#128 Fair Concert

Went to a concert not too long ago. It was at the Southwest Washington Fair—in Chehalis. The price of the concert tickets included fair admission. In this case kind of like a free undercoating when you buy a car. I confess, having two weeks before been to the Clarke County Fair, I was pretty much done in regarding penned pigs and giant dahlias. So I actually didn’t pursue the agricultural display offerings the 4-h-ers and the FFA-sters put out. You seen one pig you about seen em all, is my admittedly jaded feeling. They’re cute and all, but chances are I’ll be seeing them next in the bacon pile at Costco so I think maybe I shouldn’t get emotionally attached in any way.
But I gotta say; If I thought I was gonna be avoiding pigs by not going to the barns I had another think coming. I’ve never seen more two-legged ones in my life. Now maybe it was just because it was dinner hour. And a Friday night. Heck we arrived early so we cold plunge off the high diet dive into the deep-fried calorie pool ourselves. But some of these folks really needed a lifeguard. One corn dog, a slice of pizza and half a funnel cake did me in. But these people were lugging around paper jumbo boats of ribs and twisty fries, juggling hot buttered ears of corn and chili dogs, and dangling a hand-dipped ice cream bar from one pinky. Perhaps my sense of alarm was heightened by the fact that I was wearing light-colored clothing and every one brushing against me in the crowd was festooned with something that was melting, dripping or slathered in mustard.
And, of course, there were only three places to sit scattered through all of food row. Still, we managed to emerge from the crusty carnage relatively unscathed, give or take a sweat mark from a couple of overzealous yahoos on their way to the elephant ear hut. They had that slack-jawed look on their faces that was either the result of too much inbreeding or the permanent confusion engendered by constantly having to make the difficult wardrobe choice of Nascar T-shirt or Harley T-shirt.
Anyhow, when the concert began, there were still folk lugging in steaming paper trays of food. Apparently, it was to be a dinner concert, as the places to sit and eat were so few and far between it was worth the price of a golden circle ticket just to get a seat. Golden, by the way, it was not. The chairs were gray-painted aluminum, stolen, perhaps, from the firehall pancake breakfast, and the venue itself was definitely square. As were most of its paying patrons. Many of them had not even heard of the feature band, The Turtles, those who had were expecting maybe just an hours worth of Happy Together and Eleanor, and the kids kept tugging their mom’s overalls and asking which one was Donatello. You could kind of tell they weren’t into it. During the last song, which the band made the mistake of announcing as such, a couple of rustic couples actually got up, crossed in front of everybody between the stage and the crowd, and headed out—presumably to beat the rush to the parking lot. Or maybe they were worried the funnel cake booth was about to close...
America, ya gotta love it.