Meet friends. Elephant ears. Rides. Corn dogs. Parades. Yellow jackets. Games. Taffy apples. Bands. Fish sandwiches. Market Street Industrial Tent. Free acts. It all made your mind go Tilt-a-Whirl.
Some things never changed. The Industrial Tent’s return to its original location brought back its carnival ambiance. Nothing like buying a fish sandwich or nacho potato and walking through the tent during the devouring. Angelkeep’s done it this week. It’s proved as nostalgic a part of Street Fair’s experience as pausing for a long listen to the Street Fair Band.
Visiting the exhibits in the Community Building, or City Building’s Gym, added to the nostalgia demand for Angelkeep. It once held school displays along with the flower, veg, and crop exhibits. Proud was the child who had a piece of school work exhibited in the show. School exhibits extended into the 1970s.
Angelkeep almost exhibited in 2023. Amid all the beautiful blossoms displayed in jars, cans, and bottles, were some of the largest and tallest plants of the Bluffton area. The first family of Villa North, the Williamsons, won many a prize for their pears, honey, and needlework back in early fair days. Angelkeep almost displayed Queen Anne’s lace.
Is it a weed or flower?
Angelkeep considered multiple Queen Anne’s entries. Angelkeep revisited an old school days’ natural science experiment of placing a bloom of Queen Anne’s lace in a small amount of water with a high concentration of food coloring. Blooms wicked up water, and depending on the color of the water, the blossom changed from white to whatever. Such a 2023 entry would have been a nostalgic portrayal of both the floral and past school exhibits. Bluffton’s former Indiana State Forester, Charles C. Deam, would have been proud.
Angelkeep recalled Street Fair “freak shows” when a freak bloom appeared on its driveway’s edge.
A natural combination Queen Anne’s lace bloomed. It included, sprouting from the top of the mother blossom, a miniature addition, or a Princess Anne’s lace bloom. It was unusual, to say the least. Sadly it occurred in mid-summer and could not be saved for the Street Fair flower show unless pressed, like the thousands of plants botanist Deam identified. How did Charlie Deam get so smart about classification? E. Bruce Williamson taught him as a Bluffton teenager. The “buddy” pair probably walked together at Street Fair consuming Gee Bow taffy, back in their day.
Angelkeep had an additional tallest-ever-seen growth of Queen Anne’s lace. It reached upward beyond six feet. It might have looked the shrimp beside the twelve-foot stalks of field corn laid out on the Community Gym floor. It certainly had prize-winning stature for a Queen Anne’s lace wildflower. Perhaps a six foot vase of clear plastic tubing could have been used to display this worthy entry in the Street Fair flower exhibit. A blue ribbon for uniqueness, at least.
The Williamson family members won $1 prizes for first place. With nearly $10 required for one good Street Fair sandwich, that $1 seemed paltry. That bygone buck of 110 years ago inflated to $32 for 2023’s midway mad money.
Angelkeep never knew what it might see when entering the gym doors for this year’s exhibit. True to its past, it offered nice surprises. It smelled of nostalgia in a good way. This exhibit beat standing in the intersection of North Main and Riley looking westward to recall the outside show lineup of the girlie tent attractions.
You didn’t find any Angelkeep entries in the Community Building if you already enjoyed that Free Street Fair option.
You might have spotted Angelkeep standing beside the Bluffton Street Fair Band circled in the center of a busy street. Take in the sounds of excellence being played by an entire band made up of professional musicians. The band included professors to philharmonic members. They’ve always been superb.
What did Angelkeep carry home? Kettle Corn or Butterscotch Caramel Corn? One of each?
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
