How to Milk a Fair For All It Is Worth

Tchaikovsky Sounds Funny

State fairs across the country are held during the summer or fall when the family can enjoy the outdoors while looking at animals and agricultural products. In Pennsylvania, the summer state fair is held every year in January. While people in most other states complain about the heat during their fairs, our fair usually has its attendance reduced due to blizzards. It snows so much during our state fair that there are people who believe the state fair causes the snow. No, the state fair does not cause the snow. The problem is we are the only state that thinks it is a fantastic idea to schedule our state fair right when it traditionally storms.

At part of the fair, minute samples of Pennsylvania food products are given out free of charge. In exchange for spending hundreds of dollars on hotels, parking, and souvenirs, farm show attendees will then stand in long lines to receive a sliver of something they are promised is a morsel of food. This makes attending the farm show worthwhile to hundreds of thousands of people.

One vendor of a morsel of food had a sign proclaiming that his food product was a food from God. If that is the case, then, after having sampled his food item, I have learned that God is an uncaring God who wishes only to punish us.

Someday someone can explain the psychology of this to me, yet I observe these lines always come to a crushing halt for the same reason over and over again: a fat woman has stopped the line. I don’t know why, but it almost always is a fat women who decides that nature dictates that she has the right 1.) to skip the line and go straight to the food, because on immediate inspection everyone will accept that there is nothing that will stand between a fat woman and her food, and 2.) once she has received her food, it is her right to stand there and eat it without any concern that the rest of the line has come to a halt until she is ready to move on and cut in front of the next food distribution point.

My other observation is people who bring babies in baby carriages to a farm show have a hidden desire to see their babies killed. With half a million people, along with cows and horses literally trampling the grounds of the state fair, people with baby carriages will throw their carriages in front of the flow of other people, horse parades, and cattle stampedes in order to cut in front of them. People, cows, and horses are all expected to see that there is a baby suddenly underfoot and are to then stop and let the baby carriage along with a family of sixteen cut ahead, regardless of how many thousands of people are pushing on your back to keep moving forward. What are these people thinking throwing their babies in front of streams of traffic? Would they ever dare try this on an expressway: We need to cross 14 lanes of traffic, let’s roll the baby carriage in front of traffic to stop all the vehicles.

One year, the large escalator at the farm show broke down. An amusing sight unfolded. People panicked. Faced with a moving object that has come to a stop, people did not know what to do. The thought of walking forward was slow to be processed. Children were crying. Women were screaming for help. Men were crying. I was yelling “we’re all going to die”, but that was only because I saw gangs of families with baby carriages entering the building.

Another thing I recommend while watching the state fair: if you’re entering a bull, and you weigh more than the bull, it might be time to think about going on a diet.

Should it bother me than when I looked into the cage of the Best Large Chicken, the cage was empty? Either someone from Kentucky Fried Chicken had made a purchase, or maybe the largest Pennsylvania chicken is actually so small you can’t see it with the naked eye.

This all reminds me of my family’s diary days. I even used to help my Great Uncle deliver fresh milk straight from his cows to customers’ doorsteps. Of course, this close knit service was a little too personal. I’d be all: “here’s fresh milk, straight from Bessie”, and customers would be “do you have milk from Bossie instead?”