Retard Day at the Fair

Sometimes young boys are very cruel. Sometimes they mean to be cruel, other times they just suffer from a common form of whitetrash ignorance, and as a result, don't often choose the best or most tactful way to express their feelings.

Such was the occasion in 1975, when I experienced my first Retard Day at the Fair. The county fair was a chance to break out of the same old routine during long hot summers. Every day of the fair, my brothers and I would get up early, earn money, cash in whatever cans or bottles might be found, and head off on our mile-long journey to the Tuscola County Fairgrounds.

One Tuesday, our little gang reached the gas station on our corner only to find a similar gaggle of boys returning up our road, Van Geisen Road. We asked, "where ya headed?" They said, "we left the fair, because it's Retard Day at the Fair." Equally forlorn, we too turned and fled.

You have to understand Caro, Michigan, in 1975 to decode the phrase "retard day at the fair." Caro has a bustling sugar beat business, pumpkin trade, and commercial district, but by far, the biggest industry in Caro is the state hospital where mentally handicapped children and adults from throughout the midwest came to live at our hundred-year-old institution, the State Hospital. On Tuesdays, the patients at this hospital were granted free entrance along with their nurses and attendants. Thus, the county fair was overwhelmed by hundreds of mentally handicapped individuals. This tended to distract or obscure the zany antics of the normal boy population in Caro, as lines were longer, rides were slower, and normal fair-activities became clogged or congested.

But I see a different interpretation in all of this. I see a boy population in Caro growing up fully aware of the presence of mentally ill populations in society. I see a boy population, albeit with a politically incorrect vocabulary ("retard), growing into men knowing full well the challenges and the statistics of the handicapped population in America.

So for all it's worthy, I'm glad I experienced Retard Day at the Fair.