Bill Moeller Commentary: When Is it Fair Time?

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While searching through the dark jungle of my file cabinet for inspiration for the next column, I came across a draft of one that was scheduled to be submitted back in 2013 near the SWW Fair time — but was never used. It had to do with the future of the fair and, in reading through it again, I found it’s just as topical today as it was then. It’s hard to imagine August without our fair, but that’s our crazy world right now. So, here are some excerpts from a different time. 

Commenting on a slow dwindling of attendance, I wrote:

Oh sure, the carnival rides, a destruction derby and featured performers will always draw crowds but the reason that fairs were staged in the first place is being slowly pushed into the background.  How long will it be before they’ll be forgotten?

Fairs were a natural outgrowth of both our once rural lifestyle and competition — which is always a part of human nature. So many people living then had a cow and a few chickens.  I remember seeing a very old Centralia telephone book that listed 23 or so dairies.  Anyone who sold some of the milk old Bossie produced was classified as a “dairy.”  Whose animal was better than the neighbor’s was always a matter of dispute and pride.

That competition is still with us but it’s been shifted to the status of hobbies through such youth-oriented organizations as Future Farmers of America and 4H.  I hope they never die out because the lessons taught in responsibility alone are worth the effort involved in those activities.

Homemaking skills are still being judged but their emphasis has also become more hobby-oriented and less the result of everyday living. You’re a certified “old timer” if you remember the do-it-yourself cannery on Gold Street in Centralia where families —mostly the mothers — could preserve enough fruits and vegetables to last the family through the winter.

The slow decline in the focus of fairs parallels the decline in Grange membership and activities.  An example of that decline is the lonely Alpha Prairie Grange building still standing on the Centralia-Alpha Road. That building and a nearby cemetery are the only reminders of what was once the center of a vibrant and growing community. The book, “Alpha,” by Victor J. Kucera fills nearly 400 pages with its history. I had a hard time putting it down after I started reading it. Am I assuming something when I say that it’s probably still available at the Lewis County Museum?



The competition which was such a large part of the formation of fairs had its basis in everyday living.  Nearly every community had its own band, in fact most people could play a musical instrument of some kind.  Competition in sports was serious business.  Thirty or so years ago — when I inaugurated KELA’s “Let’s Talk About It”— I remember devoting nearly two entire programs to competition between Tono and Mendota, particularly in summer baseball games.

Until recent years, the entertainment was a factor in drawing crowds to the fairgrounds but the biggest stars have priced themselves out of the ability of smaller communities to hire them.  Booking a “star of the future” is a big gamble, and one poor performance can have an effect on future attendance for several years.  The likes of The Smothers Brothers or Johnny Cash will never appear on our fair stage again, but I somehow managed to sit in the front row when they were here. 

Hopefully, when we find some answers to our current health crisis, plans will begin for the next grand opening of the SWW Fair and we can talk about the “old days” without any masks, while standing in line for scones or ears of corn!

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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.