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Horsing around at the fair''Over there!
Over there!''
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 Brice Peterson, 3, right, of Grant Park does some riding of his own Tractor Pull at the fair. |
The shouts are familiar to those who parked in the Kankakee County Fairgrounds during the five-day extravaganza that fair officials say brought out record crowds.
The shouts were those issued by the eight people who work on horses, directing traffic to available parking spaces during the annual event.
For 360 days of the year, Vernon Arnold, of Reddick, who claims an age of ''almost 60,'' works at a trailer park in Reddick. But for the other five days for the past 12 years, anyway, he has been working at the fair on horseback, directing parking.
To work this year, Arnold said, he ''took two days off work because this is something different to do.''
What is it that drives a person to ride a horse in the heat, humidity, rain, and all the various weather that Illinois is known for?
''I just like to ride horses and this is about the most amount of time that I get to ride,'' he said Saturday.
Arnold got his start at being a horse parker at the fair when ''a guy I went to high school with asked if I wanted to help out one year and I've been here ever since.''
Being on horseback for hours on end, day after day, unable to get up a really good gallop except for perhaps a few hundred feet several times a day may seem boring to some folks, but Arnold says he enjoys it.
''I just love doing this. You get to know a lot of people here from year to year,'' Arnold said. ''You get to know where they live, when they're gonna show up, and where they're usually gonna try to park.''
When he rides at the fair, he is never alone. Arnold rides one of his five horses, Star, a registered walking horse. Arnold said he likes to ride Star because a walking horse provides ''a lot smoother ride than a quarter horse.''
Arnold said he isn't ''knocking quarter horses, but Star just gives me a lot smoother ride when I'm up here all day for five days.''
One of seven children, Arnold got his start on horses around the age of seven.
''We didn't have bicycles,'' Arnold recalled, ''but we had one horse and we had to share. I had four brothers and two sisters.'' He got his own horse, his first one, when he was in high school.
''For me, this is more pleasure than work,'' Arnold said. ''I'm not in there (the fair) drinking beer or anything.''
As he explained one of the harder parts of the job - getting people to park in the lots in an orderly fashion, Arnold and his supervisor, David L. Jackson, Milford, had to chase someone out of the lot. The driver of a small pickup truck decided he didn't want to park where the horse parkers were telling him to park and was instructed to leave.
''Yeah, we had a couple of guys last year that wanted to fight because they couldn't park where they wanted to,'' Arnold said, ''but with five or six horses around a car, people tend to listen to us.''
Do the horse parkers try to intimidate people?
''No,'' Arnold quickly answered. ''When we have someone who wants to start trouble, we all gather around - just in case.''
During those hot days, Arnold said, ''a lot of people offer us pop every now and then.''
About three years ago, he said, he didn't yet have saddle bags for Star, and ''it was always nice to get a pop now and then. My boss' family will bring something out for us to drink several times a day, too.''
Arnold said the one thing that really sticks out in his mind about directing traffic year to year is the driver who seems to be lost in a line.
''There are some people that just know where to go,'' Arnold said. ''Then there's a car that's right behind a line of people and they just have no idea what's going on. That's what really sticks out in my mind. We just direct them to follow the flow.''
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