Fair Snare

 

I went to the fair yesterday for my usual one full day of bliss. Not really bliss, but I do enjoy the fair as an adult. Most years I eat too much and spend the evening trying to recover. This would be the year that I didn’t over do it. This time, I would be responsible.

 We hardly went as kids. There was no money for it and in Illinois the fair is kind of the last hoorah of summer. Bad timing with all the back to school shopping.  Here in Oklahoma it’s the first week of October and still feels like summer. I certainly went once or twice as a kid, but I remember it being a smaller deal. For some reason it all felt very no-big-deal-ish.

Probably because I live within walking distance, in Tulsa it’s a large-scale event that lasts 10 days. I’ve decided my favorite part of the whole experience is the livestock shows. A friend came over to my place and we walked through the livestock complex first, looking for horses or goats or pigs. It might be my mistake, but for some reason I thought there was a horse show. Maybe that’s not a state fair thing. We did see a pig show and a parade of malcontent sows. They'd rather not be on display I guess. 

Getting pigs to move in a particular way and stop when you want them to seems like miserable work. I think W.C Fields said something about never wanting to work with kids or animals. In this case the kids were leading the animals. Some kids looked to be about 8 or 9 years old, but experts.

We figured that the pig show was similar to a dog breeders’ show. The hogs are judged based on specifications of the breed. The judge gave a hilarious description of the hefty pig as being “athletic and feminine”. Oh, and she apparently has a “stout frame”. As funny as that was, no in the crowd seemed to disagree. They applauded the same as if their toddler just won a spelling bee. The ones in attendance probably knew exactly what to expect. There weren’t a lot of random city types gawking at the event like me. Most had either entered a pig or knew someone who had.

Same deal with the bulls. We got to sit in the open air stadium and watch the judges select the champion bull. They stood next to their handlers as still as possible. It’s remarkable to me that a human can lead such a massive animal around by the bridle. Some of the handlers were petite teenage girls. One in particular was having a hell of time keeping her bull still. He kept jerking his head around, obviously annoyed with the whole process. She handled it like a champ though, just walked him around in a circle until he calmed down.

I witnessed a sow giving birth in one of the indoor birthing centers. I imagine the hog farmers planned this timewise for such an occasion. The sow next to her had given birth to 8 piglets the day before, this one had 10 before we left. A crew of ‘professionals’ stood around helping the mother with the process. The girl doing the dirty work, getting her arm inside the birth canal and pulling out piglets one at a time, was a pro. She pulled out each piglet and handed it off to another girl who wiped it down while the vet clipped the umbilical cord. Of all the events to see, this was the best.

We did the usual food and drink stuff. I bought a Italian sausage with the works and had ice cream. Later I filled up on a funnel cake because, this is a fair after all. The last two years I’ve been seriously disappointed in the main course food. The desserts are always good but the meat is consistently dry and I struggle to find something that makes me seek it out every year. Maybe it’s never been great. The food is all savory smells and visual enticement but after taking a bite it’s like, why did I spend so much on this shitty sandwich/stick/burger?

It's mostly why I’m always ill after walking around the fair. The main course food is terrible so I fill up on sweets and sugary drinks. Yesterday was no different. I wanted a lime aid for the walk home. It would be my final purchase this year so I got a souvenir size cup. Yeah I’m a sucker. I spend the next couple of hours eating tums and trying to feel normal again. I didn’t even eat that much relative to other years. But the fair, in all its wickedness, couldn’t let me go without a kick in the stomach once more. I thought I’d gotten out this year unscathed but nope. Like the demon that took Gandalf down with a final snap of his whip, the fair caught me just before I climbed out.

Next year will be different, possibly.