Last night, my Mom and I took the kids to a local festival. It was America at it’s finest. We saw nicely dressed folks, and we saw others in Skynyrd shirts with their sleeves cut off. We saw tall, short, thin and robust. We saw mullets.

Food booths went as far as the eye could see, serving nothing but pure, artery-clogging cuisine. And, there were ridiculously overpriced, no-chance-to-win games, where the basketball is obviously bigger than the rim, yet we donate $5.00 anyway. My son did manage to win himself a stuffed dog by pulling a duck out of barrel. Though, that stuffed dog is so hard you could skip it on a lake, which is exactly what I might do with it.

After forking out $40.00 for tickets, we hit the Midway. Yikes. Most of the workers running the rides were smoking cigarettes, while sitting back in chairs with their feet propped up. They were nothing like the dapper, young, teenagers I usually see in charge of amusement park rides. These were seasoned professionals. Though, it appeared that more than a few of them had been working the Break-A-Plate game, and some fair-goers misread the sign and thought it was the Break-A-Carnies-Tooth game instead.

The kids and I took a white-knuckle ride on the Scrambler, which was being run by two men who “no speak good English”. I don’t remember the Scrambler actually scrambling, but this thing was as rickety as they come. I had to wonder if you needed to be able to read instructions to set it up, because I’m pretty sure they “no read good English” either.

The music was way too loud (Eddie Money was playing…what happened to him?), and it was hot, humid and sticky. When it was time to leave, I looked down at my kids, whose faces had been stuffed with hot dogs earlier, and were now covered with a mixture of bug spray, powdered sugar and funnel cake crumbs. And, after all the noise, sweat, smoke and chaos...they couldn’t have been happier.

Labels: Kids