Our Little "Inferno"--Washington County Fair

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.

Crazy Fair Images

There is a zone Shila and I go into when we're shooting photos. I absolutely love being there. Shila wanted to capture the smoke coming from the twin stacks of monster trucks that, for whatever reason, were being asked to haul an enormous sledge across the drag strip. 

Their engines wailed and whined and sounded like they were about to blow up. Musta been a heavy sledge.

Repelled as I was by the deafening noise and diesel stench, I found it visually fascinating. 

Especially when a tremendous Michelin Man of smoke came rising up behind the truck. HOLY COW.

A monster, issuing from a monster.

And then Shila said, "Look at the lights."

Bug tracers!

Moths describing serrated arcs! Velvet backdrop! ZOW!

Then there were bunnies. We've bred them to look so sweet. But I can tell you they bite, even the Droopy Dog lookin' ones. Maybe it's just because they're miserable in these little display cages.

That's OK. They're not being bred to nuzzle you. People eat them, I guess, use them for fur. I don't. I like to look at their lovely colors and their lazy poses. Even if I wanted to wear fur, I couldn't wear rabbit. Makes my nose tickle. The Small Animal Barn is a limited-time-only thing for me. I have to exit stage right like Bugs Bunny when it starts getting to me. 

There's something so doglike about the lops, the way they arrange their legs when they sleep. Love them.

Speaking of things in cages...

more cool images of kids running through an obstacle course/maze of iron bars. 

I kept going to Dante's Inferno. The colors so acid, the faces so freaky on the stuffed animal prizes that almost nobody ever wins. And then when you do, it takes up a quarter of your bedroom. 

And it isn't well-made at all. Hard and not cuddly, either. But oh, the visuals, the spiders waiting by their webs.

The Spider and His Web

The fair is a place of wild and varied images, contrasts, drama. Even a tiny county fair like ours. It's getting smaller every year. The merry-go-round is shrinking, too. 

It used to have wooden horses. These are plastic, molded. I miss the wooden ones.

I also miss the days when we plopped the kids on them and took their pictures every year. This time, despite entreaties, my kids passed on going to the fair with me. At least I'm still in touch with my inner child, my kids having outgrown me.

The rides are, by any measure, sort of pitiful, and getting moreso year by year. Gone are the days of the huge honkin' rock'n'roll rides with their own music (snarly electric guitar solos) and flashing lights and truly dangerous moves. But these little rides still produce some powerful images. The carnival workers who man each of them remind me of lonely spiders sitting in their webs, hoping to snare people. 

Then they take the people in their clutches and shake them up and spin them around.

Have you ever seen a spider who, upon having an insect fall into its web, does a wild tarantella, bouncing up and down, shaking the net, hoping to throw it off balance and ensnare it more deeply?

There was one ride which, for whatever reason, was popular. It was the only one with a line.

As far as I could see, it was a human salad spinner, with three baskets that whirled perhaps eight people at high rates of speed in tight circles. Meanwhile, the whole thing was whirling in a circle. Which is enough to make my gorge rise, just thinking about it. My elderly inner ears are not made for such punishment, if they ever were.

However. Many, many people apparently wanted to put in the salad spinner, to be spun in tight circles within a larger circle. To be fair, this was the only remotely challenging ride in the dinky midway, so perhaps they selected it by default.

I had other reasons to select it.

Purely visual reasons. I loved the colors. I loved how the operator was still but the cars spun wildly, blurrily. 

But mostly I loved his face, his presence. Zow! The spiked wristlet only added to his dangerous mien. 

For me, he was out of a Renaissance painting. I always go there when I'm shooting the Fair.

That star-spun velvet blue behind him.

He seemed to like his job, cheerily checking on the people who sat, silent and perhaps a little stunned, after the ride quit spinning.

The spider and his web.