THE WORLD'S FAIR--

Bellville style

By now our quiet little town is back to normal after its four day, rip snorting extravaganza that brings multiple thousands of folks for what amounts to an annual homecoming, village reunion and agricultural festival all wrapped into one event.

During fair week the town is organized chaos.  Two state highways are diverted around downtown while tents for the animal displays and tents for the merchandise hawkers and amusement rides and carnival skill games and more food concessions than you can imagine blanket Main Street and side streets and alleys in every which direction.

On Friday and Saturday nights you ricochet gently while walking, often side-ways, to negotiate your zigging and zagging route through the crunch of humanity on the main drag. 

At night it looks like they squeezed a world-class circus into a 50 gallon drum.  Sounds like it too.

But by Sunday afternoon, poof!  Almost like magic, traffic has returned to normal, the streets have been given a bath by the local volunteer fire department and only a carcass or two of carnival apparatus litters the parking area down by the RFD store.

The brightly lit engine of a kiddie train ride (above) streaks its way into this time exposure photo.  In the bottom photo concession stand lights sizzle like fireworks as the lens is zoomed toward pedestrians walking near the town's bandstand.