At the Fair

 

I should make mention of the fact that last week was fair week. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, at least nothing I haven't said before. I've written about it many, many times, and it really hasn't changed a lot over the last couple of years. Not for me anyway.

It starts like it does every year, with the parade on Thursday night. I would be fine with not going to the parade, but that's not really my decision. But we always go and that's fine, generally speaking. I just wish there weren't so many people there. It seems to be more packed every single year.

And I also wish there weren't so many commercial vehicles in the parade.When my older kids were small, there were a lot more floats. Yeah, there was the occasional Coca-Cola truck or the occasional oil delivery truck in the parade, but it seems like those were the exceptions. This year, the parade had what seemed like an inordinate amount of commercial vehicles, culminating in a convoy of at least a half a dozen carpet cleaning vans at the tail end of the parade. By the time they rolled on by, I was more than happy to get back home.

I will say, there were some good things this year's parade. First of all, there seemed to be an almost total lack of clowns. I’m not one of those people that are scared of clowns. That is, I’m not scared of clowns when they’re hanging out where they're hanging out – like at circuses and parades and such - as opposed to, say, standing over my bed when I wake up in the middle of the night. I just don’t find clowns to be funny. To me, they seem like they're desperate for attention.

Every year, they used to have a guy that called himself a “Clown for Jesus”, or something like that. He would march along in the parade, waving and handing out flyers and making crosses out of balloons. More than just desperation, I always found it to be vaguely disturbing in a way I could never quite articulate.

Another good thing was that there weren't as many politicians in the parade this year. In years past, it seemed like there would always be at least a few of these people scattered throughout the parade - especially if it was an election year. They would ride along in the back of a convertible or worse, they would walk the parade - smiling and waving and pointing at everyone. I once made eye contact with one of them - and he smiled and waved at me, like I had any idea who that guy was. There’s something weird about that.

On the positive side though, Sam got to see some of the people from his old school marching by. He was pretty thrilled about that. That, by itself, would have made it worthwhile - even if there had been more clowns.

On Saturday, we went to the Fair. We got there a little bit earlier than usual, due mostly to the fact that Sam wanted to see the racing pigs. If we didn't get there for the morning show, it meant we would have to hang around until after lunch to catch the next show, and staying late at the fair isn’t part of our routine.

So, we got to the fair early and did our usual walking around, looking at the displays of fruits and vegetables, and arts and crafts and photographs. And then we went over and watched the racing pigs. It was threatening rain all morning long and it was touch and go as to whether the pigs would race or not. But the rain held off and the races went on, much to Sam’s and my own relief.

From there, we continued on to the other displays – the junior versions of the displays we looked at earlier, the wildlife displays, the baby animals, and so on. We walked down the nearly empty midway, under the gloomy sky, past the food stands and the tents selling feathered cowboy hats and the games of chance, where you have little chance at all. It was all a bit like the parade in reverse, where we were the ones moving, while those on the sidelines tried to wave us in.

Down at the end of the midway, there are two long buildings, and in these buildings there are displays set up by some of those same companies that drove in the parade. One of the buildings used to be more crafts and merchandise, but over the years it seems like that building, like the other, has been taken over by more service type of industries. Inside, there are the furnace repair people and the home repair people and the people that will repair your driveway. Over the last several years, they've been joined by some anti-choice people and now, this year, there is some church group set up a little further down. I make little or no eye contact with any of these people. I’m not really interested in anything any of them are selling. But still, I walk through these buildings every year.

At the end of one of these buildings is another food stand. And every year we sit down at one of their picnic tables and get some water and share French fries before deciding what rides everyone wanted to go on. This year, we got the French fries and water but we didn’t go on any of the rides after. Sam had told me earlier that he wasn’t really interested in going on any rides and Helaina would be coming back the next day, so there was no strong interest on her part, either.

This was good, I guess, because as we walked back down the midway toward the exit, the rain that had been threatening to fall all morning long, was finally coming down. At first, it wasn’t coming down hard enough to stop us from getting some fried dough, but by the time we had it in hand, it was falling hard enough to drench us and the fried dough, all the way back to the car.

Our visit was a little bit shorter than our visit last year, and our group was a little bit smaller. But despite that, and despite my lack of affection for crowds and for the vendors and for the clowns and politicians of years past, I’m always glad that we went.