Fair Junkie

Yes, I'll admit it. I'm a fair junkie. I love fairs. County fairs. The sounds of the midway (although the only ride I really even want to ride is the Tilt-a-Whirl, which apparently is out of fashion and one hardly ever finds it offered anymore), the dusty stalls full of sleepy goats and sheep and pigs, the hot crunch of a corn dog, the wandering entertainers, the loudspeaker drifting up and over the grandstands, the local bands competing loudly (with varying degrees of talent) for an audience at stages on opposite ends of the main boulevard.

But most of all I love the fair buildings, filled with fair entries from local folks. The macaroni necklaces and Lego monsters entered by the youngest kids, the rows of apple pies, the colorful quilts, the paper plates displaying beets and carrots and herbs, the dinosaurs made out of vegetables and toothpicks, the paintings and photographs and hat racks made out of old horseshoes.

My kids and I have been entering things in our local fair for almost a decade now and I'm still not tired of the process. The premium books come out months in advance and we pour over it making decisions on what to enter. It's traditional to wait until the day of the deadline to frantically fill out the entry forms and rush down to the fair office with all the other procrastinators. And finally fair days are looming and days are spent in gathering, preparing, labeling, cooking, framing, and finally transporting all the entries down to the fairgrounds. When everything is finished, exhausted relief battles with anxious anticipation for the judging to be done and the opening day to arrive.

Sadly, this year my youngest bowed out and I'm the only one left participating. This year it was just me, although my son and hubby have been mildly interested in helping me pull it all off. Oh, that's not true. I just remembered that for the first time EVER, my husband entered three flowers in the fair. Well, actually, "he" entered some flowers because I could only enter so many in a certain class and so someone else had to enter the rest of of the flowers, but when it came time to bring the flowers down to the fairground, hubby realized that he in fact had been the person who'd lovingly planted, watered, and tended these flowers all year and so had a vested interest in them. (He even said a sad goodbye to them as we left them in the hands of the floral building volunteers.) I HOPE he wins a ribbon so he'll catch "the bug" and want to enter something again next year.

Today is opening day. So I'm off to the fair to check out this year's competition and of course to see which of my entries might now be sporting a white, red or maybe even a blue ribbon. Wish me luck!