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From Emma Jane Taylor, Senior Editor:

I had it in mind to write this letter about the Washington County Fair. (I made a road trip out there a few weeks back with my friends Jay and Chuck.) But then it occurred to me that someone had already done a damn good job of writing about agricultural fairs — the "peripatetic eating frenzy"; the carnies with "the low brow and prognathous jaw typically associated with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome"; where "the general sensation is that of being in the middle of an armpit." (If these phrases don't ring familiar to you, it's about time you picked up a copy of David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Start with his essay "Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All.")

Anyway, David Foster Wallace took my idea years before I had it. Besides, he wrote about the Illinois State Fair. Not some dinky county fair. So I won't bother telling you about how many different kinds of food they sell on a stick, or how many Jesus T-shirts and cigarette-schlock baseball hats we saw, or what exactly it means to clog dance. I won't even tell you about the pot-bellied pig races.

But there's something special about the Washington County Fair, and you wouldn't know it unless you happened there on closing night, around 6 pm. Maybe they're above this in the midwest. I'm talking about the demolition derby. This event brings a new level of meaning to the phrase "amateur sport."

We arrived only minutes before the derby was due to start — which was clearly too late. We managed to find seats, but they were too far away to even get dust in our eyes when the drivers spun out their tires. Still, we were in good company. "Go Dad!" yelled the kids just down the bleachers from us. Dad was standing on the roof of his mid-sixties Chrysler Imperial, wearing a cowboy hat and smoking a cigarette. Someone had spray-painted "DEATHSHIP" along either side of the car.

If you've never been to a demolition derby, it goes something like this: About a dozen cars participate in each heat, crammed into a space slightly larger than a New York City parking lot for the same number of vehicles. The cars are mostly early '80's Chevy and Ford wagons. They must be crappy enough to be casually wrecked on a Sunday afternoon, but good enough to win. I'm guessing the average value per car was about $300, if you don't count the art work. ("Trish and Bob", "#1", and American flag stripes being the most popular.)

The winner is the car that lasts the longest. It's as simple as that. As far as I could tell, the only rule is that you can't bump someone in the driver's side door (because that would be dangerous and stupid). It seems to be a remarkably safe sport; a couple of ambulances were hanging around, but I didn't see any drivers. The firemen were called on to put out a few engine fires, but this never stopped the action for more than 30 seconds. The key to victory appeared to be using the back of your car to bash your opponents' vehicles. Veteran derby racers make cuts in the car's frame to avoid the high water booty problem that results from being rear-ended.

DEATHSHIP's driver was clearly a veteran. His skills and that '60's American steel were a winning combination ('80's steel just doesn't compare). The other cars — wheels hanging by a thread, doors crumpled, bumpers entangled in radiators — were lifted out of the arena by John Deeres, leaking gasoline gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

And that was just the opening heat. But by this time the sun was going down, the buckets of soda were starting to weigh heavily on our bladders, and the smell of cheese fries just beyond the arena was too tempting. Besides, DEATHSHIP's first-heat win had been glorious. To watch it hobble back into the arena with the damaged winners from the remaining four heats would have been too sad, like watching middle-aged men throw limp punches at each other after closing time. And I can do that in Williamstown.

Emma (9/11/98)

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