Cherokee County Fair - Columbus, KS

Hello blogworld.  Sorry for the long delay in posting.  I wanted to keep these posts going in a timely fashion, but I've been too busy working on the photographic endeavors that pay my bills.  Hopefully I can crank these out a little faster over the next few months.

So let's get to it!   This post is about my journey to the Cherokee Co. Fair, way down in Columbus, KS.  I had never been to the far reaches of Southeast Kansas before, so every part of this trip was fresh and new for me.  Columbus is a sleepy little Kansas town.  The tallest structures were the grain silos.  It was a scorching 105 degrees when I got to the fairgrounds(it was over 100 at every fair I attended on this leg of my trip).  Because of the heat, not much was happening when I got there.  The 4-H kids were trying to keep their animals cool and most of the carnival workers were nowhere to be found.  As I was wandering around the carnival rides, a large man, smoking a cigar, in a golf cart rolled up next to me.  Turns out he was the owner of the carnival company and offered to give me a golf cart tour of the fairgrounds.  I turned down his offer, mostly because he was so big that there was hardly enough room for me in that cart.  Not to mention that he was very much a stranger to showers.  At any rate, we chatted for a bit, he was super nice.  I found out that he and his company were out of Lyford, TX and they do over 45 carnivals per year.  He told me I had the run of the place and to photograph what I wanted.

I decided to escape the heat, so I returned to my hotel room($35 a night and a total dive!  I loved it, my wife would not have).  Anyways, I got back to the fair as the sun was setting and it was already packed.  Squealing kids everywhere.  I photographed almost until the carnival shutdown for the night, stopping to have a few beers at the beer garden with the locals(one of my favorite parts about these fairs).  I had a woman ask me where she knew me from.  I told her I had never been to Columbus, KS before, to which she replied, "no, I've seen ya on t.v. or somethin".  I think the heat and or beer had her confused.

So, here are some of my images from the Cherokee Co. Fair.  I do my own printing from my studio, so if you'd like to purchase a print, feel free to email me or you can go to my Kansas Fair Affair Prints Gallery.

Thanks for looking!

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