TUNBRIDGE — The past two years Renée and Steve Perry (not that Steve Perry) have come to the Tunbridge Fair in anticipation of eating apple crisp with vanilla ice cream, only to find that it has sold out before they even get there.
This year the couple, who live in Lebanon, were not going to make the same mistake. They made the Belgian Acres food truck on Antique Hill one of their first stops, got a bowl of crisp to share and savored it under the shade of a nearby tree.
“We had to get some,” Renée Perry said.
And was it worth the wait? Yes, they agreed. But this was not going to be their only stop. They were also eyeing Mexican street corn, sausage and peppers and the Quebec classic, poutine and fries — a combination they acknowledged might have later ramifications.
However, “it’s one day a year. You gotta do it,” Perry said.
People come to the Tunbridge World’s Fair, held annually in September, for myriad reasons. The rides, the agricultural exhibits, the horse-pulling contests, the pig races, the historic exhibits on Antique Hill, the sense of community.
Not least, people come to eat.
They come for the fried dough, the hamburgers and french fries, the burritos, maple creemees, cannolis, gyros, smoothies, popcorn, candy-coated fruit, homemade pretzels, wood-fired, homemade pizza, Asian dumplings, and plates of fried onion rings stacked so high they look architectural.
And if you are so inclined, hard tack.
Israel Provoncha, a Revolutionary War reenactor and Tunbridge resident who teaches history at Hartford High School, stood at his post on Antique Hill, the section of the fair devoted to tools, goods and machinery from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier, complete with cocked hat and musket, Provoncha tucked into a bowl of Indian pudding. An old New England classic made from cooking cornmeal, molasses, spices and milk, Indian pudding was not standard fare for the colonial armies.
Instead, Provoncha, who is also a fair director, pulled out a round, 3-month-old, hard tack biscuit that troops would customarily eat with small pieces of salt pork. So hard that in order to break it up, Provoncha uses the butt of a musket to split it into smaller pieces. Not his preferred fair diet.
“I’ll have four or five maple shakes over the four days,” Provoncha said, adding, “When in Rome….”
Standing next to him, Lempster, N.H., resident Robert Nickerson, dressed in a Civil War Union Army uniform, proclaims “I love a Moxie,” the New England soda that bears a resemblance to root beer.
As for food, he said, deadpan, “I like to eat something that doesn’t cost a lot. Also, I like to eat stuff I don’t eat during the year. You know, hamburgers or hot dogs.”
This year the fair has attracted 103 vendors, approximately 30 of them selling food, said Kelly Sammel, the superintendent of concessions.
One of them, Michael Flanagan, the owner of Ting Ting Dumplings, has returned to the fair after a number of years. Formerly an executive chef at the Sugarbush ski resort who lives in Vermont’s Mad River Valley, Flanagan has spent the last 15 years taking an Asian-inspired menu to fairs and events throughout New England.
“I like the freedom, the independence, not working 9 to 5,” Flanagan said.
After years fine-tuning the menu — “Basically, I’m setting up a little restaurant,” he said.
Flanagan made dumplings a centerpiece because of their popularity.
Another vendor, Kevin Goodwin from Andover, N.H., sells Dole Whip, a frozen, dairy-free dessert. Pineapple and mango are the most popular flavors he sells, Goodwin said. He dresses up the food truck with Hawaiian-themed decorations. “I love doing it and introducing it to people,” Goodwin said.
There are benefits to selling a dairy and gluten-free dessert, Goodwin says. He recalls doing a fair where a girl asked him whether the Dole Whip was, in fact, dairy and gluten-free. When he answered yes, she was thrilled, he said, that she could eat it.
“It gave me goosebumps,” Goodwin said.
If he had his way, Goodwin, who works at a printing company in New London, would operate the truck year-round. “Vending is good money. I wish I could have figured it out in my 20s and 30s,” Goodwin said. “I’m a people person.”
Sitting near the Grandstand, Rhonda Martell, from Bradford, Vt., dipped into a plate of Buffalo chicken-loaded fries. She has been attending the fair for about 40 years, she said.
“Before we leave, we’ll find fried dough,” she said.
Next to her, Sarah Mayotte, who grew up in Tunbridge but now lives in Hartland, always looked forward to coming to the fair as a child.
Schools in the Upper Valley have traditionally bused their elementary and middle school students to the fair on Thursday, its first day.
“I loved that we got to leave school and I did scavenger hunts,” Mayotte said. “For all of us in Vermont, this is one of the better Ag fairs. It’s not as commercialized, and it still has a smalltown feel.”
Prices have risen, as they have everywhere.
“I paid $18 for food but you know what, it’s once a year. I feel you just have to indulge in fair food,” Mayotte said.
Kris and Phil Partridge come down from Barre, Vt., every year.
“We’ve been coming for most of our married life,” she said. “We come for the fair food.”
Phil Partridge ate french fries while a plate of fried dough waited in front of Kris Partridge.
They used to love to eat oysters, a discontinued concession stand; now they like the Dole Whip, which they’ve tried before at Disney World in Florida, Phil Partridge said.
Up on Antique Hill, Civil War reenactor Gary Ward, a member of the 2nd Vermont Company, talked to young kids who quizzed him about his sword, his Union Army uniform and the cannon balls lying on the ground.
Ward, from Plainfield, Vt., pondered the monotony of the Civil War soldier’s diet, not much changed from the hard tack, salt pork or beef diet of the Revolutionary War diet. What if a Union Army soldier had had access to the kind of food that people come miles to eat at the Tunbridge Fair?
Ward mimicked a soldier looking befuddled by pizza: “What is this strange triangular food with tomatoes on it?”
Put it this way, he said: “If the Army of the Potomac would’ve had it, they would’ve ate it.”
The Tunbridge World’s Fair continues Saturday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets cost $20 on Saturday and $15 on Sunday.
Nicola Smith can be reached at mail@nicolasmith.org.