Word has reached The Star of the cancellation of this year’s Fisherman’s Fair, a community event that was for many decades the most beautiful, banner day in Springs — a high point of halcyon August, a moment when all that was best in human nature, and all that was best from Accabonac Harbor (as well as from the neighborhood artists’ studios) was on display for all to enjoy on the lawns surrounding Ashawagh Hall.
The reason for the cancellation given by members of the Springs Improvement Society, privately and on social media, is the impossible hurdle of Suffolk County Health Department regulations in regard to preparing and selling food. Anyone who enjoyed the fair in its glory days will agree this is a crying shame.
According to the archives of The Star, the fair had humble beginnings as the Springs Fair, and was well established by the early 1930s. A table was set out inside the Springs Community Presbyterian Church and homespun craft items and pies were sold. It snowballed into something much more special after the arrival of the bohemian counterculture to the hamlet in the 1940s and 1950s. By 1960, it was recast as the Fisherman’s Fair, and some of the 20th century’s most storied visual artists pitched in alongside the Bonacker matrons to create posters and T-shirts, sell art, shuck clams, and eat chicken dinners until sunset.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Pierre Franey, the admired French chef, was a regular presence, overseeing and dishing out bouillabaisse and other shellfish-centric delicacies. Kids won prizes in the fish pond booth and made artistic prints using the side of a bluefish as the paint block while mom and dad browsed through the books in the shade.
A community fair like the Fisherman’s Fair is about more than just nostalgia; it’s a gauge of the health of the community itself. What motivates residents to devote weekends to banging together a booth to sell cakes? How many bakers will raise their hands to bake them? Who will attend in fair weather or foul? It seems likely that the health department regulations were the straw that broke the camel’s back — the camel being community cohesion, conviviality, and sense of place.
The silver lining is that the art exhibition, at least, will go on: The annual Springs Artists Invitational can be viewed at Ashawagh Hall through Aug. 11.
What is to be done about the conflict between food-safety regulations — which have become an insurmountable problem for community groups running once-a-year fund-raising events — and the good, old-fashioned village green fair? It seems the letter of the law has trampled the spirit of the law.
Fairs have been held at local churches and village greens since the 19th century, and we can find zero evidence of any fairgoer ever having been poisoned. Perhaps someone in local government or the County Legislature could sponsor a Fair Day Food Exemption rule. Anyone out there interested in championing this proposal? Or joining the Springs Improvement Society to lend a hand?