At this booth you could win a stuffed whatever, or a live feeder goldfish, which is an essentially worthless creature for which you will have to buy a bowl, food, net, gravel, etc. etc. etc.
I don't mean their small lives aren't worthwhile, that there isn't a sentient being in each wriggling one. I just mean they're produced in such huge quantities that each individual is probably "worth" virtually nothing.
They're certainly kept as if they're beneath regard.
I hate to see living beings offered as prizes. But I'm glad that it's not green iguana hatchlings with strings tied around their tiny waists, or hatchling red-eared slider turtles, as it was only three years back, even after I thought I'd brought a stop to that dangerous practice.
Had to make another city health department stink (successful, by the way) about those. Thinking of Rising Sun, Indiana's "Snapperfest" with a smile now. Made a stink about that, too, along with lots of other people. Shut that down, too.
Can't say much about feeder goldfish and bunnies. Again, that's what they're for, much as I hate to see it.
The Cotton Candy concession. Cotton candy is pure evil. I used to beg and beg for it. What kid wouldn't want pure sugar on a stick, presented as attic insulation, highly colored?
To me, the bags of it looked like organs hanging up in a charnel house. The human souls working amidst the flames. Dante again, perched on my shoulder.
But there were comforting sights, too. I watched a little boy spin out and bung up his knee on the hardtop. His daddy checking to see if he was OK. Always good to get down to their level if you want to communicate, whether they're baby humans or animals.
Spangly bantam in the poorly-lit chicken tent. Our small animal barn burned down, waaah, and they had to be housed in tents this year. Somehow they seemed happier in the low light and the breezy air.
and the lonely glow of Miller's Peanuts, with its hand-drawn Mr. Peanut knockoffs, and its homely $1 price. Always there. From whence I know not, but I love Miller's Peanuts' booth.
Let's face it. I love the county fair. The smaller, the better.
2 comments:
interesting how you 'love' the county fair even when there's so much not to love! I like fairs, but love, well that's reserved for large open-air flea markets ;-)
I won one of those fish at our school carnival when I was in third grade and kept it (not well) in a 10 gallon aquarium It lived until the summer before I went to college.
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