Notes from my Knapsack 8-28-2025
Jeff Gill
Summer's end, and new beginnings
___
Summer is over.
Many cultures, including indigenous ones to North America, consider the crossquarter -- midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox -- to be the marker for the seasons. It was August 7th this year. Harvest time is already beginning, and will continue through the end of October.
Summer, to me, is a necklace with a string of occasional beads: there's the end of school & commencements, Memorial Day, Newark's Strawberry Festival, Cub Scout Day Camp, Granville's Fourth of July Street Fair, usually a quick vacation wedged in, either way trips to the Ohio State Fair and in the last five years the Indiana State Fair, all closing with the Hartford Fair.
With the last day of the fair, and the harness races which have been part of the state and county fairs since the mid-1800s, summer concludes. Some school districts have already started; high school band camps and athletic workouts ratcheted up to full practice weeks with Aug. 1, and the high school and college football seasons start before this month ends.
Summer is over, and a few moments of reflection around where we didn't go, what didn't get done, what needs to happen next spring before summer comes again. Many memories to sift, some muddled with similar summer events that occur and reoccur, like those harness races, all different, all the same.
There is a marvelous old engraving of the Great Circle Earthwork, on the boundary of Newark and Heath, which was from 1853 to 1933 the Licking County Agricultural Society's fairgrounds. The LCAS going bankrupt with the Great Depression is part of how that property stopped being a fairground, and turned into a park, now operated by the Ohio History Connection.
But for some eighty years it was a fairground and also within that period, an amusement park. In all seasons, there was also a racetrack within the ancient enclosure, mostly for harness racing, which you see in the Nineteenth Century engraving.
Then you go out to the Hartford Independent Fair and see horses and one-rider contraptions that could be riding right out of that old picture. In the midst of great change, there are things that have not. We still have a fair, we just share it with Knox and part of Delaware Counties; the horses have their lineages that race fans follow avidly, with today's trotters carrying the tradition on around the track. It's something I've never bet on, but I wouldn't miss it. Plus, I like to go to the last day of the Hartford Fair, because it brings the summer, for me, to a close.
We see there people we haven't run into for a year, unique to that setting; I also encounter there people I mostly know from other locations, but fairs and activities bring us together for that moment of "oh, right, you — hello!" We eat foods we may not consume again for another eleven months or so, but we'll pursue sweet corn as long as we can into August.
Summer's end, and fall's beginning. This, to me, is the true new year season, the time in August & September when the world truly seems to re-set. January? Eh. Champagne if you must. But as the last bugle "call to post" plays, I'm ready for a fresh start, as the crops come in, and the leaves turn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for autumn, if not the autumnal equinox. Tell him how you prepare for September at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
Summer's end, and new beginnings
___
Summer is over.
Many cultures, including indigenous ones to North America, consider the crossquarter -- midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox -- to be the marker for the seasons. It was August 7th this year. Harvest time is already beginning, and will continue through the end of October.
Summer, to me, is a necklace with a string of occasional beads: there's the end of school & commencements, Memorial Day, Newark's Strawberry Festival, Cub Scout Day Camp, Granville's Fourth of July Street Fair, usually a quick vacation wedged in, either way trips to the Ohio State Fair and in the last five years the Indiana State Fair, all closing with the Hartford Fair.
With the last day of the fair, and the harness races which have been part of the state and county fairs since the mid-1800s, summer concludes. Some school districts have already started; high school band camps and athletic workouts ratcheted up to full practice weeks with Aug. 1, and the high school and college football seasons start before this month ends.
Summer is over, and a few moments of reflection around where we didn't go, what didn't get done, what needs to happen next spring before summer comes again. Many memories to sift, some muddled with similar summer events that occur and reoccur, like those harness races, all different, all the same.
There is a marvelous old engraving of the Great Circle Earthwork, on the boundary of Newark and Heath, which was from 1853 to 1933 the Licking County Agricultural Society's fairgrounds. The LCAS going bankrupt with the Great Depression is part of how that property stopped being a fairground, and turned into a park, now operated by the Ohio History Connection.
But for some eighty years it was a fairground and also within that period, an amusement park. In all seasons, there was also a racetrack within the ancient enclosure, mostly for harness racing, which you see in the Nineteenth Century engraving.
Then you go out to the Hartford Independent Fair and see horses and one-rider contraptions that could be riding right out of that old picture. In the midst of great change, there are things that have not. We still have a fair, we just share it with Knox and part of Delaware Counties; the horses have their lineages that race fans follow avidly, with today's trotters carrying the tradition on around the track. It's something I've never bet on, but I wouldn't miss it. Plus, I like to go to the last day of the Hartford Fair, because it brings the summer, for me, to a close.
We see there people we haven't run into for a year, unique to that setting; I also encounter there people I mostly know from other locations, but fairs and activities bring us together for that moment of "oh, right, you — hello!" We eat foods we may not consume again for another eleven months or so, but we'll pursue sweet corn as long as we can into August.
Summer's end, and fall's beginning. This, to me, is the true new year season, the time in August & September when the world truly seems to re-set. January? Eh. Champagne if you must. But as the last bugle "call to post" plays, I'm ready for a fresh start, as the crops come in, and the leaves turn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for autumn, if not the autumnal equinox. Tell him how you prepare for September at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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