TERRE HAUTE —
I suspect that some member or another of our family has made an annual pilgrimage to the Indiana State Fair — that legendary land of fatty foods and horse barns — since corn dogs were first put on sticks; as long as “Carter had pills,” my mom used to say. The fair is a mixture of the new and the familiar, of the traditional and the trendy, of ancient harvesting machinery and inflatable purple aliens, of hand-held paper fans and soybean diesel — powered golf carts, of road apples and Peruvian flute music.
On a Saturday summer morning, not an hour after an early breakfast, we loaded up our car and headed east across the dual lanes of the Ernie Pyle Memorial Highway, otherwise known as U.S. 36. It is a trip that our car follows almost by rote through Parke and Putnam and Hendricks counties to the capital; after all, our kids were 4-H’ers, so we’ve hauled everything from caged rabbits to boxed fossils, painted rockets to canned fruit to the fair.
Years ago, our families — both my wife’s and mine — came halfway across the state before sunup to find a place in the dust of the infield between the fairgrounds’ track and grandstand. In those older days, we rarely got to sample the greasy and tempting fare of the food vendors’ booths, thinking that surely we would wither and die before we ever tasted real “sati babi” or “original” lemon shake-ups. Our moms supplied our fair food — generally, anything that could be wrapped in waxed paper or carried in Styrofoam. We did, however, always manage to look just pathetic enough to get a bag of cotton candy or a blueberry sno-cone.
I knew that we were in for an unusual day this year when, within a few steps of being inside the fair’s gates, I spied a girl clomping along in front of one of the livestock barns wearing only a bikini and cowboy boots. It’s those kinds of wonderful inconsistencies, those fabulous realities, that always make our day at the fair a true experience.
Since we were still hungry when we left home, and had driven nearly two hours by the time we’d made 38th Street, our first stop inside the fairgrounds was for lunch — an event anticipated with gluttonous delight. I love Italian sausage — particularly piled high with fresh onions — so I eagerly went for that delicacy with cash in hand.
My wife normally sees to it that we all eat healthy meals, but she, too, capitulated in the war against cholesterol and triglycerides by downing the Polish version of my lunch. At least we stayed away from the edgier fair foods: deep-fried peanut butter cups; chocolate-covered bacon; fried butter balls; and the dish that had been the rage, the “Doughnut Burger,” which consisted of a quarter-pound of beef slapped between two halves of a Krispy Kreme donut.
We had chosen a good day to walk the fair; unlike every other day of it — the entire summer, for that matter — it was breezy and cool, a few drops of rain chasing us from tent to booth to stock barn. Only in the hour or so before we left that evening did the familiar simmer of a brutal August sun burn its way through the clouds to make us uncomfortable, and by that time, foot-sore and damp and beat to the socks, we were happy to make our way toward home.
More than anything else, I wanted to see the huge 25-foot sculpture called “God Bless America,” inspired by Grant Wood’s iconic painting, “American Gothic.” Standing alone and imposing in the AgroSciences Celebration Park, the sculpture, created by J. Seward Johnson, was on the north side of the fairgrounds, and since we parked on the south side, we hiked ourselves past countless kiosks hawking $5 sunglasses, hot tubs and collapsible yard rakes. We walked at a trot through the Parke County-inspired covered bridge (Dan Collom and his gang built it), and past the “Dock Dogs” exhibit, which starred a number of pool-diving pooches, including a hound named Boo.
After spending a few minutes admiring the enormous nostrils of Johnson’s subjects, we made our way to the Department of Natural Resources Building, a favorite stop of mine since the days I first wandered past its sweating aquariums with my dad more than 40 years ago. I’ve caught my share of bluegill and bass in my day, but seeing them through the sides of those gurgling tanks and under fluorescent lights was somehow different.
My wife loves the butterfly exhibit near the DNR, and although most of the swallowtails had gone into hiding for the day, the place was filled with Painted Ladies (the butterfly variety). The cool waters of the cement fish ponds were inviting, too, that is if we had wanted to wrestle with gars and paddlefish and enormous channel cats. There, I saw kids fishing in a 312,000-gallon pool, learning to catch, then release their trophies.
Inside the building, we stood in line to bend and peer through glass at the most common of Indiana’s snakes in the “Reptiles of Indiana” exhibit. We were there, not only to take a safe look at a poisonous copperhead, but also to find the exact kind of critter that we too often find around our spread. It was there, a red and gray and brown Eastern Milk snake that, although harmless, was still rather mean-spirited. We also saw the tiny but mighty brown recluse and black widow spiders; both more fun to meet on the other side of glass than face-to-face under a dark porch or deck.
From the DNR, we wandered through the FFA Building, patted the greedy, too-fat goats in a petting zoo, sat in wonderful hickory furniture, and perched atop tractors and lawn mowers that had yet to touch a field or lawn. From there, my wife and daughter and son’s best friend, Lucy, went off in search of a live bear show and my son and I took off to explore antique tractors.
Of all the things we saw that day, I think the two of us enjoyed our stroll through those rows of old tractors most of all. I wanted to see if I could find a Silver King among the lot, and eventually I did just that, a lone ghostly monstrosity just like the one my Uncle Arlo had so many years ago. We marched through a field of Olivers and Massey Fergusons, Fords and Allis-Chalmers, John Deeres and Cases, eyeing the machines and respecting the time and care they demand. My favorite: a 1907 International Harvester, powered by kerosene.
After an envious look at a 1916 Harley Davidson motorcycle and a nearly perfect ’31 Ford Model A coupe, we hoofed it over to the Swine Barn, the primary attraction there being the largest and second-largest boars in the world. At 1,277 pounds, the grossly obese porker named “Tickle Me Elmo,” was a fascinatingly disgusting hog that defies description. His latest half-dozen offspring, penned nearby with a docile but proud Mrs., ignored the standing-room-only crowd, yet often stretched out just enough to invite a scratched tummy.
Although we wanted to wander through the Family Arts Building and its countless photographs and paintings and handicrafts, the lateness of the hour prompted us instead to head toward the Exposition Hall, where each year we stroll through aisle after aisle of displays featuring the likes of detoxifying foot baths, replacement windows, personalized license plates and plastic novelties, the most popular, I suppose, being the ever-present plastic doggy doo and fake ice-embedded flies. As always, we listened to sales pitches about stainless steel cookware, leafless guttering and the evils of damp basements, but bought nothing but a can of salsa mix, which is dynamite when served with chopped tomatoes.
There’s more to tell, but no room in which to tell it. We’ll head back to the fair next year; of that I am certain. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll again get to see “Coco, the 40-foot plastic colon, a big hit with fairgoers a few years ago, maybe even take in the cockroach races…
After our trip to the fair, you can’t say we don’t know how to have fun.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune — Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com to learn more about his books.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Taking in the ‘cultural’ experience we call the State Fair
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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