The cozy, warm feeling of sunrise on a country morning is what we hoped to achieve with the painted “rooster” statue that The Vindicator sponsored as part of this year’s Canfield Fair.

Our rooster, designed and painted by local artist Rick Muccio, depicts a beautiful sunrise coming up in the Valley over a family’s mailbox at the end of a country lane. The morning Vindicator newspaper is already rolled up and tucked inside the familiar orange paper box, just waiting to be plucked out and read with the morning coffee.

Muccio’s artwork shouldn’t be new to readers. For years, Rick has been creating political cartoons for the Tribune Chronicle and, now, The Vindicator opinion pages.

The Vindicator-sponsored giant, fiberglass rooster is just one in a flock of about 25 roosters sponsored by area businesses as a fundraiser for part of the Canfield Fair’s amazing 175th anniversary. Each business had its rooster prepared and painted or otherwise embellished by area artists for display during this year’s fair, which kicks off the middle of next week and runs through Labor Day.

The rooster art project, titled “Flock to the Fairgrounds,” is a public art project similar to Chicago’s “Cows on Parade,” YSU’s “Penguin Parade” and Warren’s “Goddess of Speed” statue projects in past years. Sponsors like The Vindicator will have a permanent commemorative plaque adhered to the base.

Our plaque bears the exhibit’s title: “Good morning, Mahoning County!”

Naming it came easy.

Incredibly, it’s already been two years ago Sept. 1 — the day this year’s fair kicks off — when a six-column headline crowed those words: “Good morning, Mahoning County!” across the top of The Vindicator’s front page.

It was the first headline on the first day that the Tribune Chronicle began publishing the “new” Vindicator after the former owners, whose family had been publishing The Vindy for some 150 years, announced they were ceasing publication on Aug. 31.

The very next morning, readers awoke to the first edition of your “new” Vindicator.

In the middle of that first front page, you also might recall, we listed 100 remarkable things about life in Mahoning County. Very, very near the top (second only to Youngstown State University, in fact) was the Canfield Fair.

We were new to publishing The Vindy, but we weren’t new to the Valley. We knew there was no question about the warm feelings of home that the fair brings each year.

I personally haven’t missed the Canfield Fair since I first moved to northeast Ohio in 1992 — other than last year, when COVID-19 put a damper on events everywhere. Long before my arrival to the Valley, the Canfield Fair was already a tradition for my husband. By the time we married in 1995, we were annually planning our Labor Day festivities and work schedules around Canfield Fair events.

This year, my fair fun undoubtedly will include my annual visit to livestock barns and review of other Junior Fair exhibits, a trip to the great pumpkin exhibit, Sunday’s Darius Rucker concert and, of course, my required lemon shake. I’ll also be spending some time meeting and greeting readers and fair-goers at The Vindicator tent, set to be at its usual location near the grandstand.

The Vindy’s rooster has been on display for several weeks now at the Mahoning County library in Canfield. It’ll be there for a short time longer until it’s transported to the fairgrounds to be reunited and displayed with the rest of the flock.

So, while you’re at this year’s Canfield Fair next week, I hope you’ll stop by our Vindicator tent, and I hope you’ll make it a point to check out the flock of roosters.

Indeed, they are all expected to be spectacular. And although I might be a bit biased, I think The Vindicator’s “Good morning, Mahoning County!” rooster is something especially worth crowing about!

See you at the fair!