I’ve been told
I don’t have a closer. You know, a line that makes everyone
want to run right out and go to the Minnesota State Fair.
Instead, I have two words that warm my heart but seem to alienate
most others: Seed Art.
Imagine being so obsessive,
so organized as to categorize various seeds and eventually
glue them onto backing to create a still life or a landscape
or perhaps a portrait of Ray Romano or Shirley Temple. Yes,
this is just one of the delights that awaits you at the Minnesota
State Fair.
But if you are like
many of my friends, this is not a draw (no, it is art created
with seeds.) So how about being able to pet a baby buffalo
at a stand that also houses a taxidermied head of a buffalo
named “Fred” and various meat products for sale,
including buffalo jerky? These, truly, are some unsentimental
folks.
Or there is the Snake
Hut where, for $1 (on top of the $9 admission fee for the
Fair), you can view various snakes in glass tanks, all displayed
in a room adorned with shed skins.
The Minnesota State
Fair wants you to look pretty despite humid September conditions,
so it offers an outdoor beauty salon where you can get “Fair
Hair” (read: teased to high heaven). Once you have acquired
the fashion sense of a trailer park, you can have that hair-do
whipped around and flattened by the centrifugal force of the
Midway rides.
My personal favorite
was the Magnum P.I. ride, because the airbrushed face of Tom
Selleck had a kind of outsider art quality. And there is the
bonus thrill of going on a ride that has been making the carny
circuit since the 1980s.
By the time you have
enjoyed this, the newly supercharged teacups and the rusty-looking
Zipper, you’ll possess a bed-head quality that meshes
nicely with the weave-and-bob, inspired not by alcohol, but
by g-force.
I have avoided the subject
of food until now (unless buffalo jerky counts in your world)
because you really do not want to eat before going to the
Midway. If you must eat, keep it to a minimum – a few
Tom Thumb donuts at most.
After the Midway, if
you can stop the butterflies, head to the food pavilion to
sample the biggest draw at the Fair: Fried morsels or something
on a stick.
Here are just a few
examples:
Pork chop on a
stick
Meatball on a
stick
Scotch egg on a stick
Reuben on a stick
Fried Twinkies
Fried cheese curds
Fried peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches
Fried Mars Bars
There is also a stand
that is emblazoned with a sign that says they offer “absolutely
nothing on a stick!” which proves just how silly and
out of hand this whole food-on-wood situation has become.
I tried the fried cheese
curds (too salty), but eschewed the rest of the aforementioned
goodies in favor of a pork tenderloin sandwich and some truly
delicious corn.
In addition to the food
stands, the fair offers the delightful and ubiquitous “best
in show” displays of canned goods, cakes, cookies and
the corporate sponsored Spam cook-off and Pillsbury Pie Crust
bake-off (how difficult could that be?).
I loved the bee-keeping
displays and the quilts, but they didn’t come close to
the educational dioramas designed by school kids. I learned,
for example, all about the ice industry that thrived in the
early part of the last century. This is Minnesota, after all.
To update an old adage:
If life gives you freezing tundra, make cocktail ice.
Reprinted courtesy
of World
Famous Crazy Wild wfcw@yahoo.com
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