It’s Not Fair
With each passing day, it seems, yet another event or festival long looked forward to on the summer calendar is either rescheduled or cancelled this year due to COVID-19.
No My Waterloo Days, Freedom Festival, or Sturgis Falls celebrations. The Waterloo Bucks season opener has been delayed. Yesterday came word that grounds and grandstand entertainment at the Linn County Fair in Central City will be cancelled; they’re still trying to find a way to hold 4-H and FFA exhibit competitions. Earlier came word that the Benton County Fair in Vinton and the Wapello County Regional Fair in Eldon also will not be held in 2020. Those three county events were to have been held in June, just a month away. So far, all other county fairs are still on…but as May passes into June, many of those may also be affected.
And I really hate to end the week on this down note, but it’s not too soon to wonder if the Iowa State Fair will be held as scheduled. Nearly 1.2 million people attended last year’s 11-day-long event, with daily crowds ranging from 85-thousand to 122-thousand. The first state fair was in 1854, and since then, it’s been held each and every year except for four years during World War II…it was even held every year during the first world war and the Spanish flu pandemic of a century ago.
Sure, much of the fair is held in open air venues…but the crush of people, at all times of the day and night, strolling around the grounds to find the best food on a stick is the absolute opposite of social distancing.
I’m certainly not advocating that the fair not be held; my deep hope is that it will be held, right on schedule, because that would mean we are back to some sense of normal.
It’s such a shame that individual celebrations, such as Waverly Heritage Days and Conrad Black Dirt Days, are off, because they mean so much to those communities. You can’t blame the folks at Grundy Center’s Felix Grundy Days for holding on until they see if the current May 15 partial state shutdown is extension.
But to lose the great Iowa State Fair, in addition to countless proms, graduations, and other events…it will be a very empty summer, to be sure.
