One of my many duties as editor of the Torrington Telegram every week is compiling copy and images for the Look Back feature, which appears in (most) Friday editions.
While some of the jobs in a small, weekly newspaper office can become somewhat, well, tedious at times, pulling together the Look Back information isn’t usually one of those. I am, you see, something of a history buff, particularly when it comes to newspapers and specifically when it involves newspapers I work at.
History – more precisely preserving it – is at the core of what newspapers do. And nowhere is that more true than at smaller community newspapers, such as The Telegram.
We are the scribes of local history.
It’s job which once fell to cave painters, monks in cubicles lit with the flame of a single candle, or patriarchs recording births and deaths on the fly leaves of family Bibles.
Currently, one of the years we’re dipping into for the Look Back pages is 1942. It was a difficult time in America, scant months removed from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the event that forced this country into World War II.
The pages of the Telegram from those months are filled with stories of rationing, metal drives, rubber drives and lists of men, heading out to defend their homeland. There are also the more homey stories – who got engaged to whom, weddings, town council meetings. Stories of the sugar crop projections, irrigation issues and everything in between.
These were the average, day-to-day proof that life was going on, despite – or perhaps because of – the war, the battles on the land and seas on the other side of the planet.
Looking back to January 1942, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, there are a series of stories concerning that year’s Goshen County Fair. County Commissioners, it seemed determined a need to save county funds and, with an annual bill of about $8,000, canceling the 1942 county fair was seen as one viable option to reduce expenses.
Ballots were sent out through newspapers around the country, including the Telegram, asking residents to vote on the proposal. Three options were given: Eliminate the fair completely, proceed as normal or host the 4-H and FFA club show while canceling the other events that were a normal part of the county fair of the times.
Balloting was completed in just a couple of weeks. County residents decided they wanted their fair. It’s a time of fellowship and camaraderie, a chance to see neighbors, family and friends that was needed at the time.
Fast-forward several months to August 1942. The growing season was winding down and harvest was rapidly approaching. Commissioners had decided to hold just the 4-H and FFA project shows, with the livestock exhibits further postponed, while canceling the rodeo and other events.
But one thing caught my eye as I was reading through those 75-year-old newspapers from our archives: Despite everything else being cancelled, the Goshen County Fair for 1942 was able to field both a carnival and a circus during its annual run.
There were apparently some entertainments just too dear to the community to be done away with completely by the folks organizing the fair. Those fair-goers in 1942 were lucky, and they enjoyed a diversion denied to modern fair goers.
“A carnival brings atmosphere,” Lanna Hubbard, manager of the Scotts Bluff County Fairgrounds, said before this year’s fair in Mitchell, Neb. “Whether it’s the lights or the sounds, it just brings a certain ambience to the fairgrounds.
“I think there’s a void when there isn’t one,” Hubbard said. “You can love them or hate them, but it does bring a certain atmosphere to the fair.”
The question has been asked: Why wasn’t there a carnival at this year’s Goshen County Fair? It’s a question that was on the lips of many around the fairgrounds this year, and it’s a question that hasn’t been answered.
