The right medicine...
It's no secret; I've been aggrivated and in a dark mood of late. Jen's been sick, her lungs invaded by mold at the school she works on... 10 months of having a cough is way to long. I've told her to quit. Her health isn't worth it. Her back is injured from the car wreck- torn ligiments. My kidney stones are still kicking my butt... and now they want to operate on the 24th to pull my wisdom teeth. I've never been under the knife before. Cam stuff has been... taxing... (understatement) of late but a made a promise and I will do good by it. Amber has been difficult but we have some hope and are trying new tactics to get through to her. Everything combined was really not making me a happy camper at all...
So last night Jen wanted to go to the Sandwich Fair. In Illinois, it's the largest County fair, and I've always enjoyed them, and in spite of my kidney stones really pouring it on last night, I said ok...
So the place is PACKED, I thought perhaps this would add to my cranky mood, but then I smelled the elephant ear cart... the cotton candy... the roasted ears of corn... the hay in the 4-H barns... the sights and smells took me straight back to some of my happiest childhood memories of visiting my dad and hanging out at the fair in Warsaw, Indiana. He was (and still is) the Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Cheif for his itty-bitty little country town and they had a small pole-barn type structure in which they had a food service to generate funds for the department. Tenderloin sandwiches, fries, hot-dogs or Spanish dogs (if you've never had one, you really need to try it), burgers and canned pop. My stepbrothers had hogs in the 4-H show and we'd do the fireman's bucket brigade for kids and cheer on dad's department at their bucket brigade competition and waterball, which is something like tug-o-war except that opposing teams from different departments would face off, a tether-ball hangs from a horizontal cable about 20 feet overhead and they spray their hoses at it, trying to get the ball to pass the rear of the other team. Dad's team was the best. Norman Rockwell, eat your heart out.
I had a roasted ear of corn that was awesome, a glass of fresh lemonaide, a steak sandwich that would make many in downtown Chicago look like garbage and some cinnimon-roasted cashews. It was fun just walking around the fair, watching the people, watching my family enjoy the lights and the festive mood. We saw a woodcarver who takes whole stumps of wood and makes sculptures into bears, bald eagles, frogs and roosters with chainsaws. The work was good and defined enough that I got their business card. When we set up our new home in KC, I'm going to order an eagle or a totem pole from them to set off my back porch. (The carvers are called Barker Carving Co. and they can be reached at wesawit@yhti.net out of Eldon, MO. We played a couple of the Midway games out of sheer fun and Jen and Amber went into a tent for fifty cents to see a two-headed piglet. Then we did something really cool...
I always saw these and thought they would be a bit silly, but Jen wanted to do it. It turned out really cool so I have to give her points on this one. We did one of those old-fashioned pictures that is all tinted yellowish dressed up in wild west garb. To say the least, it turned out really well and once we find the right antique frame for it, y'all can come on over to see it.
It's rare that I find a guy that isn't taken by the Old West in one way or another and over time, I've toyed with the idea of WWII reenactment, civil war reenactment and once I toyed with Old West reenactment. I was in a good mood (complete with warm glow through the pain of the kidney stones), so I decided to do a little web-surfing when we got home close to midnight.
What I found was... well pretty damn cool.
The genre of Old West reenactment is alive and well in the US of A. I found an organization called the SASS, or Single Action Shooters' Society. When you join up, you have to take a Wild West psudonym and you must be in garb to attend. At the events, they have shooting, cooking, riding and costume competitions. They have affiliated stores and vendors who sell costume patterns, six-shooters, all kinds of awesome stuff. I'm definitly going to check it out. Come to find out, once we move, there's a chapter in Lenexa, KS too, the Powder Creek Cowboys.
~Cheesy grin~ I'm gonna be a cowboy... with a dash of Doc Holiday thrown in... of course...
Check it out at http://www.sassnet.com/
Sometimes it's not a drug that can make you feel better, sometimes it's your family, a place or even a good old fashioned Americana county fair. Try it out sometime; for me it was the right medicine.
And I look damn good in gunslingers' gear...
~eat static
So last night Jen wanted to go to the Sandwich Fair. In Illinois, it's the largest County fair, and I've always enjoyed them, and in spite of my kidney stones really pouring it on last night, I said ok...
So the place is PACKED, I thought perhaps this would add to my cranky mood, but then I smelled the elephant ear cart... the cotton candy... the roasted ears of corn... the hay in the 4-H barns... the sights and smells took me straight back to some of my happiest childhood memories of visiting my dad and hanging out at the fair in Warsaw, Indiana. He was (and still is) the Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Cheif for his itty-bitty little country town and they had a small pole-barn type structure in which they had a food service to generate funds for the department. Tenderloin sandwiches, fries, hot-dogs or Spanish dogs (if you've never had one, you really need to try it), burgers and canned pop. My stepbrothers had hogs in the 4-H show and we'd do the fireman's bucket brigade for kids and cheer on dad's department at their bucket brigade competition and waterball, which is something like tug-o-war except that opposing teams from different departments would face off, a tether-ball hangs from a horizontal cable about 20 feet overhead and they spray their hoses at it, trying to get the ball to pass the rear of the other team. Dad's team was the best. Norman Rockwell, eat your heart out.
I had a roasted ear of corn that was awesome, a glass of fresh lemonaide, a steak sandwich that would make many in downtown Chicago look like garbage and some cinnimon-roasted cashews. It was fun just walking around the fair, watching the people, watching my family enjoy the lights and the festive mood. We saw a woodcarver who takes whole stumps of wood and makes sculptures into bears, bald eagles, frogs and roosters with chainsaws. The work was good and defined enough that I got their business card. When we set up our new home in KC, I'm going to order an eagle or a totem pole from them to set off my back porch. (The carvers are called Barker Carving Co. and they can be reached at wesawit@yhti.net out of Eldon, MO. We played a couple of the Midway games out of sheer fun and Jen and Amber went into a tent for fifty cents to see a two-headed piglet. Then we did something really cool...
I always saw these and thought they would be a bit silly, but Jen wanted to do it. It turned out really cool so I have to give her points on this one. We did one of those old-fashioned pictures that is all tinted yellowish dressed up in wild west garb. To say the least, it turned out really well and once we find the right antique frame for it, y'all can come on over to see it.
It's rare that I find a guy that isn't taken by the Old West in one way or another and over time, I've toyed with the idea of WWII reenactment, civil war reenactment and once I toyed with Old West reenactment. I was in a good mood (complete with warm glow through the pain of the kidney stones), so I decided to do a little web-surfing when we got home close to midnight.
What I found was... well pretty damn cool.
The genre of Old West reenactment is alive and well in the US of A. I found an organization called the SASS, or Single Action Shooters' Society. When you join up, you have to take a Wild West psudonym and you must be in garb to attend. At the events, they have shooting, cooking, riding and costume competitions. They have affiliated stores and vendors who sell costume patterns, six-shooters, all kinds of awesome stuff. I'm definitly going to check it out. Come to find out, once we move, there's a chapter in Lenexa, KS too, the Powder Creek Cowboys.
~Cheesy grin~ I'm gonna be a cowboy... with a dash of Doc Holiday thrown in... of course...
Check it out at http://www.sassnet.com/
Sometimes it's not a drug that can make you feel better, sometimes it's your family, a place or even a good old fashioned Americana county fair. Try it out sometime; for me it was the right medicine.
And I look damn good in gunslingers' gear...
~eat static