COLUMBIA COUNTY FAIR, DAY FOUR

Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News

09-04-10 - DAILY DISPATCHES FROM THE FAIR...

The Pot O’ Gold at the End of the Rainbow

Fans of the Chatham Fair found the proverbial Pot O’ Gold at the end of the rainbow Saturday as a beautiful, vibrant double rainbow seemingly started in Ghent and ended at the Chatham Fair.

The late afternoon-rainbow had fairgoers looking upward not at the Zipper, Ferris Wheel or Vertigo, but rather the colors that were as clear as if they had painted across the blue sky. Camera phones and cameras were all pointed skyward to catch the site, which lasted for about 20 minutes.

Back on the ground, the combination of the Firefighter’s Day Parade – which had more participants than in recent years past, cool, but mostly sunny weather, and the monster tractor pull packed the fairgrounds.

In terms of the parade, the Greenport Fire Department took top honors - The Charles “Rip” Vogel Memorial Award in honor of the best overall appearing Columbia County fire Department with auxiliary. Ancram took the Philip D. Mickle Memorial Award for the best overall appearing fire department without an auxiliary.

By 10 a.m., State Route 66 was blocked from the Village of Chatham back to the hamlet of Ghent, leaving even firefighters trying to make the parade lineup stuck in traffic for up to 25 minutes.

By mid-afternoon, alternate parking was in place and yellow school buses were hauling fairgoers from various parking sites inside the village and out.

The tractor pull once again sent thunderous crashes across the village throughout the late afternoon and early evening as competitors from across the Northeast battled in out in their half-million dollar tractors to see who could haul the most weight down the track. The throngs of people on hand kept vendors happy, creating long lines at nearly every food booth.

In the barns, 4H participants dressed in white showcased their best show cows and fairgoers – some of whom don’t know the difference between a goat and a lamb – browsed the pens loaded with farm animals.