This weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the community had their annual fall fair festival. The whole community plus people from the surrounding area turned out for it. There were people that came from as far as SLC, Utah, but also St. George, Hurricane, Cedar City, Cane Beds, Fredonia, and Colorado City.
Our family had a food booth where we sold shrimp and brat's on skewers...and 3 different sandwiches. It's a lot of hard work...days worth of work besides the actual fair days because we had to set up the booth, shop for the all the ingredients and coordinate all the details plus do all the preliminary preparation of the food the night before each day of selling. The fair is a community effort and funds are raised for improvements with in the community such as public restrooms, community ball fields, improvements on the community center..etc. It's a great addition to community pride and culture. Each year it gets a little bigger, and reaches a little further into the surrounding communities. I assume that it will eventually attract quite a number of people that aren't local to our community. It seems people enjoy these sort of community functions and I believe it gives them a sense of belonging. Many of the people I met were people I knew in my childhood but who had been gone from the community for 20+ years. It was great to re-connect. It's interesting the dynamics of small rural community life. The people I grew up with I feel a connection with. I grew up viewing them as part of my extended family and still, today, feel that way about them. So when I see them, it's renewing old friendships.
..it's been sad... experiencing the disintegration of the community I grew up in. It's amazing how one evil, conniving man, or a few evil conniving men, can destroy something so quickly that was a very good thing and... something that took years to build.
