Visit
America’s county fairs as they are vividly evoked through the
images, stories, and voices of the people who make them
happen—4-H kids, fair managers, pie judges, farmers and
ranchers, rodeo queens, entertainers, food vendors, midway pitchmen,
and assorted local characters. Illustrated throughout with stunning
color photographs, Purebred and
Homegrown is an affectionate and thoughtful look at the
history of county fairs, and their tradition and persistence today,
despite the diminished number of Americans who earn their living from
agriculture.
Author-photographers Drake Hokanson and Carol Kratz traveled 40,000
miles across America from Maine to Alaska, from Georgia to California,
visiting ninety county fairs in thirty-five states. By day they
interviewed, observed, and photographed; at night they camped among the
carnies and the teens showing sheep, under the rollercoaster, and next
to the chicken barn. The story they tell goes beyond the stereotype of
fairs as quaint anachronisms obsessed with giant pumpkins and instead
reveals the county fair as an important institution that helped define
us as a nation of free-thinking, self-reliant, community-focused
people. They present the nearly 200-year-old county fair as a
fountainhead of American ideals and rural life, as a place of reunion,
and as perhaps the most traditional of all American celebrations.
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Purebred And Homegrown
America's County Fairs
by Drake Hokanson and Carol Kratz
University of Wisconsin Press,
2008
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a copy
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