From Sunday's Times and News-Star
You
still have time to take a little person to the State Fair.
Most
of us have had some highs and lows in the Fair arena. The lows tend to dominate
your thinking as you get older. Maybe it was a night haunted by rude people. A
bad parking sport. Poor weather. The guy guessing your weight overshot the
runway by about 40 pounds.
“Do these corn
dogs make me look fat?”
A
personal low: My interview, for the newspaper, with The Headless Woman.
Toughest quote to get of my career.
But
my favorite memory is so top-shelf that I can’t remember with clarity any “bad”
time I might have ever had at the Fair. My son was almost 3, and on the icebox a
magnet holds a photo of him sitting on a hay bale by the petting zoo, a smile
on his face and goat poop on the bottom of his Nike.
Those
were the Salad Days. And that was the first trip of a few. And that first trip
was 21 years ago.
A
note from Cousin Other reminded me of all that, made me hope that older folk
jaded by grownup things would remember that to a little one, the Fair is lights
and sounds and Oz. To a Fair veteran, it might be crowds or noise or wondering
whether the same guy who invented the guillotine invented the Tilt-A-World. But
it’s all new and wonder and dreaming in color to a little one.
Other
said it best in his note:
Just me and her.
It was
dollar-night so all rides were $1 each.
She's 8, almost
9, and tall enough to ride everything.
I'm much older
and haven't ridden anything in years.
Nevertheless, we
wore out the token dispensers buying ride coinage.
There were the
traditional Ferris wheel-bumper car-fun house options.
But also an
endless selection of Scrambler-Octopus knockoffs.
Different names
and lights and music but basically the same ride.
You know, a
two-seat compartment freewheeling at the end of one of several rotating stems.
So you spin and
twist and jerk and bump and rise and fall for about three minutes.
And Abbey,
convinced they were each unique, wanted to do them all.
Do that for
about half a dozen rides in a row.
I dare you.
On a full
stomach of fair food.
But I held my
own and my food.
However it was
not dollar-night at the concession booths.
Far from it.
And Abbey had a
"homework assignment" to sample specific fair foods.
Supposedly Old
Lady Huggins told the third-graders they "had to" have:
Jumbo Corn Dog
($6)
Lemonade ($6)
Cinnamon Roll
($6)
Notice the
pattern.
Everything was
six bucks.
Even the large
order of curly fries we shared was $6.
(Not part of the
assignment, but a personal favorite.)
When we came to
the pineapple whip ice cream for only $3, I couldn't get my money out fast
enough.
And there were
several places offering generous cups of sweet tea for only 75 cents.
I was almost too
embarrassed to buy one.
Almost.
We were also
able to squeeze in a few side shows and freebies.
Big tortoise,
small pig, camels and horses and llamas trotting in circles.
And Abbey fed
carrots to the (selfish) giraffe.
All things
considered, it was time, if not money, well spent.
I'd do it again.
If
I could go back 21 years, so would I.
