State Fair to Middlin'

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Compare to this. Startling similarity, no?

Today we attended the North Dakota State Fair in Minot. Minot is only two-and-a-half hours away, but we wanted to get there in time to spend some of the cooler morning hours walking around, so we left Dickinson about 6:00 A.M. Mountain Time. (It would have been earlier, but we made a stop first at Wal-Mart for the new Harry Potter book. I know, I know: I said that we would be there last night at midnight to get our copy, but sleeping in preparation for today's adventures seemed preferable once last night finally arrived.) Faithful readers know that we are wont to photograph the beautiful vistas on our drives around scenic western and central ND, but I'll spare you those today. Suffice it to say that the gorgeous verdant meadows, tree-filled valleys, cow-dappled pastures on buttes and rolling hills, sparkling bodies of water (including the sprawling Lake Sakakawea lapping at the majestic Garrison Dam), rippling fields of grain, and well kept farms and ranches along the route did not go unnoticed by the motoring Mobergs--or by me, who kept interrupting everybody else's reading to point out these sights.

We arrived in Minot as the State Fair parade was underway, which blocked the route I had chosen to get to the fairgrounds. We wended our way on side streets through the city until we got to the fairgrounds via the most convoluted route possible (one that took us past the parking lot outside the hospital where my mom died, an experiential memory that we weren't prepared for today and that resulted in some tears as we continued driving). The girls had heard numerous stories about what I used to do at the State Fair when I was a child attending with my parents and sisters, so our plan for the day was to recreate some of those memories for the girls. We started with a walk through the commercial building nearest Gate C.

What was intended to be a quick tour of vendor booths offering interesting products to look at but never to buy leading to rather clean restrooms after our long drive to Minot turned into a half-hour (or more?) imprisonment at a cookware vendor's demonstration (of this and this). We stopped to join other folks watching him prepare some food, but as the others got up and left, we felt too guilty to join them because that would have left his audience at zero. (A plus: being the last people at his demonstration improved our odds of winning the door prize so much that he just handed it [a Ginsu knife] to us without going through the motion of calling out a ticket number.) He was funny and personable and cooked us some tasty chicken breast, potatoes, and mixed vegetables, but ultimately we decided that a $3,790 ("the State Fair special") set of cookware was not a wise impulse buy.

The girls seemed as interested in the farm machinery and implements as I used to be when my dad would take me, sighing and eye rolling, through that display on the lot outside the commercial building. So we headed for the Pioneer Village/Fur Traders Rendezvous to learn about the life of frontiersmen in Dakota Territory. One woman demonstrated turning wool into thread on a spinning wheel and then turning that into cloth on a loom. Another woman showed us how to use paraffin, bee's wax, and pewter forms to make candles. Another woman explained the different styles of tents used by soldiers and trappers on the move, and she showed us recreations she had made of women's fashions of the time. A man showed us how to start a fire using char cloth, flint, and birch and cedar bark, and he encouraged the girls to consider all the things they would have to give up from life today if they were to go back in time to live like a pioneer (not only televisions and automobiles but also toothbrushes and eyeglasses, unless their parents were very wealthy). A silversmith talked to us about his collection of work, and other tents featured outdoor baking the frontier way, beadwork, blacksmithing, handmade snow shoes and sleds, fur trapping and animal skins, woodwork, and more.

Suzanna, Abigail, Hillary, and Daddy Crocket

Many of my fondest memories of the State Fair are food-related (raise your hand if you're surprised . . . anyone?). Dad and I always got foot-long hot dogs, and Mom always took us to the Lutheran church booth for homemade pie, so both of those were on the agenda. But how were we ever to consume all the food that we wanted to try? We decided to get one item at each booth and to share everything. Our walking tour smorgasbord included a foot-long hot dog with fried onions, a funnel cake with powdered sugar, cherry limeade (hand-squeezed), crab fritters with spicy dipping sauce, Greek gyros, and Lutheran peach pie and apple pie. We were too full to get an Indian taco or an enormous turkey leg, and we never did spy the deep-fried Twinkies that we had read about (which in retrospect was probably just as well). Also, Susan's pocketbook was screaming at us for paying $5 or $6 for each item (profit margin much, food vendors?), so we had to settle down with the food.

Mouths full of foot-long hot dog

The morning was partly cloudy, and for most of the day, there was a strong, slightly cool wind to counter the 100-degree heat and 105- to 110-degree heat index (to be fair, it had cooled down to 97 degrees by late afternoon). It all feels like 150 degrees anyway on the blacktop of the midway with the added heat of all the carnival ride motors. Be not surprised, therefore, that we sought shade and air conditioning often. We were in some more commercial buildings whose vendors we completely ignored en route to the water fountains and restrooms. (Well, the presence of the Watkins vendor right in the doorway enticed us to buy some vanilla extract [childhood memories of Watkins products, you know] and a pair of nitrile-coated gardening gloves, which were on my shopping list anyway.) We chose not to sit on bleachers facing the sun for a free show featuring a contest among North Dakota's unfunniest clowns in favor of ducking into some of the many RVs on display--not because we intended to buy but because they offered shade.

We spent time in the rabbit barn as well as Old MacDonald's Farm, a building with miniature farm animals and a petting zoo. (Oh, how I wanted to clap my hands or drop a metal trash barrel near the pen of fainting goats, but it was next to the people supervising the animals, and I didn't want to get in trouble.) We talked to the guy who was carving a life-sized statue of a motorcycling cow out of Land o' Lakes butter. We watched ranchers shearing sheep in another barn (and then draping the sheep in warming hoods and sheets that made them look like ovine Ku Klux Kla-a-a-an members). We peaked in on a horse sale and spent an inordinate amount of time in the North Dakota State Fair Center, a gigantic facility serving as display central for all contest submissions, from horticulture and gardening to quilting and needlework to FFA and 4-H (bonus: water fountains with ice-cold water).

I like the extra set of hands in this photo.

North Dakotan Gothic

In the bunny barn

In the petting zoo--but where are the dating teenagers from the '60s?

What does Suzanna's facial expression mean?

Eventually, though, we had to re-emerge in order to tour the midway (but only after buying a bag of kettle corn popped outdoors at the Pioneer Village--delicious). First we walked the perimeter and plotted which carnival rides we wanted to try. Then we calculated the number of coupons each ride required, the amount of money needed to buy the necessary coupons, and the number of years past retirement age we would need to work in order to pay for this investment in coupons for rides that lasted one to two minutes. This process of critical thinking helped us to narrow it down to two rides: the Sizzler and the Ferris wheel. We were actually thinking that we'd start with those two and afterwards consider what to ride next, but the Sizzler gave Mommy and Daddy headaches, and the Ferris wheel emphasized for us Mommy's lack of joy merely hanging calmly high up in the air, let alone being spun around, shot up, twirled about, or thrown for a loop in any of the more adventurous rides. While hanging in our Ferris wheel car at the top of the ride (while the bottom cars were unloaded and reloaded), baking in the sun and watching Mommy, white-knuckled, bite her lip with each sway of the car in the wind, we made a group decision: beat it for the car, rest our weary feet, crank up the air conditioning, and call it a day.

We all sizzled on the Sizzler.

A bird's-eye view of the midway from the top of the Ferris wheel. (Note to self: do not rock the Ferris wheel car when Susan is in it.)

We shared a couple glasses of hand-squeezed lemonade on the way back to the parking lot and broke open our cooler of water bottles in the vehicle. We stopped for fuel on our way out of town and then drove to Bismarck (instead of the Beulah-Hazen-Pick City-Riverdale route we took on the way to Minot), where we had supper at Golden Corral, a higher-end buffet restaurant that did nothing to help offset the damage that a day of noshing at the State Fair had done to Susan's and my recent attempts to eat more healthily and lose weight. The girls were in a particularly giddy mood at supper, probably the result of fluid returning to their systems and blood returning to their heat-fried brains. We got a lot of mileage out of some jokes about the hand dryers in the restrooms, which blew air with the force of a wind tunnel or a jet engine.

The girls were all pretty quiet, though, on the ride back home from Bismarck. They were exhausted from an overall good day at the State Fair. And, even though I had turned to Susan at one point in the day--after walking approximately 47 miles around the fairgrounds in the wind and the heat and holding three girls' sweaty little hands and paying outrageous prices for food and rides--and said, "Let's never do this again," I suspect that we will, in fact, return to endure--I mean, experience the Fair again. Blame it on nostesia*.

* Nostalgia + amnesia = forgetting the bad aspects of an experience over time and later recalling it fondly; nostesia may be what makes a woman who has survived childbirth agree to have another child . . . opinions, anyone?