Meet Me At the Fair

PH and I are hoping to go to the State Fair of Virginia this afternoon, but it may be too rainy to enjoy it.

The State Fair went bankrupt (who knew a fair could go bankrupt?) but was then sold to an out-of-state company which resurrected it at the 11th hour (that'll preach; I'd better remember it for next Easter) and so it is going on this week.

A parishioner who is very talented with baking and crafts has submitted a number of items for the competition portion of it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how many ribbons she has been awarded.

But mostly I'm looking forward to wandering around and seeing the animals inthe exhibits, eating the famous Virginia Tech ag school BBQ sandwiches, a funnel cake (I allow myself one per year), and seeing PH sigh over the two-story tall bright green John Deere combines. He may be a city boy now, but his Grandpa was a dairy farmer in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, and I think that, in combination with the testerone-related love of all things mechanical and large, makes him a sucker for the equipment.

This city girl loves seeing the range of specialty chickens, the 4H-ers washing down their cows and goats and sheep before they show them, the guy who carves the 200-lb pumpkins into fierce monsters, and the beekeepers selling their wares. I am not so big on the carnival rides and games of chance, or the fried pickles or Snickers bars or oreos. They do fry everything short of ice cubes at the Fair.

But mostly I love the people wandering around, the kids tugging on daddy's hand to go look at this or that, the old folks on their scooters, the young folks holding hands. It seems a bit of a world of fifty years ago (complete with the short-shorts on the teenage girls), and it makes me smile.

Pray for the rain to end, will you? I want to go the the Fair.