Life and Death at the County Fair

“The real spectacle that draws us here,” David Foster Wallace wrote of the Illinois State Fair, “is us.” Of course, Wallace took the 15,000-word scenic route before reaching his epiphany. For Michael Adno, a longtime fan of the Sarasota County Agricultural Fair, communion is the starting place. Over nine days, Adno observes his hometown fair at a vulnerable moment, its temporary workers and doughnut burger stands flanked by anti-immigrant rhetoric and Trump-related merchandise. His essay honors the quiet vulnerabilities that bring us together. May they outlast the brash spectacles that threaten to tear us apart.

The fair seems to reflect whatever station I’m passing through in life. I’ve come each spring, sometimes with a deep sense of hope that the fair only strengthens. Some years, though, the maze of vendors and rollercoasters has felt like a neon metaphor for grief. I came the year after my father died during a routine surgery in his native Johannesburg. I came after my stepfather survived a severe traumatic brain injury and lost his sight. (Fried food is an underutilized step in the stages of mourning.) This year, the fair framed a clear picture of the county’s political bent, the militant Trump paraphernalia a stark counter to the petting zoo, just like the firearms strewn across a table next to rock candy. 

The things that have always haunted me about being an American, a Southerner, and a Floridian are the same things that make me proud of my home. The cast of eccentric people here renews my hope one night and reaffirms all my doubts the next.