Step Right Up: It’s Time for the Alabama National Fair
For the last 68 years, the Alabama National Fair in Montgomery has drawn thousands of people for 10 days of family fun — with roller coasters, prize livestock and maybe, if they’re lucky, some saltwater taffy.
As we age, our millions of memories gradually leave us. Some just disappear; others fade slowly, their once bright colors and sharp images going gray and blurry before a haze finally consumes them. But some recollections survive this process.
One that’s remained crystal clear for me is my first taste of saltwater taffy at the Mississippi State Fair in Jackson. My dad reached into the brown paper sack he’d accepted from a man leaning out of a trailer painted with pink cotton candy and dancing peanuts and produced a white chunk enclosed in wax paper. He twisted the ends of the wrapping, peeled free the bite-sized blob, and handed it to me. I ate it without hesitation. It was chewy and sweet with a hint of vanilla and salt that kicked my salivary glands into high gear.
Today, plain vanilla saltwater taffy — not the flavored stuff — sits near the top of my long list of candy favorites, and part of its appeal is its rarity. I can’t find it in my grocery store. Gas stations don’t have it. Thanks to the internet, you can now order it, but it’s been my experience that the best bet for finding saltwater taffy is a trip to your nearest fair.
And enjoying it in the fairground environs that match my memory hits my nostalgia button hard. It sweetens the deal.
So, when October rolls around, I attend The Alabama National Fair in my hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. I go to search for taffy, but also for the rides, the fried-food options and the “fall is here!” feeling the fair always provides. I go for the fun of it all. This year’s fair kicks off today at 1 p.m. Central time.
But when I buy my fair ticket, I’m also contributing to the good of our community. The Alabama National Fair is a self-sustaining nonprofit corporation under the umbrella of the Kiwanis Club of Montgomery, one of the oldest and largest Kiwanis chapters in the country. Since the group founded the fair in 1954, it has used the money raised from the fair to award grants to area charities and service organizations, including our Boys and Girls Clubs, the Brantwood Children’s Home, the Montgomery Area Food Bank, Montgomery Public Schools’ Reading Is Fundamental program and the Girl Scouts, to name a few. In 2021, more than $300,000 in grants went out.
When I buy my fair ticket, I’m also contributing to the good of our community. In 2021, more than $300,000 in grants went out to area charities and service organizations.
The Alabama National Fair isn’t the only fair in the state hosted by a Kiwanis Club, but it’s one of the biggest and most successful. Some of the other, smaller county fairs staged by Kiwanis clubs have ceased operations. In early September, Shelby County, which is just 50 miles north of Montgomery, announced it was cancelling its 2022 fair due to low attendance and not enough volunteers.
Yet every October, thousands come to Montgomery’s event “from miles around,” as the fair’s advertising that blankets local airwaves brags. I can’t say what draws those crowds; I don’t know what all of those folks are after. But I can share what has me humming the jaunty jingle as soon as the outside air begins its blessed transformation from moist to crisp.
I start my annual visit with a stroll to let the sensory splendor of the fairgrounds envelop me. Chattering and squealing children drag stuffed animals bigger than them through the dust. Roller coaster cars rumble and screech. Adults and children scream their lungs out on the Tilt-A-Whirl. The scent of fried dough and sauteed sausages and boiled peanuts and spun sugar floats on the fall breeze. A rainbow of neon lights glows against the navy night sky.
I like watching kids throw ping-pong balls at goldfish. I enjoy the obnoxious and mildly aggressive midway hawkers trying to convince me to play their games or let them guess my weight. The multicolored patchwork quilts on display make me think of my grandma. The girth and weight of the giant vegetables vying for blue ribbons never cease to amaze. And I love the livestock exhibits (or, more accurately, I love watching people who made the mistake of wearing nice shoes to the fair walk through the livestock hall on tiptoe). Most of the fair’s eating options come with a side of regret, but that never stops me from indulging.
And of course, there’s the taffy. For years, I knew that once I finished checking out the pigs (piglets too, if you’re lucky), Brahma bulls and specimens of chicken breeds that look like they’re having a terrible hair day, I’d end up at the saltwater taffy stand. Then it was back to the car and back home, unwrapping and eating (and loosening my cavity fillings) all the way.
But then one year, the taffy was gone; the stand was no longer there. And every year I’ve been to the fair since (I have missed a couple), the taffy void has remained. For the first few years, I’d pester the nice ladies at the information booth. “Is there saltwater taffy anywhere on the fairgrounds?” And “Do you know why the taffy people stopped coming?”
While I don’t know if a taffy vendor will ever be back, I’ll be back at the Alabama National Fair this year. I’ll put on sensible shoes, buy my ticket and make my way to the midway, confident that whatever I find, taffy or no, will always be worth the visit. And I’ve not given up: I’ll never stop scanning the offerings, hoping for the return of my favorite sweet treat.
Jennifer Stewart Kornegay's magazine articles appear in local, regional and national magazines and websites including Garden & Gun, Southern Living, American Profile, The Local Palate, Conde Nast Traveler, Alabama magazine, Birmingham magazine, Paste magazine, thekitchn.com, travelandleisure.com, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Alabama Living, Alabama Journey, okra magazine, Good Grit, Edible Lower Alabama, Southern Lady magazine, Georgia magazine, al.com, myscoop.com, rootsrated.com and more. She writes a monthly food column for Alabama Living magazine and is the managing editor of the Montgomery Business Journal.