What with all the excitement and razzle-dazzle of the start of Lecture Season, I completely forgot to post this last series of photos from the State Fair! Ah well, better late than never, and to use another cliche, I’ve saved the best for last. And by ‘best’ I mean most strangely puzzling.
Yes, it’s not truly a State Fair without a wizened man of the land sitting on his horse in the middle of the street, waiting to answer any questions you might have about farming or life.
I saw small children clutching enormous Rastabananas tottering around the food stands. It’s either due to a mistranslation in the Chinese manufacturing company’s order sheet or the trendspotting companies responsible for such pap have officially resorted to random word generators. I defy anyone to connect bananas and Rastafarianism. Wait a minute…
(The secret is to offer them a nice picnic lunch in exchange for their honey.)
The Family Nail Box, with something for everyone! Tiny wood tacks for little Susie, steel bolts for Mom, and don’t forget roundhead screws for Dad’s special projects!
Speaking of which, it wouldn’t be a large gathering in the Midwest without at least one Juggalo sighting. Here, I came across an entire family (no, the baby was not wearing face paint):
Yep.
Just outside, anachronisms ran rampant at the Civil War reenactors’ tent site. He is so irritated by that tie-dye!
Over at the 4H tent, this fellow represented endangered species or something:
I am still unsure how not seeing a snake is inconveniencing.
There’s something poetic about this man, gazing upon a purple tractor as the warm summer twilight falls around him.
State Rocks! All the excitement of geology plays out state-by-state RIGHT BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!
A nested WTF within WTFs, this model railroad had its own (delightfully air-conditioned) room, right next to a special snake exhibit. Pretty much a modified trailer, the entire room save one narrow pathway around contained a glass-walled enclosure filled with an enormous model train set. I got to walk around with a 10-year old who ran ahead of his family (or, more likely, they left some lag time), calling out the name of each train, car type, rail system and engine number like he some kind of train-specific form of Asperger’s. I got the strange impression he said all this out loud assuming persons nearby (ie me) would be impressed. We were not. However, I was taken by some of the smaller details in the gigantic tiny world; it seems model train makers are a mischievous sort as opposed to the dour caricatures of them portrayed in so many movies and TV shows. Some highlights:
Faster than a speeding bullet! Tinier than a G.I. Joe! It’s…Superman! Off to destroy something with some rock he found!
I’d like to think the placement of the Batmobile in this wee parking lot was an obscure nod to the classic monorail episode of the Simpsons, where a mention of help from Marge has Homer query “Is it Batman?” “No, he’s a scientist.” “Batman’s a scientist.” “IT’S NOT BATMAN!” Then I looked over at Lil’ Rainman rattling off train cars as they went by and kept the thought to myself.
A slice of everyday Americana, if your neighborhood constantly reenacted North By Northwest. Given the ridiculous stunts people pulled with small aircraft in the past (playing tennis, doing the hully-gully on the wings), flying one under a train bridge towards a small-town bike race wouldn’t surprise me too much.
Ah, bringing some much-needed gravity to the comical world of models. Here we have a reenacted scene from COPS: Iowa. Is that show still on? Is it just 90% meth arrests now, or do they still get the occasional shirtless convenience store robber caught down the street (still shirtless) sitting at the local bar?
The cemetery was just a tad too far away and underlit to get a proper, focused photo, but rest assured, that’s Beetlejuice sitting on a tombstone. No sight of the Maitlands though. So meta!
