As Americans fly the coop, county fairs spring back to life
Perhaps one hasn’t truly reentered post-pandemic life – unmasked, undistanced, unconcerned – until one has seen a pig fly.
We’re in Del Mar, California, a couple of beach towns north of San Diego. It’s early in our national Summer of Reentry. Just recently, California became one of the last states to lift all COVID-19 protocols, though some cities, such as Los Angeles, have reimposed them. And now here we are in the coastal sunshine and sea breezes at the San Diego County Fair, one of the first mega-fairs on the 2021 U.S. calendar. To be sure, it’s not as “mega” as usual. But it’s “mega” enough for games and rides and magicians. For a Ferris wheel rising high over the endless Pacific. For carnival barkers and food stalls and wild-animal whisperers. For astonishments. For crowds.
And maybe most important, it’s big enough for those crowds to feel communal again – for each of us to rub shoulders heedlessly under a warm sky and rejoin life en masse.
Finally, after a 2020 gone dark, the rites of American summer passage are back. The flag-draped parades, the annual festivals (from arts to music to zucchini), the ritual family gatherings. And, yes, the endless cycle of state and county fairs. Here in San Diego you can sense in people their relief and hunger and joy – their eagerness to convene again in traditional ways. To have a collective adventure, maybe.
And maybe to see some things you don’t see every day – even see some things that, let’s be honest, you didn’t think you ever would.
is named Swifty – so called by Zach Johnson, proprietor and ringmaster of Swifty Swine Productions. For 23 years, Mr. Johnson
