A Maui Community Tradition on the Brink of Reviving
Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran | Photos courtesy Gil S.C. Keith-Agaran
If there’s a Ferris Wheel, I’ll be at the Maui [County] Fair sometime between October 2–5 next month.
Since moving home in the early 1990s, taking a Big Wheel ride with my mom (and later my wife) became an annual tradition. At some point, the Maui Fair Alliance had taken on organizing and running the Fair—probably after the leadership of the venerable Maui County Fair and Racing Association (and its subsequent non-profit successor), as we former Jaycees say, “roostered out.” I’m too young to have seen it but they apparently did have horse races at the Kahului Fairgrounds way back when.
But as the Fair approached one hundred years, Covid happened. After the October 2019 event, the Maui Fair Alliance began canceling the event. The Alliance cancelled the Fair for two years during the pandemic. The next three years got nixed due to various challenges—E.K. Fernandez had difficulties bringing the expected rides and games to the neighbor island fairs (and even some traditional Honolulu events passed on including the conventional Joy Zone), problems getting commitments from various volunteers and community partners (the greying of community volunteers probably played a big part) and other issues. The Alliance announced last year it was formally dissolving after canceling the Fair for a fifth straight year. It appeared the Fair would end short of its 100th event.
Coordinating all the effort—herding volunteers, getting sponsors, security and the joy zone provider, lining up food and other vendors, handling contracts, storing equipment to be used at future fairs and dealing with issues that came up—was a fulltime job and Sherry Grimes handled it for many years.
I admit dismissing the announcement the County of Maui was providing funding to re-start the Fair (former Mayor Mike Victorino and former legislator Avery Chumbley, Alliance honchos, were unable to overcome the challenges following the pandemic.) But seeing the bones of the tents on the War Memorial Gym parking lot and the new food booths being constructed on the adjacent soccer field, it looks like the powers that be may be pulling this rabbit out of the hat.
Our long national nightmare is over.
I wish the County-subsidized organizers well. The Fair, at one time, was an important community gathering. It was a visible manifestation of the connections that bound our residents.
At both the old location and the War Memorial, various community groups served fair food. Christ the King offered pansit for American tastes. Malasadas, of course, from the Kiwanis (and Key Club members). Pronto pups from the Boy Scouts. Steaks from a soccer club. Chow Fun from Wailuku Hongwanji (if your kid was in the pre-school, you voluntold a shift or two under Wes Wong’s careful eye). Smoked meat from a canoe club. Chili and chili dogs from the Maui High band. It was touted as the biggest annual fundraising event for many local non-profits.
E.K. Fernandez over time encroached on community food offerings (pizza, cotton candy, candied apples). And with connectivity expanding, fundraising through GoFundMe and other virtual efforts reflected the shift from group efforts to more individual money asks.
The fair was such a big thing that Maui treated fair weekend like a religious High Holiday. It was the only event for that block of time. A tradition like Easter, Memorial Day, Makawao Rodeo on July 4th weekend, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Even Maui Interscholastic League (MIL) football games used to take a “break” for the fair (coaches, county workers and MIL volunteers no doubt also working at the fair instead that weekend). Of course, there were only four teams then (Maui, Baldwin, Lahainaluna and St. Anthony). When the MIL added more schools (with their own stadiums), the fair break faded away.
But many a community leader made their bones as a chair of a Maui County Fair committee.
I grew up when MCFRA still held the event at the Fair Grounds off Pu‘unēnē Avenue. The parade route at that time started at War Memorial and wound its way downhill past Kahului Shopping Center, the old Bank of Hawai‘i, Maui Clinic and the Kahului Armory (McDonald’s opened at some point during that era). I walked the parade with my boy scouts and cub scouts troop as a kid and dutifully stood along the route through high school to watch friends, and later nephews and nieces in the Maui High band, color guard and cheerleaders march by.
I enjoyed wandering through the homemakers’ building and looking at the pies and cakes on display. I checked out the orchid display (and even bought a few for my mom who liked to have them). I admired the photography and student art event—it showed Maui had great eyes and talent (and art and photo teachers).
I was terrible at games but I would toss a few rings at soda bottles and dimes on the slippery Lucky Strike table as my annual contribution to E.K. Fernandez. My sister accumulated quite a number of large stuffed animals won for her by friends. It was a matter of pride to collect a toy in whatever game you played.
The main attraction—besides a lot of people watching and some of the nightly entertainment—was the joy zone. I remember being on what I think was called the skyline—really just a modified ski lift with a route above a portion of the fairgrounds allowing you to survey the people below. I gave up on the dizzying, vomit-inducing rides early in high school (my first real roller coaster ride came Senior year in college when we wandered away from campus to one of the Six Flags Amusement Parks).
A perk for volunteers was free entry for your shift. And if you really had connections, you could get parking behind Baldwin High School’s campus. I generally parked at Kaiser or the Cameron Center to support whichever non-profit had won handling those spaces.
A&B took back the land in 1989 to re-develop and MCFRA gave way to the Alliance moving the fair to the War Memorial complex instead. Returning home to Maui in the 1990s, I volunteered at the fair as a member of a Kiwanis club supervising High School key club members frying malasadas (yeah, we used bisquick pancake mix—aery sugared donuts when allowed to rise a bit before being drenched into the hot oil), put together batches of chicken hekka using a secret recipe passed down to Kahului Hongwanji Mission (white wine substituted for Sake), and did shifts selling drinks at soda booths, stirring chili for the Maui High band when a niece was a flag girl/color guard member, offering talk story evangelism and religious tracts at a church table, and surveying fair goers for the Focus Maui Nui project.
I even volunteered as the designated “parent” for a niece who was a Maui High cheerleader at their ice cream stand (scooping frozen ice cream can build up your forearm and wrists over the course of a weekend). And don’t even bring up all the volunteering I did when you still had the Maui Jaycees Carnival as well.
So I certainly hope it happens. I think it may be difficult to draw as many of the old groups back—mainly because I expect a lot of those volunteers and organizers, are, well, old. In 2019, the Alliance didn’t fill all forty-four of the food vendor slots. My sources assert there are no Key Clubs and Leos at the high schools anymore (something called Interact takes on community service projects now) and the Kiwanis and Lions have much smaller memberships, and the boy scouts have merged with the state organization.
But if there’s flying saucers, malasadas, chili and some smoked meat, I can live with that. It may mean the community still sees the value of continuing tradition and re-building some of the connections local folks once felt so strongly. If the Good Lord’s willing, and the creek don’t rise …
Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran practices law in Wailuku. He formerly represented Central Maui in the State Legislature and served in County and State government.