State Fair by Earlene Fowler Read Free Book Online Page B

tinker’s chance in Hades of getting it back. But if it was one of these hate groups, believe me, you might not want it back. If it’s just a person who wanted the quilt, chances are it has already gone to wherever stolen quilts go. The quilter’s pawnshop?” He laughed at his own joke.
    I sighed and stood up. In terms of being a significant crime against humanity, this wasn’t even close. Still, it was important to some of us. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
    “Find me that photo and then I suggest you make up some posters, offer a reward. If it was some carnie taking it on a lark, you might actually get it back.”
    “That’s not a half-bad idea. I’ll tell Maggie and the others.”
    Back outside, the fairgrounds were elbow to elbow with people and the temperature pushing 100 degrees. That actually wasn’t too bad for an August afternoon in Paso Robles. I could recall Mid-State Fairs where the temperatures soared to 115 degrees, though the heat had seemed easier to take when I was younger. A thin stream of perspiration trickled down the side of my neck as I walked back to the home arts building.
    I felt sick for Maggie, Katsy, Jazz and the rest of the Ebony Sisters who met at the folk art museum every other Tuesday night. I’d watched this quilt’s birth from the initial bantering over fabric choices to practically the last binding stitch. Before the fair, it had been displayed at the folk art museum. The Sisters had seriously debated whether they should take a chance on showing it at the fair whose security didn’t match ours at the museum. It was Jazz who had been the driving force for it to be shown at the fair. It wasn’t surprising that she’d taken its theft so personally.
    “Hardly anyone will see it at the museum,” she’d said at the quilt guild meeting eight months ago when we first discussed the fair exhibit. She glanced at me, blushing slightly. “No offense, Benni.”
    I held up my palm. “None taken. I’ll be the first to admit our museum’s viewership is limited.” I was attending this particular Ebony Sisters guild meeting because I was Oneeda Cleary’s ride. After the meeting, she and I were meeting Gabe and Jim, her husband, for chicken pot pie night at Liddie’s Café.
    “It could be damaged,” Katsy had argued. “People can be so careless. I hate the thought of any food or drink being near it.”
    “But isn’t it more important that people see it and learn about Harriet Powers?” Jazz insisted.
    “She’s right,” said Flory Jackson, her white hair a striking contrast against skin the color of burnished copper. “It’s just fabric and thread, ladies. Both are replaceable. It’s more important for us to tell Harriet’s story to as many people as we can. The fair does that in a way this lovely museum cannot despite how hard Benni works to entice folks in here.” She smiled at me.
    “Agree,” said Oneeda Cleary, sitting next to me in her wheelchair.
    Because of her advanced MS, her words were garbled, but we’d all been around her long enough to understand her. She took a deep, labored breath and slapped one hand down on the armrest of her wheelchair. “Folks . . . need . . . to know.”
    So, the African American quilt exhibit at the fair, cosponsored by the museum and the quilt guild, was centered on the replica of the Harriet Powers quilt. The exhibit at the museum was running concurrently and had been a huge success. It had been Katsy’s idea to ask her friend in Oakland to loan the museum some of her collection of black cloth dolls, African American dolls made from 1870 to 1930. She and I had worked together on the brochure using information we gleaned from a similar exhibit curated by Roben Campbell of the Harvard Historical Society. We mailed out our brochure to both local and out-of-area newspapers and magazines.
    Black cloth (as well as white cloth) dolls are a folk art tradition that came about because of newly available low-priced