For the State Fair!

All is Fare at the Fair

By Rick Horowitz

You were only trying to be polite, you say -- but did they see it that way? Not at all, the brutes. That's okay; you can talk to us.

You say you were invited to State Fair, and that even being a city boy -- especially being a city boy -- you jumped at the opportunity. You say you'd been to State Fairs before, despite your deprived background, rurally speaking, but none of those other State Fairs was half the size of this one, so you were really looking forward to it.

You walked through the gate, you say, and saw the whole amazing flapdoodle spread out before you, and you turned to your friends and you said, "When do we eat?"

It wasn't the last time you said that.

That first time, it was pig parts in a bun, with onions. Some of the pig parts were still on the bone, so you couldn't just bite the bun while you walked; you had to sit down and pick it apart with a knife and a fork. Your friends were patient; after all, you hadn't had a thing to eat since breakfast, and that was over an hour ago.

After that, you say, you strolled though the exhibit halls, digesting. There are always exhibit halls at State Fairs, showing off the latest in slicer-dicers, feather dusters, juicers, goosers, decorative nooses, turquoise papooses, and enough zirconium jewelry to turn a sultan green with skin rash. You had a cream puff. It was made right there on the premises -- real cream, real puff -- and somebody said it was famous local cuisine. You could hardly go to State Fair, you explained to your friends, and not support famous local cuisine.

Besides, you weren't being gluttonous about it. Didn't you walk right past every one of those "Great Moments in Fudge" exhibits, even though all you were carrying at the time was the cream puff, which only took one hand, not like the pig parts on the bone in the bun, for instance, so you still could have had some fudge in the other hand, too, if you'd wanted to? You bet. But you know your limits.

The free sample of the summer sausage was great, you decided, even better than the free sample of the low-fat custard and the free sample of the nacho-flavored cheese spread on a cracker, which you rated "pretty good" on the form they gave you to fill out. Somebody goes to all that trouble to ask your opinion on nacho-flavored cheese spread, you figure the least you can do is try it and write down what you think.

Take those potato pancakes from the local potatoes -- if anyone had asked, you could have said that they were plenty tasty, but a little too greasy. You know someone would have appreciated the information. The apple sauce that came with the pancakes was fine, though, and so was the Polish sausage. Not a bad lunch -- or were the pig parts on the bone in the bun lunch? It gets confusing sometimes, and your friends were no help at all, were they?

So then you toured the livestock exhibits; you can't have State Fair without livestock exhibits. Those kids had been working so hard all year to raise their special animals, naturally you tried to show some interest, maybe even ask a question or two. "What works better," you wondered, "slow steady heat, or searing the outside to lock the juices in?" You're absolutely right -- who'd know more than the one who raised him?

But by then your friends were muttering. By the time you made it through the Agriproducts building (you had the local strawberry sundae), they were acting like they didn't even know you. It was all you could do to get a bite of their caramel apple.

And then the hardest part: It was time to leave. There was still so much to see, and who knew when you'd be invited back? Not soon, you figured. But when you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

You were meeting a friend for dinner.