmers struggle to keep up with global supply chains. A century ago, some 30 percent of Americans lived on farms. Now something like 1 percent work on them.
This is a loss because agricultural life encourages certain virtues. A farmer must be patient, resilient, and humble before nature. A farmer relies on the community of his neighbors to help with jobs he cannot do alone, and helps them in return. Membership and mutuality characterize farm life. At the same time, closeness to the land and the creatures that dwell in it remind us that the land is not simply there for our use and exploitation. The presence of farmers, at their best, is the presence of caretakers of the land. And the more distant we become from the caretakers, the more distant we become from the need for care in the first place.
To you, an ear of corn might just be an ear of corn. But if you stretch your eye along the plates and plates of sweet corn in the Agriculture Building, you’ll become aware that there is much more than meets the eye. Dozens of farmers and gardeners have spent time and attention tending and nurturing the most beautiful head of grain they can, and they’ve entered it here at the fair, where this perfection can be appreciated. So it goes also with the beans, the cabbages, the gourds, the apples, and so on.
It is here in the Agriculture Building that you can also find the butter cow. I must say, I am encouraged that this life-sized, butter-based, bovine sculpture still draws long lines. What does such a thing have on a Marvel blockbuster or anything on TikTok? Well, it has history and it has a special place in the hearts of locals. Above the buttery artwork you can see photos of the long line of sculptors, going back to 1911, who have crafted these works of art over the years. It’s a simple thing, maybe even a corny, cheesy thing—but it is a very human thing indeed, and more importantly, it is ours.
Just west of the Agriculture Building, you’ll find the talent stage. Here is a little girl playing Haydn on the piano, followed by a dance performance inspired by the Joker, and a baton twirling display. More impressive things could be pulled up in an instant on Instagram. But who cares? What matters here is that young human hearts are doing their best.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that the whole point of politics is to protect moments like these. “It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects,” he wrote, “—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.”
Implicit in this description is the necessary common good of peace. This supreme good is a necessity for the conduct of human joy. When we argue about politics, when we are tempted to get too hot and passionate and violent, we have to remember the moments of the little girl playing piano, of the strangers mingling happily together, of the artist and his easel, of the farmer and his calf. The peace and civil concord that allows these things is not a given—it is an achievement.
I won’t say that going to the State Fair will absolutely change your life or your outlook. It’s a simpler, humbler thing than that. But, if you want to be reminded of what America is about, then it is good to be reminded of the normal, healthy, human things, and you’ll find some of that at the fair. The ordinary joy of normal families, the delight of amateur artists in the beauty of the land, the labor of farmers and craftsmen, the mixing and mingling of diverse people in peace and good order—these are things the state exists to protect.
