Ulster Publishing’s almanac, August 23, 2007

Fair-est of them all

Molly Ahearn signs copies of her new book on Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck & Kingston
By Carrie Schapker

A time-honored Hudson Valley tradition since 1842, the Dutchess County Fair is the most popular county fair in New York State. And now its place in history is explored and enhanced in the colorful pages of The Dutchess County Fair: Portrait of an American Tradition, with text and photographs by Molly Ahearn. This historical account, illustrated with more than 130 antique and contemporary photographs, maps and memorabilia, shows why almost a half-million people go through the turnstiles each year. It is published by Black Dome Press with a foreword by Tom Odak, Fair manager/secretary (1979-2006), and a prologue by Michael Christensen, co-founder of the Big Apple Circus.

“When we moved up to Clinton Corners in 1994, we attended the Fair for the first time,” says Ahearn. “I was just delighted with it. It seemed timeless, fun for the family and a great celebration of the harvest season. It was so different from the New York city environment that I grew up in and just really appealed to me.”

Ahearn went to the Fair with her camera every year, and after about 10 years realized that she had a great collection of photos. “Then I realized I had to find all the people in the photos to get their permission to use their images,” says Ahearn. And she did. “It was unbelievable. I had a small book of the photos that I brought to the Fair, and I’d ask someone if they knew who was in a photo. People would send me on to other people, and eventually I got them all. I really was serendipity.”

Molly Ahearn’s photographs document both profound and humorous scens. A reader can witness the serenity of a young shepherdess resting her head on her goat’s belly, laugh at the row of shooters’ derrières as they squirt midway clowns and share the delight of a toddler driving his own racecar. “The image I am most proud of is the draft horses on the book’s cover, and it too me many years to get,” explains Ahearn.”It’s my favorite event. When you see six of those horses harnessed together, it’s just a very impressive situation. You feel the ground shaking – and I just couldn’t capture that for the life of me. The year I took the cover image I decided to lean under the fence, and that’s what you see.”

As a first step, Ahearn applied for and received a New York State council on the Arts grand and had mounted a show of Fair photographs at the Starr Library in Rhinebeck. As a thank you to the library, she made a book of photos and wrote a little dedication in it. “People really responded to it and I thought, ‘I have a good project here.’ I approached a couple of publishers and Black Dome was a perfect fit,” says Ahearn.

As part of the deal, they asked her to write a history of the Fair to accompany the images. “No one had written a history yet,” says Ahearn. “The Fair is there every year, and we just take it for granted. It was their idea to add the history and I ran with it.” The design firm where Ahearn works, Namaro Graphic Designs, was awarded the design for the book itself.

The book contains lively anecdotes and interesting facts. Readers can find out what songwriter Don McLean and Teddy Roosevelt have in common and discover why FDR was fascinated with a horse named St. John the Baptist. “As I went along doing the history, a lot of that was through word of mouth, people passing me to other people,” says Ahearn. “I went through people’s attics and found images. The fairgrounds themselves have an attic, and I had full access to that. I was fortunate to find a good number of images to reproduce.”

Scheduled book-signings will take place August 21 through 25 form 3 to 6 p.m. daily at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds’ Arts & Crafts Building; August 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Kingston; and September 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Newburgh. For more information about the book, visit www.blackdomepress.com or call (518) 734-6357. For more information about the fair, visit www.duthcessfair.com.