fair day

Friends let me tag along yesterday to visit the Indiana State Fair. I had never been and decided that it was best to go with someone who had an established ritual.

Fairly quickly, we got new Indiana state maps. I passed on the refridgerator magnets shaped like the Hoosier state. I also got my glasses cleaned by a fellow who pointed out I had a small knick in one of my lens. He put a substance on my lens that prevents the glasses from fogging up.

One of my friends had her tennis shoes cleaned by a miracle wipe that made them look very shiny and white.

We roamed the art exhibits, walked past a style show with a runway and people sitting around it. Somewhere was an organ whose tones swelled repeatedly. I never saw the organist.

I also saw a child play a piano in the area where paintings were being shone. He was a small kid, but played quite confidently. Somewhere in the crowd must have been a proud parent or two.

I had a ribeye sandwich and a shake from the Dairy Bar. There was a man who wrestled an alligator, and a hyperactive host of a dog show (lots of frisbie catching and a pier diving contest). We walked past the horse barns where the harness racing horses, and their carts, are kept.

I saw fish that swim in Indiana's rivers.

I saw trees cut into lumber, and cedar into shingles.

I saw competitive entries of tomatoes and green beans -- our garden's bounty looked at least as good as the entries, which of course, says something about fairs and its celebration of our ordinary lives.

I saw more gutter guard exhibits than I ever care to see, a few animals, including my favorite of the cows, a small brown Jersey calf. And frankly, it's hard to look at food entries if you can't eat any of them.

I saw honey bees in glass boxes, and I saw round aluminum honey extractors.

I saw the colored photographs of the Miss State Fair winners since 1958. Big hair never made it up in the 60s like it did in Texas, but boy the short bobbed hair of the Dorothy Hamil era was quite popular.

In a world that kills out the odd and unslick, led by forces that market the belief that life experiences should all be the same, the state fair is a throwback, a reminder of places and experiences that are rough, silly, garish and unique to this place for at least two weeks a year.