#119 Fried Green Twinkies

So I was at the Clark County fair a while back. I had a good reason; my family and I were going to a Styx concert. We arrived early for I’m not sure what reason, I guess because the price of the concert ticket included fair admission and it seemed like such a waste to pass up a free trip to the fair. Yeah right.
Naturally, the kids peeled off right away, teenagers have no business with adults in public, and we were left to our own devices to amuse ourselves for the three hours before the concert started. So it was off to the pig barn. Nothing more amusing than spending some quality time with our nearest cultural neighbor on the food chain. Pigs and humans have a lot in common. Not just police humans either, I mean the family nature and the omnivorous-ness and the tendency to waller in squalor. These pigs were none too perty. Hairy, but the hair was sparse. And hanging lankly like it did against their bright pink flesh, the word chemo patient came to mind.
There were only two pigs in the entire pig barn. The rest of the space was occupied by cattle. I don’t know if it was meant to be some 4-H version of humor—to trap the urban masses into asking what type of pig had horns and a big fly-swatting tail—or if indeed Clark County is just more dairy and less bacon, but one thing’s for sure: Putting the livestock barn only a few feet from the food concession barn seemed a little cruel even by raise-a-pet-pig, win-a-ribbon, sell-him-to-a-butcher, 4-H standards.
The smell of bacon burgers and hot dogs wafting from the fair food concessions had all the animals looking mighty alert, let me tell you. You gotta wonder if animals, with their keen sense of smell, can pick out the sweet/smoky odor of one of their rendered friends being griddled to culinary perfection.
Anyhow, the smell was too much, so after a quick trip to the rooster hut we made a beeline for that very same food area, there to stuff ourselves on onion beef burgers, chicken strips, corn dogs and oh yeah, emu jerky. Nature, thy bounty. If you think that’s odd, well hey, if you’re gonna eat it, you got to be able to look it full in the face first.
As we emerged from the food barn we noticed one of the carny food booths selling elephant ears. And something else. The newest in fair food this year: Deep-fried Twinkies. I kid you not. Operating on the principle that if it’s good normal, it’ll be that much better if it’s slathered in batter and deep-fried, fair folk have gone completely over the edge of cardiac sensibility. Hell, this is the fair dammit, I ain’t at the health club. Oh look, they gone done deep-fried a Twinkie, Maybell. I have died and gone to heaven. I’m as happy as a pig in slop.
America, ya gotta love it.