Puyallup Fair 2008

[elfs]

Omaha and Kouryou-chan on the carousel.

omahas, Kouryou-chan, lisakit, and I all went down to the annual state fair, the Puyallup. We'd invited Lisakit along because we had a spare ticket; as it turned out, we had two, and we still have one left, so if you have a need contact Omaha.

The drive down wasn't too bad, although traffic around the fair itself was a pretty nasty tangle. When we all got in, we went to the right, through one of the many food kiosks to the Fred Oldfield Western Heritage Center, a lovely little museum where one family's history in the rural portions of Washington were documented in fascinating detail.

Kouryou-chan said she was likely to be bored, but she was the last one to want to leave. All the western mythology was on display, the romanticization of the Indians, the lone cowboy and cute farmyard kids with animals. One installation was of a general store circa 1904, from which I took copious notes and photographs. A lot of the products on display were from companies we still buy from: Sears, Schilling, Calumet. After we left the museum we strolled out into the rides area, where Omaha took Kouryou-chan on a couple of rides while Lisa and I tried to find places where the weather wasn't so brutally hot. We paused to slather sunscreen on ourselves and Kouryou-chan, despite her insistence that she didn't need sunscreen.

We wandered through many of the animal displays, watching the dairy cows, the goats, even the dog show. It was all very rural and I was grateful that there was still someone willing to do all this stuff: the cattle judging, the quilting competitions, the canning. Did you know there's a contest for the finest table setting? I didn't, and the displays went from elegant and worthy of a job to tragically jingoistic and over-the-top red-white-and-blue.

Don't Eat In Barns.

While we were in the "baby animal barn," I saw one of the stupidest things I'd seen yet. There was stupidity galore: Jesus freaks, "I drink too much" t-shirts, and people carrying McCain/Palin signs. As I sat next to the petting animal pen, I watched this woman hand her baby to the father, put a baby bottle on the cement floor of the barn, fill the bottle with water from her own bottle, add powdered formula from a baggie, put the top on, shake, and hand the bottle to the father for feeding. While the baby fed, they sat under a sign that read "Don't Eat In Barns." Uh, hello? That sign is there for a reason.

After that, we took Kouryou-chan on some more rides, watched a live baboon perform at the "Wild about Monkeys" show (I didn't get any photos except of some damn fool's head in the way), and then headed over to the horse barn. While we were walking that way, Omaha heard a young man complain to his date, "That's the 37th guy I've seen wearing a kilt today. I could have worn mine, but someone said it would be a bad idea." Hee hee.

Dinner was overpriced barbecue. Kouryou-chan asked what hot tubs had to do with the state fair and we explained to Kouryou-chan that the Puyallup fair was half state fair, half machine for extracting money from your pockets.

The crowds

The crowds were brutal there. We took the cable car over the entire fair, taking pictures. You can see how crowded it got toward evening time.

We went to the quilting judging, where Lisakit aired her opinions of the work and indicated just how flagging she was in the flesh. I was frankly impressed with the patience and artistry of some of the works. We were all tired, truth to tell. It was almost 8:00pm. I walked out to the car, then turned around to pick everyone up. Omaha's skillful navigation got us to the freeway much more quickly than everyone else. I surmised that most of the people were following their Google maps rather too closely, whereas Omaha had her iPhone and could route around everyone trying to get to the Meridian Street exit (which is what Google Maps told you to do).

On the drive home we became so concerned with an excessively aggressive pickup truck on the road that Omaha actually called it in. He even forced someone into the shoulder at 60 MPH! But by the time we'd connected he was too far ahead and we couldn't see his license plate.

We got home safe and sound. Kouryou-chan had a great time, and truth to tell so did Omaha and I. Lisakit looked a little wobbly when she was walking up to her front door; I hope she's fully recovered today. I fed the cat and we were miraculously in bed by 10:30.

Puyallup Fair 2008 Set on Flickr.

Comments

[blaisepascal]

Kouryou-chan asked what hot tubs had to do with the state fair and we explained to Kouryou-chan that the Puyallup fair was half state fair, half machine for extracting money from your pockets.

Boy will she be disappointed when she goes to other State Fairs. I've yet to see a State or County fair which wasn't at least half machine for extracting money from your pockets. If she assumes that Puyallup was worse than usual, she won't get what she expects from other fairs.