County Fairs and Country Stores

We spent a lot of time on the road last summer. Family weddings and get-togethers took us to the western New York area a couple of times. After decades of air travel for our respective business careers, we now choose to drive. It's nice to see at eye level all the things we used to fly over.

 

 

 

 

An August, 2014 visit to the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, NY. The Erie County Fair is one of the oldest continuous running county fairs in the country. I grew up not too far from here, and growing up going to the Fair was one of the highlights of summer. We visited in August for a family wedding, and happened to hit Fair time. It brought back a lot of very good memories, but times have definitely changed.

 

My attempt at documenting the Fair in photography yielded several interesting photographs, but with the plethora of cell phone cameras and other cameras I noticed people no longer politely wait when they see a camera pointed, they simply jump in front to take their photograph. I unfortunately ended up with many less than flattering photographs of the backsides of people I did not know, and are not likely to ever see again. "Street" and "Event" photography poses many more challenges now than it did when Vivian Maier did her work.

We drove a different route last summer to western New York State, the place we both grew up but left long ago. Family still lives there, so a summer visit remains a must for us. Plus, let's face it, not a lot happens in west central Florida in July and August. After eight hours in the car, we stopped in a small place in Ohio. While perusing their tourist information, usually my second stop after checking out the room, I realized we stopped near Ohio Amish country. And, much to my amazement, quite near the Lehman's store. The next morning we arrived at opening, and spend a couple of hours wandering the 35,000 square foot, many roomed store. Started as a hardware store serving the Amish in 1955, the still family owned store provided me with the non-electric items I needed over the years.