Fair is an opportunity to connect

This summer isn’t likely to go down in history as anyone’s favorite.
Floods and crop damage guarantee that.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t still be fun.
A little thing called the Jay County Fair may be just the tonic the doctor ordered.
It kicked off today and continues through Saturday, and for our money you’d be hard pressed to find a better opportunity for the community to come together.
One of the charms of the fair is that it’s a place where people re-connect. It’s possible in our busy lives to go an entire year and not cross paths with old friends, but it’s hard to take a stroll around the fairgrounds this week and not see someone you know. It may, in fact, be that old friend you’ve been missing.
It could be a high school buddy you run into on the midway.
It might be someone you see once a year at the 4-H livestock auction.
It could even be someone you see regularly but encounter in a different context: The banker wearing an apron as she serves up whole hog sausage sandwiches, the school principal helping kids clean out a 4-H barn or the retailer helping out as a volunteer for his church.
That’s the beauty of it. You never really know what you will run into.
The payoff, of course, is connecting with one another.
This year, it may come down to commiserating with a farming friend about the rainy weather or talking with someone from the highway department about how hard it’s been to maintain rural roads. Or, if it happens to be that old high school buddy, maybe it will just be about old times.
The topic doesn’t matter. The connecting does.
The fair’s not just an event. It’s an opportunity. Make the most of it. — J.R.