A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord...

Oh, the county fair, epitome of taste, pinnacle of social graces, standard by which to judge the continuing devolution of the human form...ahhh, how I've missed you.

This afternoon I went with my family to revisit the bosom of my youth, the Bethlehem Fair. It was a gray afternoon, redolent with the scent of sizzling grease and sugar. The ground was slick, spongy with mud in places, and strewn with hay already soaking through. But despite the drizzle and the mud we plowed on resolutely into the heart of the beast.

And what an odd beast it was. The fair is a spectacle almost beyond description, an event and a cataclysm existing on many different planes simultaneously. Heritage and tradition, bundt cakes and oxen pulls, stand along side hot-tub vendors and faux-Tibetan trinket stands. In the span of ten feet, I could watch draft horses haul stone blocks and find a decorative southwestern poncho that matched my eyes. I could eat kettle corn popped before my eyes or have the Harley Davidson logo put on my shoulder in henna tattoo. Homemade pickles, knock-off t-shirts, warm apple cider, ice cold Vitamin Water. It fairly boggles the mind.

And nothing is quite so engrossing as watching the crowds themselves. Even here, in Connecticut - Connecticut, for crissakes - there is nothing so tawdry, nothing so skin-crawlingly delightful as the average fair goer. Neck tattoos of Chinese characters (people still get those?), tweens in halter-tops, the morbidly obese...you can't help but gawk at the gawkers. I wandered the crowd, part of it but feeling utterly apart, dazzled by the raw stink and shine of it all.

So what did I do at the fair? Well, I ate. Perhaps wanting to blend into that seething mass of humanity with morbid obesity of my very own, I seemed to work methodically through the fair's various food sellers. Fried dough, onion rings, a roast pork sandwich, very good blueberry shortcake, birch beer, apple fritters...not my personal best, but not bad either. We wandered the barns, looking at photographs, macramé, and preserves, and dodged the splatter of beef cow effluvia. We 'ooohhh'ed and 'awwww'ed at lop-eared rabbits and three horned goats, and watched the vague indignity of a mechanical milking machine being attached to a Jersey's udder. We visited the hand sanitizer dispenser, more as proof against the germs borne by slack jawed yokels than by the hogs or horses.

And then, satiated by crudeness and cholesterol, we left for home, past the sad cries of the carneys and the games barkers, past the art barn, past the screaming metal of the ferris wheel and tilt-a-whirl. The last sight was the hulking form of the portable funhouse. On its sides freakish clowns were painted, and obscene pig-nosed caricatures leered down at us. A bit too on the nose perhaps, but what can you do. We went home, full, sleepy, and secure, for the moment at least, in our own comparative normalcy. But even now, I'm thinking about that shortcake, about that once-a-year pork sandwich. I might have to go back again tomorrow...