Editorial: Westmoreland Fair fun is back

Tribune-Review | Saturday, August 21, 2021 5:01 a.m.

Shane Dunlap | Tribune-Review

Aubrey Sierra, 4, of Greensburg, screams with excitement while on a ride Tuesday night, Aug. 20, 2019 at the Westmoreland Fair.

Is there anything more quintessentially summer than a county fair?

It’s the kind of event that brings all of those snapshot memories of summertime fun into focus. Cotton candy. Blue ribbons. Funnel cake. Carnival rides. Midway games.

The Westmoreland Fair runs through Aug. 28. For the next week, dads will walk around with preschoolers on their shoulders and moms will fret over kids who want to run in three directions at once. Cooks will proudly show off their chocolate cakes and canned jams while young farmers strut their lambs and heifers around the ring.

And the memories will be all the sweeter because of how long the wait was.

The fair was just one of the many events that was mothballed in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing and covid-19 restrictions made the festivities — a kind of weeklong countywide block party — impossible to pull off last year so organizers had to push pause.

But now it is back.

Even though numbers are rising and the delta variant is in play, even though mask-wearing is again being recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and caution is being recommended but not mandated.

Throwing this kind of event has been a problem in other states. Spring break in Florida — well, a whole lot of things in Florida. Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The 2020 motorcycle gathering in Sturgis, S.D.; the jury is still out on the 2021 rally.

But not every get-together has to be a threat. It’s up to us all to find a way to gather without being at risk. We can show that it is possible to celebrate, to have fun, to explore while still being safe.

Those are things that are just as important as the air we breathe. It didn’t take long for 2020 to teach the world how much the little moments like baseball games and birthday parties meant when they weren’t made available. Summer at a distance wasn’t quite the same as summer with snow cones and concerts and lugging giant stuffed animal prizes back to the car.

The Westmoreland Fair can be that opportunity to be smart enough to protect ourselves and our loved ones but also protecting our ability to indulge in the kind of good times that will fill memories with moments to look back on with smiles.