Deep-Fried Everything: The American State Fair
For two weeks every August, a small city of prize pigs, blue ribbons and hot sugar appears in an empty field — and half the state shows up.
You smell it long before you see it: hot oil, burnt sugar, and about a thousand animals. Then the Ferris wheel appears above the corn, turning slowly against a pink sky. A loudspeaker announces the winner of the apple pie competition. Somewhere behind you, a cow is being washed with shampoo. This is the American state fair. For two weeks every August, the fairgrounds are the busiest place in the state.
It started as serious business. The first American state fair opened in 1841 in Syracuse, New York, and it had nothing to do with fun. Farmers traveled for days to compare their crops, weigh their animals against their neighbors’ animals, and learn new methods. The competition was the whole point. If your bull was heavier or your corn was taller, everyone in the state found out about it. Entertainment arrived later — and then it never left.
The barns are still the heart of the fair. Teenagers sleep beside their livestock and get up at four in the morning to brush a pig that will be judged at nine. A blue ribbon means first place, and people frame them. You can win one for a goat, a jar of honey, a quilt, a rooster, or a pumpkin. The pumpkin competition is by far the strangest event of the week. The pumpkin that wins is nowhere near normal size — it is usually bigger than the farmer who grew it, and it arrives on a trailer.
“The pumpkin that wins is nowhere near normal size — it is usually bigger than the farmer who grew it.”
— On the competition nobody expects
Iowa takes the art of the fair one step further. For more than a century, an artist there has sculpted a life-size cow entirely out of butter and displayed it in a refrigerated glass case. People line up to see it. Minnesota simply calls its fair “The Great Minnesota Get-Together,” which tells you everything about what these two weeks are really for.
Beyond the barns is the midway. The midway is far louder and far brighter than the quiet barns behind it. Rides spin, games promise you a giant stuffed bear you will never win, and every vendor is shouting. Above all, there is the food, and the food follows one rule: if it fits on a stick, it goes on a stick. Corn dogs. Pickles. Cheesecake. And whatever else is available, they will make it deep-fried — fried candy bars, fried butter, fried cookie dough. The funnel cake is hands down the most popular food on the midway: fried batter under a snowdrift of powdered sugar, guaranteed to end up on your shirt. It is the greatest crowd-pleaser in American cooking, and nobody pretends it is good for you.
So why does a farming competition from 1841 still fill a field every summer? Because it is one of the last places where the two Americas meet. The city family that has never touched a cow stands in the same barn as the family that owns two hundred of them. Everyone eats the same fried food. Everyone rides the same wheel. And for two weeks, the biggest news in the state is a pumpkin.
10 Words from This Issue
Comparatives & Superlatives — And How to Make Them Stronger
A state fair is one long competition: whose pig is bigger, whose pie is the best, which ride is the scariest. That is comparative and superlative territory. At B2, the forms themselves are easy — what separates you from an A2 speaker is the words you put in front of them: far, by far, hands down, nowhere near.
The midway is louder than the barns. · The fair is more popular than ever.
Superlative — compares one thing with all the others. the + adjective + -est, or the most + long adjective.
It is the busiest place in the state. · It is the most popular food.
Intensifiers — put them before the comparison to add force.
far / much / a lot + comparative → far louder
by far / easily / hands down + superlative → by far the strangest
nowhere near + as + adjective + as → nowhere near as big as
✗ NOT: very louder. Very never goes with a comparative.
1 The line for funnel cake is ___ (long) than the line for corn dogs. Tap to check
One-syllable adjective, so add -er — not more long. And never forget the than.
2 The Ferris wheel is ___ (tall) ride at the fair. Add by far. Tap to check
Superlative, so you need the — and by far goes in front of it: by far the tallest, not the by far tallest.
3 My pie was ___ good ___ hers. Add nowhere near. Tap to check
Nowhere near as … as means “very much less than.” It is a polite, natural way to admit you lost badly.