Families buck hot weather, stay cool at Lane Fair

LANE — Shade and water were hot commodities at the Lane Agricultural Fair Saturday.

With temperatures hovering in the upper-90s, fairgoers found many ways to enjoy the fair, while staying cool.

Darlene Hay, Lane, found the shade of the livestock barn comfortable, as she looked at the animals with her youngest grandchild, Lawson Hay, 2, Paola.

It was Lawson’s second year at the Lane Fair, but Hay said she has been going since she was in 4-H as a child and her father, Buddy Page, as president of the fair board. Going to the fair was always a tradition in the family and one she was passing on now.

“Goat, goat,” Lawson said as he pointed to the pen of goats in front of him.

Hay said she and her husband, Joe, had five goats on their farm that belonged to their five grandchildren.

At the other end of the barn, Jesse Hamblin, 13, Richmond, and Cade Asbury, 11, Princeton, were armed with hoses and spraying the pens, the pigs and each other.

“Cooling down the pigs is one of the pig farmer’s jobs,” Asbury, who was showing pigs at the fair, said.

“We’re kind of having fun, while we’re at it,” Hamblin said with a smile as water dripped out of the spray nozzle.

Levi Daniels, 16, Ottawa, found another way to keep cool.

“I was inside helping with the cotton candy, and when I came out, I was instantly sweating,” Daniels said from his perch above the dunk tank.

Although nothing was on fire, the Pottawatomie Township Fire Department ranked high in the popularity contest. With a fire engine parked in front of the station house, a fireman assisted children with a fire hose as they sprayed a metal four-pronged flame, causing it to spin and ring a bell in a small house-like structure on a trailer.

The only group larger than the line of children waiting their turn with the fire hose was the crowd of children running and hopping through the spray on the other side of the house-like structure.

A hot August day made for a good turnout at the concessions stand.

“I think we’re popular right now,” Tammy Mitchell, Lane, said as she served lemonade to a customer at the concession stand.

Mitchell wasn’t sure how much money had been made for the fair board by the concession stand, but a lot of customers had been served.

More than a 100 bags of ice and 650 cups for lemonade had been used Friday and, out of 51 packages of pop — each with 24 cans — only nine packages remained early Saturday afternoon, Mitchell said.

“We are the best place in town,” Rexanne Chester, Lane, who was working the stand with Mitchell, said.

For the fairgoers, the heat is not unexpected for an annual August fair, Chester said.

“It’s not as bad as we’ve seen it before.”

Brian Williams can be e-mailed at bwilliams@ottawaherald.com.