Life Isn't Always Fair

The next ten days are a big deal for Hutchinson. There will be tractor pulls, arm wrestling contests, chainsaw artists, pigs racing and pigs just standing around, bands who last hit the Billboard charts in 1986, a performer who had his first top ten hit when you could still buy 8-track tapes and a performer who was born seventeen years after that song was on the charts. The Kansas State Fair is off and running.
I grew up in Hutchinson so the Fair is part of my earliest memories. The very first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Fair, not something their PR guys would want me to say, is mud. It always seemed to rain during the Fair. The second thing is road signs. The first real hint the Fair was coming was when I was walking home from Roosevelt Elementary School there would be sign posts with no signs. The city would put up “No Parking” signs on several streets close to the fairgrounds, but the posts would go up before the signs were added.
We lived close enough we would be serenaded by the dulcet tones of race car engines on weekends and we could catch occasional bars of music wafting over the treetops from the rock groups at the Grandstand. We also lived close enough I could easily walk there. This meant when I got old enough to go without parental escort I could do so without even asking for a ride. Asking for money? Yes. A ride? No.
My best friend, Rob, and I would go to the Fair. As was the case in many aspects of our friendship, he was the adventurous one and I was not. He wanted to go on the rides which would make Alan Shepard throw up. I did not. He would talk to long-haired men with tattoos chiding us to play their midway games. I would not. He would actually get the little crane thing to grab a prize and drop it through the little door which meant it was now yours. I would not. The crane thing isn’t really all that adventurous; it’s just another example of his fair going skill and my lack thereof.
Another thing Rob loved about the Fair more than I did was free stuff. He would load up on giveaways from businesses and political candidates like it was pirate treasure. Once Rob loaded up on stuff at the Democratic Party booth. The Republican booth got more trade so the Democrats probably didn’t mind. Anyway, he got a bunch of bumper stickers which simply read “Glickman” for no other reason than we both thought the name was funny. We didn’t know at the time that little known Glickman guy would go on to become the Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, the group who brings us the Oscars and decides if a movie has too many dirty words to be rated G.
When I was in high school I worked on the school newspaper so I was actually able to attend press conferences for two performers in the Grandstand: Bill Cosby and Red Skelton, two giants of the comedy world who are personal heroes of mine. As stated above, I am not adventurous so I didn’t say anything, but I do have framed on my office wall Red Skelton’s autograph and a picture of a much skinnier, bad hair wearing Chris Pyle sitting quite close to a comedic genius. Awfully cool.
I haven’t been back to the Fair much since I moved out of the family home. I will be taking my ten-year-old son there this weekend. I am looking forward to a few things. I want to see the place through ten-year-old eyes again, even if it is vicariously through George’s reactions. I want to get free stuff from booths in the Sunflower Building. I want to see a gigantic sculpture made from butter. I would really like to get a candied apple, but the last time I went you could only get the caramel kind. Some government watchdog probably found the glass like candy substance used to encase the fruit was carcinogenic, darn them. It’s food on a stick. It’s not supposed to be good for you. I’ve never seen a Pronto Pup represented on any food pyramid, yet they haven’t stopped selling those.

P.S. They had candied apples. I bought one. It tasted...horrible. You can't recapture those halcyon days of one's youth.