August 18, 2025 • 15 mins
On this edition of ACF 411, Russ is joined by Chad Hughes to talk about the Allen County Fair documentary, the "moo-seum" and more history surrounding the 175th Allen County Fair!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another edition of ACF four one one,
the official podcast of the Allen County Fair. And I'm
your host, Russ Dekker from Nutrient and we want to
thank everybody that helps this podcast happen, and that includes
iHeart and Alex Wilfar engineer and this year we have
Anne Decker who's our videographer, who's making us show up
on YouTube of all places antsy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, and probably we.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Could even got on YouTube if we didn't have a
star of the caliber of Chad Use, our guest in
the podcast today.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hey, I'm just the keeper of the passwords.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
There you go, keeper of the pastor all right.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, so Chad is the historian bar nun for the
Alan County Fair.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
And it's a big fair.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's the one seventy fifth Alan County Fair.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So it's not your first rodeo.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
My first rodeo number thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So I was going to ask you how many fairs
have you been a associated with?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
My birthday is July twenty ninth, so I was at
my first fair three three weeks after I was born.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Did you win a ribbon?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I mean, cutest baby?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, I'm guessing, okay, yeah, yeah, we got Troy oldest
to dot never to shave. I think he's gonna want
to this year. So tell us a little bit about Well, so,
a lot of things going on with one hundred and
seventy fifth, But a lot of people saw the documentary
and if they didn't, they can. So what was the documentary?
(01:21):
I know it was a five year project that you spearheaded.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, so five years ago when I was the fair
manager for just a blink of an eye in the
middle of a winter, snowy winter night, we decided that
we needed to create a documentary. So we started preparing.
From that moment, the board set aside some money from
the bed tax that we get and it was marketing
(01:46):
funds that was set aside, and we were able to
create the documentary. And we knew we wanted to. I
knew I wanted to work with Video Branch. I've worked
with them a lot, their great crew. They produced some
other documentaries, so it was important to have a good
production team. And that first fair we started filming b roll,
scanning pictures, collecting footage, doing research, spending lots of time
(02:09):
at the museum, lots of time in Jay's old files
that are stored here at the fairgrounds. Jay himself was
a little bit of a historian, the past fair manager.
So from that then we started to piece together the
story and we knew we kind of wanted to hit
on a couple of different things, and from there we
(02:29):
just interviewed people. So there was actually no plotline through
the whole thing. It was just piecing together everyone's interviews
to make the documentary that everyone sees today and you
can find it on the fairs YouTube channel where you
can find these.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You know, when we talk about the Allen County Fair,
we talk about making memories. And I think what your
documentary drove home was the fact that everybody you talk
to has a fair memory or more. And I was
actually so happy that And you'll know exactly whom I'm
talking about, but some of the interviewees that you had,
(03:03):
I'm glad that we got the interviews before they left us.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Correct. There are three people in the documentary that have
since passed and we were able to not only talk
to them about their fair memories, but get some of
their history, you know, of how things started, but just
their life story as well, and we have all that
footage now we have over thirty two hours worth of
just footage of interviews of local people's stories that all
(03:29):
have amazing stories, and we have that now and the
fair made all that happen.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And one of the ones that pops to my mind
right away is Clyde. Clyde did oh and you know,
because you look at the fair grounds as we see
it today, Clyde designed a lot of the buildings that
people know about.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, the milking parlor that we are sitting in was
one of Clyde's first projects that he drew.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Up, and Schmidhorst was probably about his last, was it.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Actually? The Nutrient Plaza stage was Clyde's I think rightly
did that one thing that he drew up.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, But I mean you look at the Allen County
Fairground as we see it today, and I knew that
had to mean a lot to the Diddo family, And
I just picked him out as one example. But if
you watch the documentary, there's all kinds of stories like
that where you see how people put their heart and
soul into making the Allen County fair what it is.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Today, generation after generation. You know, Clyde's grandson is a
helper in the antiques department that I help with today.
And actually Jason just had Jason Junior, who will be
twenty five years old at the two hundred towny County
Fair this morning, so we have to make sure he
gets the next generations already here to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's planning. Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let's talk about if you're coming out to the fair,
we hope that you do. Underneath the grand stand there's
a special treat this year. It's the Mouseum.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
There is the museum. So we I personally and the
fair board have been collecting artifacts for many, many years,
probably about ten at this point, because we knew this
was coming. So any box that had anything important on him,
I wouldn't let the girls in the office throw away
before I went through it and got all the stuff out.
And a lot of those archives paperwork. There's some war
(05:15):
plans for during war times in there. There's a flyover
from nineteen forty three that they wanted to do in
Delphus and they more or less were told not going
to happen because all the planes are too busy fighting
the war. All that stuff is in there, postcards from
when it was held at the memorial site, the driving
Park site, which are super super rare and very hard
(05:38):
to come by. The one that I purchased was actually
found in California. So we've been collecting, purchasing, buying all
this stuff to tell the rich history of the Allen
County Fair now for about ten years, and it's lived
in my house and in my storage. And I'm really
happy that it's here because that means it can go
into storage for another twenty five years. I don't have
(06:00):
to stub my toe on it anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, so all those really neat artifacts that you're talking about,
they are actually under the grand stand, very nicely displayed.
And along with all those artifacts is the documentary that
we spoke about.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
It's on a loop. So if you.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Haven't seen it yet, hang out for a little bit,
watch a little bit of it, come back watch something
else later. But and you can buy Are there any left?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There are? Okay? Because I know they only made one
hundred and seventy five. I don't know where they got
that number, but they've.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Made one hundred and seventy five copies of the documentary
and they're available at the Administration office, along with some
other souvenirs.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
What else is.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Available, there's fairwears so sweatshirts, t shirts that you can get.
One design has Maurice on it, the other with the
big birthday cake. The other has just the Fair logo,
the one seventy fifth logo. But we have pennance like
you can see here, right, here's one.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
They were actually handmade in Buffalo, New York, so they're
made in the USA. And I went to go see
them why they were in production because I'm a big
pennant fan. I collect pennance along with a lot of
other things, but the pennants are one of my favorites.
And the gentleman who owns the company, they each gave
us a tour and I took them a yard long
(07:17):
that was actually from Ohio. A yard long is a big,
big long picture like you see, and all the school
kids were holding pennance in it, and I think they
were more excited about that than giving us a tour
of their factory and production floor.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So that's very cool. Yeah, so you mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
We can't like let this interview go without talking about
moor Reice and now he adorns the entrance to the
Allen County Fairgrounds. I didn't realize he was so big.
I've seen him. I've seen apparently it must be a
Moorice Number two runs the fairgrounds because the real guys
out front right, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Mean the real guy runs the fairgrounds. His owe to
himself as statue.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Oh that's how that works, Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
And his I don't now the exact footage. I've heard
twenty feet before, but I know that his shoes weigh
as much as a grand piano.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Well, so I did hear that the shoes were size forty?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Correct, Yes, they are size forty, and each shoe weighs
as much as a baby grand piano.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Took a crane to lift each shoe into its spot,
not a big crane.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And you got to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And you know what's neat is two or three weeks
out before the fair I'd be over a tractor supply
or something, and every time I was out this way,
there was somebody stopped in getting a picture taken with Marie.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Always it's really fun to set down with Troy when
Troy has time, and they'll see where all the license
plates are from, because we have cameras out there babysitting him.
And they said that they've seen people as far away
as Louisiana, California. So people from all over the country
are coming to get their picture with the big Maurice,
which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So what surprised you?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know a lot about you live the fair. When
I think of the Allen Fair, your picture pops up
in my head.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
That's scary.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It is scary.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Chase away the mice with the There used to be bads
up there, but that's going on. We have plenty of
bad situations this week, So what's.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
There had to be something as you're going through all
these archives of material, there had to be something that's like,
really wow.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I think the coolest thing that we found in digging
and millions of conversations with people, and that's kind of
it's tracking down history, figuring out who has it, where
it lives. But we have a beam in there that
to anyone else looks like something that you would probably
burn over a fire, but it is actually from the
original grandstands that set at the driving Park and that beam.
(09:45):
The fun story behind it is a local family outside
of Herod, in between Herod and Wes Newton. His grandparents
bought that beam. And you say, well, why would you
just buy a beam. Well, when the fairboard was broke,
after those fire years of reign that we talk about
in the documentary, they dismantled the grandstand because it was
in pretty bad shape, and they sold chicken coops. They
(10:09):
made chicken coops out of the wood from the grand
stand and they sold these chicken coops to raise money
for the fair. And his grandparents bought one of these
chicken coops, and that chicken coop then got very very old,
as we know, around one hundred years old at this point.
And he took the beams because they were such great lumber,
because it was native lumber to that area, and he
(10:32):
made a giant shelf. Well, he told me, hey, in
a conversation, I have the beams from the original grandstand,
and I was like, no way, you're crazy. And one
day he took me out and in his barn, Steve
has a shelf that he made from these beams because
the lumber is such great native lumber and it still
(10:53):
has the paint on it from the grand stand, which
is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You know. I think if I really encourage everybody to it,
to check out this documentary because there are things in
there that will blow you away. And one of the
things that just blew me away was so when the
Allen County fairs started, President Lincoln wasn't president yet, he
was not We had no electricity.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
You think of the fair.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Today and you look out here at all the stuff
and the music and the sound and the flashing lights,
and the first fair, we had no electricity.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, that very first fair was held on the banks
of the Ottawa River, and it looked much much different
from what you see and imagine today. It was one day. Yeah,
they had it the next year, and then after that
the fairboard couldn't get along, which was just about twenty
years after Allen County became Allen County and they kind
(11:44):
of separated. And during that time, all the little villages
had their own fairs. So there were still fairs happening
in Allen County. It just wasn't organized by the Agricultural Society.
So there was a fair in Delphis. That's eventually why
I moved to Delphis. There was a fair and space.
There was a fair in West Newton, there was a
fair in Lafayette. So kind of the four corners had
(12:05):
these small mini fairs that happened which I don't even
know if that made the documentary because we only had
so much time.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
But if you really really really dig on.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
The internet, you can find some ribbons that say, you know,
Fair Street Fair or whatever it was Afield. But I
have one that is in our family archive that's from
the West Newton Fair and it is from like eighteen
fifty three.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, and we talked about the very first fair was
actually in Ben Faroad's farm, and Ben faroade for his
people who were into Allen County history. He owned a
paper mill along the land a lot, yes he did,
but he but his big business was the paper mill
right on the river, which is also his farm was
right on the river, and hence the name for road
(12:48):
Park and a lot of other stuffs and opera house,
and it was Ben that was drilling for natural gas
to power his paper plant when he struck oil, which
then attracted John Rockefellers to town.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So yeah, what a.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Rich history, and the fair kind of intermingles it all.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
And there's a great there's a great corner of the
museum dedicated to Ben. And also in their newsletter that
just came out very fittingly about Ben and all the
projects that he was involved with in Allen County just
came out like last week, I think it was. It
was a great little article and write up about all
the things that he did in Allen County.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If you could tell people one thing and then we
got to because I know, we got to wrap this
get you we could, but Troy said, I had to
shut you down after a while. So what would you
want people to know about the Allen County Fair and
that that maybe they don't know? What would you want
them to be? What takeaway?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I think the biggest thing in the thing that constantly
comes back and forth and it makes me alteriary when
I talk about it, is the little kids.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I just watched my friends here from Columbus and I
watched her little guy go down the slide and when
he went down that big slide, that was the most
fun he's gonna have all week. And that's what it's
all about. It's that next generation and generation after generation
coming through having fun, making those memories. You know, the
old people talking to the young people, the neighbors talking
(14:18):
to their neighbors that they don't see from across the county,
the families getting together, you know, I saw three cousins
today that I don't get to see on a regular basis.
But everybody comes home from the fair and it's just
a big family reunion, and I think that is what
is important. It makes me alteria and I look like
a giant nerd, But like you just think, Hey, we're
going to the fair. It's really expensive. Funnel cakes are expensive,
(14:39):
it's hot, you know, get the sunscreen, load up your kids.
Oh we got a haul of the stroller. But you're
making core memories with your kids and that's important.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, you know. I was way walking over here to
the old milking Parlor, which is where we have the
podcast part now, and there was a little girl coming
out on one of the barns. They had just had
competition and she had a fifth place ribbon. Yeah, and
she was beaming from ear to you. That girl will
never forget coming to the Allen County Fair and winning
a ribbon. And it wasn't first place, but she had
(15:08):
a project and it was successful and she got a
ribbon in her hand and she was pretty proud.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Of that room.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Twenty five years, it can be in the two hundredth
anniversary Museum, and I'll be sixty three years old, so
somebody else gets to do that. I'm an old guy
setting under the tree in the shade.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
We'll be doing the podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I probably will be.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Who knows that Batt'll even be around at that point. Chad,
thanks for joining us in the podcast parlor, and please
come on out to the Allen County Fair. We're only
on day number four of nine, so we got five
yet to go. Come on out to the Allen County
Fair and we'll have more coming up in the next
episode of ACF four oh one.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Hang in there, thanks so much,
Welcome back to another edition of ACF four one one,
the official podcast of the Allen County Fair. And I'm
your host, Russ Dekker from Nutrient and we want to
thank everybody that helps this podcast happen, and that includes
iHeart and Alex Wilfar engineer and this year we have
Anne Decker who's our videographer, who's making us show up
on YouTube of all places antsy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, and probably we.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Could even got on YouTube if we didn't have a
star of the caliber of Chad Use, our guest in
the podcast today.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hey, I'm just the keeper of the passwords.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
There you go, keeper of the pastor all right.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, so Chad is the historian bar nun for the
Alan County Fair.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
And it's a big fair.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's the one seventy fifth Alan County Fair.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So it's not your first rodeo.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
My first rodeo number thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
So I was going to ask you how many fairs
have you been a associated with?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
My birthday is July twenty ninth, so I was at
my first fair three three weeks after I was born.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Did you win a ribbon?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I mean, cutest baby?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, I'm guessing, okay, yeah, yeah, we got Troy oldest
to dot never to shave. I think he's gonna want
to this year. So tell us a little bit about Well, so,
a lot of things going on with one hundred and
seventy fifth, But a lot of people saw the documentary
and if they didn't, they can. So what was the documentary?
(01:21):
I know it was a five year project that you spearheaded.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, so five years ago when I was the fair
manager for just a blink of an eye in the
middle of a winter, snowy winter night, we decided that
we needed to create a documentary. So we started preparing.
From that moment, the board set aside some money from
the bed tax that we get and it was marketing
(01:46):
funds that was set aside, and we were able to
create the documentary. And we knew we wanted to. I
knew I wanted to work with Video Branch. I've worked
with them a lot, their great crew. They produced some
other documentaries, so it was important to have a good
production team. And that first fair we started filming b roll,
scanning pictures, collecting footage, doing research, spending lots of time
(02:09):
at the museum, lots of time in Jay's old files
that are stored here at the fairgrounds. Jay himself was
a little bit of a historian, the past fair manager.
So from that then we started to piece together the
story and we knew we kind of wanted to hit
on a couple of different things, and from there we
(02:29):
just interviewed people. So there was actually no plotline through
the whole thing. It was just piecing together everyone's interviews
to make the documentary that everyone sees today and you
can find it on the fairs YouTube channel where you
can find these.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You know, when we talk about the Allen County Fair,
we talk about making memories. And I think what your
documentary drove home was the fact that everybody you talk
to has a fair memory or more. And I was
actually so happy that And you'll know exactly whom I'm
talking about, but some of the interviewees that you had,
(03:03):
I'm glad that we got the interviews before they left us.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Correct. There are three people in the documentary that have
since passed and we were able to not only talk
to them about their fair memories, but get some of
their history, you know, of how things started, but just
their life story as well, and we have all that
footage now we have over thirty two hours worth of
just footage of interviews of local people's stories that all
(03:29):
have amazing stories, and we have that now and the
fair made all that happen.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And one of the ones that pops to my mind
right away is Clyde. Clyde did oh and you know,
because you look at the fair grounds as we see
it today, Clyde designed a lot of the buildings that
people know about.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, the milking parlor that we are sitting in was
one of Clyde's first projects that he drew.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Up, and Schmidhorst was probably about his last, was it.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Actually? The Nutrient Plaza stage was Clyde's I think rightly
did that one thing that he drew up.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, But I mean you look at the Allen County
Fairground as we see it today, and I knew that
had to mean a lot to the Diddo family, And
I just picked him out as one example. But if
you watch the documentary, there's all kinds of stories like
that where you see how people put their heart and
soul into making the Allen County fair what it is.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Today, generation after generation. You know, Clyde's grandson is a
helper in the antiques department that I help with today.
And actually Jason just had Jason Junior, who will be
twenty five years old at the two hundred towny County
Fair this morning, so we have to make sure he
gets the next generations already here to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's planning. Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let's talk about if you're coming out to the fair,
we hope that you do. Underneath the grand stand there's
a special treat this year. It's the Mouseum.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
There is the museum. So we I personally and the
fair board have been collecting artifacts for many, many years,
probably about ten at this point, because we knew this
was coming. So any box that had anything important on him,
I wouldn't let the girls in the office throw away
before I went through it and got all the stuff out.
And a lot of those archives paperwork. There's some war
(05:15):
plans for during war times in there. There's a flyover
from nineteen forty three that they wanted to do in
Delphus and they more or less were told not going
to happen because all the planes are too busy fighting
the war. All that stuff is in there, postcards from
when it was held at the memorial site, the driving
Park site, which are super super rare and very hard
(05:38):
to come by. The one that I purchased was actually
found in California. So we've been collecting, purchasing, buying all
this stuff to tell the rich history of the Allen
County Fair now for about ten years, and it's lived
in my house and in my storage. And I'm really
happy that it's here because that means it can go
into storage for another twenty five years. I don't have
(06:00):
to stub my toe on it anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, so all those really neat artifacts that you're talking about,
they are actually under the grand stand, very nicely displayed.
And along with all those artifacts is the documentary that
we spoke about.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
It's on a loop. So if you.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Haven't seen it yet, hang out for a little bit,
watch a little bit of it, come back watch something
else later. But and you can buy Are there any left?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There are? Okay? Because I know they only made one
hundred and seventy five. I don't know where they got
that number, but they've.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Made one hundred and seventy five copies of the documentary
and they're available at the Administration office, along with some
other souvenirs.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
What else is.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Available, there's fairwears so sweatshirts, t shirts that you can get.
One design has Maurice on it, the other with the
big birthday cake. The other has just the Fair logo,
the one seventy fifth logo. But we have pennance like
you can see here, right, here's one.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
They were actually handmade in Buffalo, New York, so they're
made in the USA. And I went to go see
them why they were in production because I'm a big
pennant fan. I collect pennance along with a lot of
other things, but the pennants are one of my favorites.
And the gentleman who owns the company, they each gave
us a tour and I took them a yard long
(07:17):
that was actually from Ohio. A yard long is a big,
big long picture like you see, and all the school
kids were holding pennance in it, and I think they
were more excited about that than giving us a tour
of their factory and production floor.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So that's very cool. Yeah, so you mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
We can't like let this interview go without talking about
moor Reice and now he adorns the entrance to the
Allen County Fairgrounds. I didn't realize he was so big.
I've seen him. I've seen apparently it must be a
Moorice Number two runs the fairgrounds because the real guys
out front right, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Mean the real guy runs the fairgrounds. His owe to
himself as statue.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Oh that's how that works, Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
And his I don't now the exact footage. I've heard
twenty feet before, but I know that his shoes weigh
as much as a grand piano.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Well, so I did hear that the shoes were size forty?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Correct, Yes, they are size forty, and each shoe weighs
as much as a baby grand piano.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Took a crane to lift each shoe into its spot,
not a big crane.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And you got to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And you know what's neat is two or three weeks
out before the fair I'd be over a tractor supply
or something, and every time I was out this way,
there was somebody stopped in getting a picture taken with Marie.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Always it's really fun to set down with Troy when
Troy has time, and they'll see where all the license
plates are from, because we have cameras out there babysitting him.
And they said that they've seen people as far away
as Louisiana, California. So people from all over the country
are coming to get their picture with the big Maurice,
which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So what surprised you?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know a lot about you live the fair. When
I think of the Allen Fair, your picture pops up
in my head.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
That's scary.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It is scary.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Chase away the mice with the There used to be bads
up there, but that's going on. We have plenty of
bad situations this week, So what's.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
There had to be something as you're going through all
these archives of material, there had to be something that's like,
really wow.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I think the coolest thing that we found in digging
and millions of conversations with people, and that's kind of
it's tracking down history, figuring out who has it, where
it lives. But we have a beam in there that
to anyone else looks like something that you would probably
burn over a fire, but it is actually from the
original grandstands that set at the driving Park and that beam.
(09:45):
The fun story behind it is a local family outside
of Herod, in between Herod and Wes Newton. His grandparents
bought that beam. And you say, well, why would you
just buy a beam. Well, when the fairboard was broke,
after those fire years of reign that we talk about
in the documentary, they dismantled the grandstand because it was
in pretty bad shape, and they sold chicken coops. They
(10:09):
made chicken coops out of the wood from the grand
stand and they sold these chicken coops to raise money
for the fair. And his grandparents bought one of these
chicken coops, and that chicken coop then got very very old,
as we know, around one hundred years old at this point.
And he took the beams because they were such great lumber,
because it was native lumber to that area, and he
(10:32):
made a giant shelf. Well, he told me, hey, in
a conversation, I have the beams from the original grandstand,
and I was like, no way, you're crazy. And one
day he took me out and in his barn, Steve
has a shelf that he made from these beams because
the lumber is such great native lumber and it still
(10:53):
has the paint on it from the grand stand, which
is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You know. I think if I really encourage everybody to it,
to check out this documentary because there are things in
there that will blow you away. And one of the
things that just blew me away was so when the
Allen County fairs started, President Lincoln wasn't president yet, he
was not We had no electricity.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
You think of the fair.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Today and you look out here at all the stuff
and the music and the sound and the flashing lights,
and the first fair, we had no electricity.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, that very first fair was held on the banks
of the Ottawa River, and it looked much much different
from what you see and imagine today. It was one day. Yeah,
they had it the next year, and then after that
the fairboard couldn't get along, which was just about twenty
years after Allen County became Allen County and they kind
(11:44):
of separated. And during that time, all the little villages
had their own fairs. So there were still fairs happening
in Allen County. It just wasn't organized by the Agricultural Society.
So there was a fair in Delphis. That's eventually why
I moved to Delphis. There was a fair and space.
There was a fair in West Newton, there was a
fair in Lafayette. So kind of the four corners had
(12:05):
these small mini fairs that happened which I don't even
know if that made the documentary because we only had
so much time.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
But if you really really really dig on.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
The internet, you can find some ribbons that say, you know,
Fair Street Fair or whatever it was Afield. But I
have one that is in our family archive that's from
the West Newton Fair and it is from like eighteen
fifty three.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, and we talked about the very first fair was
actually in Ben Faroad's farm, and Ben faroade for his
people who were into Allen County history. He owned a
paper mill along the land a lot, yes he did,
but he but his big business was the paper mill
right on the river, which is also his farm was
right on the river, and hence the name for road
(12:48):
Park and a lot of other stuffs and opera house,
and it was Ben that was drilling for natural gas
to power his paper plant when he struck oil, which
then attracted John Rockefellers to town.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So yeah, what a.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Rich history, and the fair kind of intermingles it all.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
And there's a great there's a great corner of the
museum dedicated to Ben. And also in their newsletter that
just came out very fittingly about Ben and all the
projects that he was involved with in Allen County just
came out like last week, I think it was. It
was a great little article and write up about all
the things that he did in Allen County.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If you could tell people one thing and then we
got to because I know, we got to wrap this
get you we could, but Troy said, I had to
shut you down after a while. So what would you
want people to know about the Allen County Fair and
that that maybe they don't know? What would you want
them to be? What takeaway?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I think the biggest thing in the thing that constantly
comes back and forth and it makes me alteriary when
I talk about it, is the little kids.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I just watched my friends here from Columbus and I
watched her little guy go down the slide and when
he went down that big slide, that was the most
fun he's gonna have all week. And that's what it's
all about. It's that next generation and generation after generation
coming through having fun, making those memories. You know, the
old people talking to the young people, the neighbors talking
(14:18):
to their neighbors that they don't see from across the county,
the families getting together, you know, I saw three cousins
today that I don't get to see on a regular basis.
But everybody comes home from the fair and it's just
a big family reunion, and I think that is what
is important. It makes me alteria and I look like
a giant nerd, But like you just think, Hey, we're
going to the fair. It's really expensive. Funnel cakes are expensive,
(14:39):
it's hot, you know, get the sunscreen, load up your kids.
Oh we got a haul of the stroller. But you're
making core memories with your kids and that's important.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, you know. I was way walking over here to
the old milking Parlor, which is where we have the
podcast part now, and there was a little girl coming
out on one of the barns. They had just had
competition and she had a fifth place ribbon. Yeah, and
she was beaming from ear to you. That girl will
never forget coming to the Allen County Fair and winning
a ribbon. And it wasn't first place, but she had
(15:08):
a project and it was successful and she got a
ribbon in her hand and she was pretty proud.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Of that room.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Twenty five years, it can be in the two hundredth
anniversary Museum, and I'll be sixty three years old, so
somebody else gets to do that. I'm an old guy
setting under the tree in the shade.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
We'll be doing the podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I probably will be.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Who knows that Batt'll even be around at that point. Chad,
thanks for joining us in the podcast parlor, and please
come on out to the Allen County Fair. We're only
on day number four of nine, so we got five
yet to go. Come on out to the Allen County
Fair and we'll have more coming up in the next
episode of ACF four oh one.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Hang in there, thanks so much,
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