Scenes from a West Virginia county fair, 1938 — dangerousminds.net

In 1938, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt to a county fair in West Virginia where he captured some wonderfully evocative images. You can practically smell the funnel cakes, kettle corn and hot dogs. But their major preoccupation was bodies—human bodies, animal bodies, bodies that looked half-human, half-animal. The “girlie” shows, which were hot and smutty, drew smaller audiences than the freaks from crowds made up of farmers, breeders and hillbillies. Only a few city people were present, although some urban sophisticates have discovered the county fair and are beginning to make America’s great harvest-time diversion a city-folk fad.

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