Goat Showmanship

It was unutterably hot the day we went to the fair, and these 4-H'ers were gathered under the galvanized metal roof of the new cattle barn for a Goat Showmanship competition. Two of the girls are friends of Phoebe's, and we watched with great interest as they pulled and tugged on the collars of their recalcitrant animals, trying to get them to stack up and stand right for the judge (in red).

Rumor had it that one of the goats in the group had been purchased for $1,000. Our friend McKenzie's goat, Simon, had cost about $50.00. The longer I looked at the bunch of animals, the more convinced I became that Simon stood head and rounded shoulders above the lot. What a gorgeous animal--well filled out, straight of spine and leg, clear of eye, just about perfect, as far as I could tell.
McKenzie's other goat, Randy, was supposedly better-behaved, but went into a snit just before this heat, so Simon stood in. I told McKenzie's dad that I thought Simon was a keeper, though I knew the whole point was to sell him to the highest bidder. Just wanted to put in a plug. I'd stop short of spray-painting NFS on his side, y'know. I mean, look at that sweet goat.
There's something doglike about these meat goats. OK, I can't think about that any more. Moving along...

Phoebe's friend Jessi had her goat there, too. I think his name was Jared. I like this picture. Jessi looks so intent and serious. That's big old Simon's pink posterior just to the right of Jessi. My gosh, what a gorgeous goat, even his bum's nice.
There's a lot of standing around and waiting in ring judging. This goat alleviated its boredom by trying to nibble the rivets off its handler's jeans.
The judge carefully considered each animal, teaching the kids and onlookers a lot about goats in the process.
In the end, Simon won Grand Champion of all the goats entered. We were thrilled for McKenzie, and I got a little glow that I'd been able to spot his quality, knowing essentially nothing about goats. Yaaaay for McKenzie and her folks! I will tender my application for goat judge in 2008.Today, I'm whipped. I've been on the road the last three days with some good adventures and funny pictures to show for it. Sure has been nice to ride on my ant's harvest of blog posts--a nice break after the couple days' work it took to put two weeks of posts together. But they're petering out. It's 10 PM and I've just finished driving the same durn stretch of I-77 for the third time in three days. Phew. I fell asleep coming around a sharp curve on the road home--just one of those moments of unconsciousness that remind you that your heart can still leap and race. That would have sucked, to run my old car into the crumbly shale cliff face that had ZICK written on it... Smacked my thighs so hard to stay awake I have bruises. But I can stay home now for a little while and paint!! Yay¡¡ Talk to you soon...

Sideshow

My mother-in-law, Elsa, co-founder of Bird Watcher's Digest with my father-in-law Bill Thompson Jr. , likes the county fair for all the same reasons I do. She loves to people watch, gawk at the animals and chickens, look at the flowers and produce, eat corn dogs, and ride the merry-go-round. She's much more adventurous than I am. The merry-go-round and sometimes the swings that hang on long chains are the only rides I will go on. Nothing stops Elsa.

Here's Elsa, with her two granddaughters, Annalea and Phoebe. I think Annalea looks just like Elsa.
It was about 225 degrees under the merry-go-round canopy.

This guy was heavily tattooed and kind of scary looking, and he had the giant homey shorts working. But he walked slowly though all the flower arrangements, considering each one. "You never know," Elsa commented, as we watched him appreciating them.
Confession: I love corn dogs. I eat approximately one and a half corn dog per year. That would be the one I buy for myself, and half of Liam's. Whoever came up with the concept of putting a hot dog in cornbread batter and deep-frying the thing deserves a ribbon. I do not approve of deep-fried Twinkies or Snickers bars, the other treats that are sold at the corn dog stands. But corn dogs are divine. Bill of the Birds enjoys his yearly allotment of a single corn dog. He came to pick us up at the fair when our brains were thoroughly baked, and I brought him a corn dog as thanks. Although I believe he got another at the Demoleetion Derby on Tuesday night. So he's over quota.You put a big squiggle of bright yellow mustard on them, wait for them to cool, and bite. I gotta say, this is the best mustard line I've ever done. Ahhhh. I really like eating dinner at the county fair. Which consists of corn dogs, a lemon shake from the Band Boosters, and home made ice cream.

These are meant to scare crows, but they scared me badly. I call them Scarezicks. I would not take a kernel of corn from a garden protected by these apparitions.

Remembering and Wishing

It was hot, hot, hot at the fair. Nineties. Humid. The heat was coming up off the asphalt on the midway, drying my kids up like French fries. After we finished the water we'd brought along, I kept buying bottles of cold water and emptying them into my babies. Liam found a way to keep cool in the cattle barn.

The heat collected under the carousel's canopy, and Liam almost swooned as we waited for the music to begin and the horses to start their dizzy gallop.It was time for ice cream. I followed the sound of a one-lung gasoline engine, circa 1900 or so. It sounded like a John Deere, and it was. This was the first model of engine my dad ever restored, and by the time he died, he'd restored dozens. He was good at it. He tore them apart and cleaned and greased every moving part, and then he painted them in original colors, sometimes asking me to do the lettering or pinstripes, and put them back together. He'd sit on a bunch of newspapers on the basement floor with hundreds of little parts spread out around him, his legs out like a kid playing marbles, and mutter to himself as he worked (or played).

He would have liked Liam and Phoebe, if he had ever gotten to meet them.

When he finally got them reassembled, he always liked to start them up for the first time to see if he'd done it right. Remember, this was in the basement of our house. The exhaust would drift up the stairs, along with the sometimes deafening report of the engine firing (if he hadn't put a muffler on it), and when she couldn't stand it any longer my mother would stomp over and holler DAAALE!!! down the stairs and slam the basement door and you'd hear him shut it down, the flywheel coasting to a whispered halt. Then you'd hear some muttering and tinkering and before long he'd give the flywheel another crank and the whole show would repeat.

Because I'd been hanging around like a dirty shirt while he rebuilt the things, I always ran downstairs to congratulate him on another busted-up engine brought back to life. I always wished my mom would at least go down a few steps to take a peek at what he'd accomplished, but she didn't think much of having to pick her way through antique engine debris to get to the Maytag.

The man tending this ingenious setup--the engine is turning the ice cream makers' cranks-- was pleased to have someone come by who knew what she was looking at. I was taken away by the pop and chug of this noble machine. All that iron for a quarter horsepower.

Something was wrong, though. It looked right, sounded right, but the nostalgic loop was incomplete.

You're not burning gasoline in this, are you?
Nope, Coleman fuel.
I didn't think it smelled right.

The ice cream was darned good, nice and sloppy, but not as good as Dad's. Mom used to buy Golden Guernsey milk and put extra vanilla in, too. This was made with regular old Holstein milk, I think. Dad was forever trying to figure out how to hook an engine up to the churn, but never got the ratios right. He'd have loved this, hanging out all day making ice cream. He used to take his engines to the Virginia State Fair in Richmond and come home hoarse from talking about them all day.

Good thing this old Deere wasn't burning gasoline. Had I caught the scent of that old familiar exhaust, I know I'd have stood there and bawled.

Small Animal Barn

The Washington County Fair happens over Labor Day weekend. I go every year, no matter how hot, stanky and humid it is. Bill didn't accompany us this year, which is probably a good thing, because you have to really, really want to be there to deal with the stifling heat and smell of fried dough. There is a Felliniesque quality to it that attracts me. I take millions of pictures, while dispensing five-dollar bills and juggling the repeated entreaties of my kids to get to the midway where we can roast our brains on the hot asphalt, waiting in line to ride icky filthy undersized kiddie rides and throw darts in weak arcs at balloons made of titanium so we can "win" a "free" "prize" that costs us $8, is worth about 79 cents, and breaks in the car on the way home. At least they don't have baby green iguanas or red-eared sliders as prizes any more. That made me insane. And don't even talk about the box turtle races, which I protested and brought to a halt several years ago.

I do miss the sleazy house of horror, trampy T-shirt stands and creepy sideshows that accompanied the concession that gave live animal prizes. They had these great hand-painted wooden fronts with giant pythons and parrots, recorded tapes blaring about the giant snake that could eat an entire sheep, and the creepiest carnies. Loved it. But the midway now is all dull as a corncob, without the sparkle of danger and sex, though you couldn't call it sanitized.

I'm there for the chickens and bunnies, cattle and horses that clop smartly around the trotters' racecourse. I'm there for the homemade crafts and giant pumpkins. Mostly for the chickens and bunnies, though. It's hard to photograph them; the lighting is bad and the cage bars are obtrusive. The only hope is to stick the lens right up against the bars and get in their faces.

This is a Japanese silky. He's got a genetic mutation that creates feathers without barbules, those little hooks that interlock and keep a feather sleek and smooth. You don't want to leave Japanese silkies out in the rain. They wouldn't survive a month without a coop, methinks. What chicken would, in this raccoon-ridden world?
I like the extra touch of Antwerp blue around the eye. This little rooster looks intelligent and slightly severe to me, though I think it's just his feathery eyebrows.

I can't tell if this rooster looks intelligent or not. He's a Polish crested, with the added allure of lacy feather edges.
Tiny sweet baby bunnies, all together in a pile.
A giant angora, allergy in a cage. I sneeze just thinking about it. I'm allergic to rabbits, cats, and horse dander. I can ride, but don't ask me to curry a horse! Some dogs drive me crazy--Cocker spaniels and some other long-haired dogs. Kind of depends. But not birds, thank goodness, or Boston terriers. I can bury my face and go to sleep in Chet's sweet eyelash-length fur. If I buried my face in this rabbit's fur I would not wake up.
And a Siamese dwarf bunny. Please. Every time I thought I'd found the cutest bunny in the world, another one would hove into view. I have to get out of the bunny barn now. Cute overload allergy. Achoo!