Yet even with all the changes, the Pleasant Gap native says one thing has endured: the fair’s role as a reunion, where neighbors and families gather year after year to share food, stories and traditions.

From his first night at the Grange Fair in 1940, when he was just nine, Hoy has spent nearly every August in the iconic canvas tents of the Centre County Grange Encampment with his family. Now, 85 years later, he is the eldest of four generations camping on the grounds, surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are carrying on the time-honored tradition.

As a boy, Hoy attended the fair with his grandparents, who had a tent on the north side of the fairgrounds. Like many tenting families, the camp was home for the week, and he stepped away only briefly each night to help his grandfather with farm chores.

“They had different kinds of things in them then they do today,” Hoy recalled of his old family tent. “Today they are so modern. Before, they weren’t that way.”

HUNTER SMITH/THE EXPRESS Members of Earl Hoy’s family are pictured amongst the tents at the Grange Fair.

Back then, campers slept on straw mattresses, and the tents had few of the comforts people expect today.

“You just smashed it flat and slept right on the dirt floor,” he said.

Even basic necessities were rudimentary.

“Most of them had a commode and a bucket inside that got carried out in the morning and dumped,” Hoy said.

Of course, the fair itself was much smaller back then.

HUNTER SMITH/THE EXPRESS Rows of tents are pictured at the Grange Fair on Wednesday.

“The PA system was minimal, and all the roads were just these main ones right around here,” Earl recalled while sitting in the fair’s office.

He remembered the fair in those early years as a modest gathering of a few hundred people, far fewer than the tens of thousands who now descend on Centre Hall each year.

“Then they started getting more tents. There didn’t used to be very many, and later on they started to get all these vehicles that came in on their own,” Hoy said. “It just kept spreading–getting bigger and bigger.”

Though the fairgrounds lacked electricity and modern conveniences like refrigeration, much of the fun has remained the same. Hoy recalled that even in his earliest memories, Garbrick’s Rides–which is celebrating their 69th year at the fair–were there with their amusements, and many of the cherished events that drew crowds then, from livestock shows and food stands to live entertainment and parades, continue to be central parts of the fair today.

Except for one year when the fair was canceled and during his military service as a helicopter mechanic, Earl has come to every Grange Fair to see his family, friends and neighbors, which he says is the part of the tradition he cherishes most.

Now that his children are grown and have children of their own, they use the tent Earl has maintained over the decades between Grandstand Row and Grove Street as a reunion place.

“Most of them come on Sunday when we each bring a dish and eat in the tent,” Hoy said. “They all stop and see us no matter what.”

One of those children, his daughter Helen, was only four days old when she came to the fair for the first time.

“My wife and I had our first child; she was only in the hospital three days, and on the fourth day she came to our camp,” said Hoy.

70 years on, Hoy’s daughter continues to come to the fair, now bringing her own children along–carrying on the family’s connection to the Grange Fair into a new generation.