Tradition trumps comfort as fair season heats up

Hot Fair 7.19.2012

Cason Schaneman, 11, struggles to hold his ewe still during the Saline County 4-H Club sheep show in the Saline County Fair on Thursday, July 19, 2012 at Tuxedo Park. Cason was named champion junior showman.

ADAM WOLFFBRANDT/Lincoln Journal Star

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By ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

CRETE -- The temperature sign at the nearby Pinnacle Bank said it was 90 degrees by 10:30 a.m. Thursday, and the climate control on the peak of the hog barn at the Saline County Fair was running full blast.

Air conditioning, in this case, was toward the crude side. It consisted of a soaker hose laid out, top side, from one end of the building to the other, sending cool water streaming off two tin slopes.

Keeping the sun side wetted down, said Saline County Extension Agent Randy Pryor, means there’s less heat radiating off the under side and toward pens full of puffing porkers. And, by golly, it works.

“I’ve not seen a heat wave like this since I’ve been in Extension,” Pryor said, “and that’s since 1983.”

July and early August are county fair season in Southeast Nebraska. Thursday was Day Two in a Saline County event that continues through Sunday. So far, there’s no sign of a break in the relentless heat and humidity.

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“The mood would be better if we could get a nice soaker here during the fair,” said Pryor as he carried cases of bottled water toward exhibitors in a morning sheep show. “But it’s not going to happen.”

That’s not meant to suggest that all is lost.

Gov. Dave Heineman was due at fair headquarters in Tuxedo Park on Friday to help celebrate the state’s designation of Saline as a livestock-friendly county.

Despite the latest climb toward 100 degrees, the fairgrounds were anything but deserted as the noon hour approached.

As the sheep show progressed, Lumir Tachovski was sitting outside on a pickup tailgate on the shady side of the livestock arena. He was sipping from his water bottle and doing a mental count on the box fans he had aimed at the holding pens for his grandchildren’s entries.

It turned out to be 12.

Amy Weber watched her husband, Joel, and sons Christian, 8, and Jacob, 6, wash the twin bucket calves the boys have been tending since May.

Kris Kowalski and son Wyatt, 16, were cleaning up behind four feeder calves scheduled to be judged Saturday.

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Wyatt sounded downright humble when asked whether it was the younger people or the older people who hold up better in heat.

“They’ve been through more than us,” he said.

How does he deal with heavy-duty heat? “I just try to stay in the shade or I go up to the exhibition building” -- equipped with more conventional air conditioning -- “and look around.”

Pausing to compliment him on his honesty, his mother was quick to agree. “I think that is true,” she said, “because when we were growing up, we had to work out in the heat and haul bales.”

Now that hands-on approach to collecting small square bales has given way mostly to big round bales that are picked up by tractors with air-conditioned cabs.

While it might be hard to prove, heat could be a bigger threat to attendance at the upcoming Lancaster County Fair on Aug. 2-11 or the State Fair in Grand Island later that month.

In more rural settings, family ties bind participants and spectators, and that’s more than a match for weather extremes.

At 64, Lumir Tachovski and wife, Kathy, haven’t missed the fair in Crete in three decades.

Tachovski attributes his staying power through several long days to drinking water without ice in it and avoiding moving back and forth between climate control and no climate control.

At 81, Robert Kasl of Dorchester said he and his wife, Marva, haven’t missed any of the past 50 fairs.

Their four children all were in exhibitor ranks and six of eight grandchildren followed them in pursuit of purple ribbons. Now, great-granddaughter Carly Rains, 7, has joined the annual progression.

The grandparents towed a camper to the fairgrounds and parked it next to the Big Blue River to serve as a respite from the weather. They themselves were at the Wednesday night tractor pull and planned to be on hand again Thursday night for the figure-eight car competition.

But Robert Kasl has a humble streak, too. It’s the younger generation that has the energy to stand all day in the sun, he said.

“They can take the heat better than the old,” he said. “We’re not like we was.”

Reach Art Hovey at 402-473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com

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Hot Fair 7.19.2012

Cason Schaneman, 11, struggles to hold his ewe still during the Saline County 4-H Club sheep show in the Saline County Fair on Thursday, July 19, 2012 at Tuxedo Park. Cason was named champion junior showman.