Come Ye to the Fair!
Ah yes, I'm burnt to a crisp this evening, but what fun we had today! Both EB and I had the day off today, so we wandered over to the Mississippi Valley Fair in Davenport, IA. The temp was easily 90+ outside in the cloudless sunshine, but we each grabbed a hat and set out to explore. Shame we didn't think of the sunscreen. Everyone at work to whom I told of my plans had the same reaction: WHY?! One said, "Can't you get your fill of fat sweaty rednecks here in Milan?" Sorry, those would be Rock Island County sweaty rednecks. I long to see those of SCOTT County. Besides, I also get the chance to eat fat-laden, artery-clogging, overpriced corn dogs and drink $3 cherry-lemonades! Now do you understand?
My relationship with the fair goes back to my youth when Grandma Stephens was a reporter for the Moline Daily Dispatch. Living in the nearby little town of Cambridge, IL (the Hog Capital of the World), she always got passes to the Henry County Fair in order to report on it and get pictures for the paper. For her it was an assignment, for us it was an Adventure to the extreme. Going at night was the best when the Fairway was lit like the proverbial Christmas tree. Alice's Adventureland had nothing on this! Ferris wheel rides, Dad trying his hand and winning(!) a horse racing game with one of the carnies (he won a trophy!), incredibly good taffy that we just watched being made and pulled on one of those mechanical perpetual-motion taffy contraptions. Just the magical cooking smell alone, which was probably just variously-scented hot grease, to me was like what Marco Polo must've encountered with all the exotic spice scents he discovered in the Orient.
Okay, so it's changed just a bit over the years. None of those rides really excite me any more; plus now you have to buy separate tickets for them anyway. And I see the fair differently since I have Eilene with me now. We spend a lot more time in the animal barns -- the sheep and exotic poultry, especially the Belgian horses, which are simply massively and magically majestic. I still love watching little things like the kids and their mini-John Deere tractor pulls, stilt-walkers, walking through the 4H pavilion. And salt water taffy still rules, even though it's now probably imported from China. I'm absolutely too jaded now to even walk down the row of carny games. You can't win and they're all sleazebags. Does that make it clear enough? But things I do love are: the chainsaw carvers. I could sit in front of those alone the entire day, and, as a matter of fact, that's mainly how I got so sun-burned, as I watch two creations being made today, sitting for over three hours in the process. We also watched a BMX bike show, part of a frog-jumping competition and a tiger exhibition/show. Oh, and don't forget the above-mentioned corn dogs. Yum! That magical aroma of the carnival gods still transports me back to the days of yore with Grandma, the Fair-y Queen.
As for the fat and sweaty rednecks? Well, since the bulk of the big entertainment consists of country stars in the evening - a genre which definitely does NOT appeal to us - we managed to miss most of the redneck YEE-HAW population as well, no offense intended for those of you who might be of that ilk. Having said that, I remember another summer when Eilene's dad and niece Beth's dad and I went out to see a grandstand show of a combine demolition derby. What a hoot! Shows that there's a wee dram of redneck in the best of us, I guess.
