Special Ingredients: None's Fair in Love and Fairs

So there I was, trekking through the intense heat of midday, the sun beating down on me as I pushed through a mass of others who were wandering through the barren land. Large, loud machines screeched into operation as the people who fell victim to their vicious design screamed for their lives. Unkempt men of questionable motives shouted at us from their stations, daring me to solve their twisted riddles in order to gain meager rewards. Food and water was at a premium as I marched around, aimlessly wandering the land.

This is more or less the summary of my day at the Lucas County Fair.

Many of you probably have country fairs in your area, assuming that your area has a demographic where 70% of the population owns 100% of the area’s cows. The county fair is an exceptional way of bringing several communities together to share camaraderie and boast about each others’ livestock (“My pig’s got a mighty-fine shade o’ pink!”). But county fairs are more than just a farm fashion show. It’s also an opportunity for people with more rusted vehicles in their yard than teeth to take your money.

I’ve been going to the Lucas County Fair off and on since I was little. In my younger years, when video game systems (get ready for this one) just played video games, the Lucas County Fair was a warm, magical experience, a marking of the dusk of summer. It was also the closest thing to Cedar Point I was going to experience, so I figured I had better savor it.

No, seriously, the fair was fun, with all of the lights, attractions, and rides. Besides the intangible memories, I also encountered my first Chick tract there, so you could say we owe a debt to the Lucas County Fair for the creation of Pocky Box. Not in monetary form, unless you want to get up to Maumee from whatever dump you currently live in to come check it out.

I’ve been going to the fair on a pretty consistent basis over the last few years with my girlfriend, Christy. It’s always been a fun experience, one that providwa a loving couple something different and fun to do together to build up our relationship. By this, I mean it is cheaper than Cedar Point.

So we went once again to the Lucas County Fair. I paid our admission and we were off, rushing into the experience, prepared for the bursts of child-like wonderment as we stepped into the recreation center’s warehouse, which was operating at swamp-level humidity, looking for the flea market that was present the previous year. By this, I mean I was looking for the flea market. Christy was silently praying for a tornado to come and kill her quickly. Much to Christy’s fortune, the warehouse was curiously empty, so we just went on to the fair, my bursts of thrift-like wonderment severely hampered.

The first thing we did was wander around and get a feel for the environment, by which I mean we searched for a ride that didn’t have a longer line than a standard aircraft runway. We decided on the Whirl Wind, a ride where riders stand on the edge of a huge cylinder, which spins and forces the riders against the wall, using quantum physics. To be honest, the Whirl Wind is about has imposing as a box of puppies once you get up there, which is evidenced by the fact that the only safety device is a single metal wire that’s designed more to tell people where they should be if they don’t want to fly out of the ride and into an elephant ear stand. Actually, I would pay to see this.

The other rides were quickly gaining massive lines of people who were more than willing to wait ten minutes for twenty seconds of fun, so we decided to wander around a bit. At this point, I need to mention my groupies. At one point, a group of teenagers (mostly girls, I should note) began squealing and pointing at me, indicating that they loved my shirt. I was wearing a button-down Full Metal Alchemist shirt that I had just purchased a few weeks before, and I figured it might get me some notice if I wore it at the fair. And boy did it ever.

I posed for some photos and thought that was the end of it. Wrong. Over the course of the day, the girls begged me to sell them my shirt. They even offered me $40 for it (considering I had paid $23, this would have been a good transaction). At that point, I was attached to the shirt, and the girls were getting sort of weird, so I tried to avoid them. Not that I’d do the same to my loyal, fanatical readers! Of course not! I would take out restraining orders.

After dodging the girls, we decided to start looking for something to eat, a daunting task when you consider the shear variety of stands serving food. It’s not choosing what to eat that’s difficult; 98% percent of the food served at county fairs, including bottled water, is fried beyond recognition, so it’s all basically the same. The trouble was finding a stand that was selling fried food that wouldn’t require a student loan to purchase.

Fortunately, there’s always a stand that sells hotdogs for a dollar and another that sells cola for fifty cents, so it’s not impossible to find good deals. It’s more convenient to find bad deals, though, as they’re all over.

For example, we stopped at a tent that was serving “smoothies,” which, in the alternate dimension that was supported within this tent, is defined as crushed ice with artificial fruit flavoring. You know, what the rest of the universe knows as a slushy. These weren’t bad, but you’d figure they would be at least tolerable for the two dollars per eight ounce glass they charged. Curiously, they were selling a substance they called a slushy, which were basically the same as a “smoothie,” but tasted like drain cleaner. With a fifty cent price difference, it seemed like the extra half-dollar was to cover the cost of the antidote they included with the poison.

We also had a funnel cake, which is one of my favorite summertime foods (nothing says “summer fun” like fried dough). Unfortunately, it was getting pretty hot by that time, and watching the funnel cake cook by literally floating down a trough of cooking oil set my stomach to spin cycle. I still ate it, of course. You can’t refuse the funnel cake.

After filling our stomachs with fried dough and soda, we walked around to check out the various attractions. On hand was Buffo the World’s Strongest Clown, who I first encountered while he was riding around on a Segway. A Segway, for the uninformed, is a one-person vehicle fixed on two wheels with a handle bar sticking up, so the person can ride around while standing up. They’re especially popular with important business types who have decided that they’re too important to walk on their own. While I imagine these businesspersons firmly believe that they look like stud muffins, all I see is Dorks on Wheels. Case in point: a weight-lifting clown looks more respectable on a Segway than a guy in a suit.

We didn’t catch Buffo’s act, but it looked like it primarily involved tearing phone books in half. Instead we checked out the 4-H Club exhibit. For you city dwellers who’ve never heard of the 4-H, it stands for Horrible Human Head Hunters, or something like that. It appears to be an organization that promotes country livin’ to younger people, meaning it consists of painstaking care of cows and crappy crafts (although I did find this cool scarecrow ninja, a design innovation that will know doubt change the cutthroat scarecrow industry). Frankly, I think they’re an evil organization bent on world domination, but that may just be because I had a bad experience with a sheep-raising girl at my mother’s church when I was younger, a girl, in addition to being a 4-H member, was also, to put it diplomatically, a bitch-face.

We escaped the 4-H exhibit, but were quickly apprehended by another organization that had set up camp at the fair. I mentioned that the county fair is designed to unite the community, so various businesses, political parties, and other groups take the opportunity to set up tents to advertise. And every year, some Christian group shows up to save souls (this doesn’t count my famous encounter with the Chick tract, which was at a food vendor), so of course a Christian group setup shop there, and if you’re a regular reader of this site, you’d know I had to do something about it.

Their main attraction of one group, the Monclova Road Baptist Church (here's a link to their site, if your interested, but it’s not as fun as a site run by Chick or Phelps, but proves that there are still some tolerable Christians out there), was a giant board that said, in big letters “Three Things that God Cannot Do.” The actual things were covered up by a smaller flip board, forcing passers by to go up to the tent and flip it open to reveal the surprise. And it should come as no surprise that I checked it out.

It turns out that I wasn’t actually supposed to touch the board. That privilege went to one of the youth leaders, a twenty-something fellow who was damned sure he was going to Heaven. Really, that was the theme of the entire thing, as posed by an thought-provoking inquiry: “Are you 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% sure you’re going to Heaven?”

Of course, the leader was 100% sure, and I’m about 0% sure that Heaven even exists, a fact that he must have picked up on, because he immediately latched onto Christy, because she’s a Catholic and must have had a glimmer of the darkness of Christianity that the leader was trained to sense. Either that or he really wanted her to join his Christian cult, because she’s hot.

He pretty much gave up on me right away, as evidenced by him completely ignoring me while he focused on Christy, revealing to her the sacred Three Things that God Cannot Do. I sort of walked around listlessly, thinking that I should crush the leader’s vision with the Ultimate Tool of Satan known as logic. Then again, I didn’t want to cause a scene, even though he did stop short of grabbing us and throwing us into a sack to be taken away for Christianization back at his secret lair.

So I just sort of looked around the tent, hoping to find Chick tracts, but coming up short. They did have tract from another company called ATS, which, compared to Chick’s, are as offensive as cotton candy, but one, entitled “The True Force,” referenced Star Wars and used graphics that were either ripped directly from Star Wars artwork or were very inspired by it, by which I mean they looked like a low budget 3D rendering from 1985. What’s the connection? Why “the Force” is a lot like God! Duh! George Lucas wasn’t trying to make a sci-fi adventure! He was preaching Jesus!

Interestingly, although the tract claims that they aren’t affiliated with George Lucas’s company, they also don’t say they had permission to use the art or the name (there’s a Star Wars logo on the cover, by the way, so it’s not a parody, even if they have an images of a really bad looking space ship thrown in there). I smell a lawsuit here. Check out the tract on their website and judge for yourself.

While I was bugging despondent-looking teenage Christians (who don’t hatch into outgoing Sheppard’s of Christ until they hit their twenties, it seems) who grudgingly handed over the tracts, Christy wasn’t fairing so well. When the leader posed the Heaven questions, she replied that she thinks she’s going, because she prays to God and goes to church. I knew she had done it then, because the leader arrogantly shot back that there was a very religious man in the Bible (I didn’t bother remembering the name) who went to church, and he still wasn’t good enough. Christy concluded that she is 75% sure she was getting in, because, ultimately, it’s God’s decision. The leader shook his head in pity and disappointment, because she was obviously wrong (and because now she wouldn’t go to his church, so he couldn’t sleep with her). God had no say in the matter! He was going to Heaven no matter what, even if God hated him, because he had Jesus.

We managed to escape, where Christy went on to hate me because I put her into that mess. I know I could have created a distraction by pointing out that the Adam and Eve story had two continuities or the Noah’s ark story was impossible, but, again, I didn’t want to make a scene. I need to point out that my groupies got sucked into the tent and were getting Jesus burned into their brains. I later encountered them, and they (surprise!) wanted to buy my shirt, and I asked them if they got saved. They said they did, and I replied that I couldn’t sell them a shirt then. I was joking, by the way.

I could be putting my life on the line for revealing this, but in case you’re wondering the Three Things that God Cannot Do are the following: he can’t lie, change, or get you into Heaven without Jesus. Pheh, what a wussy God.

Joking.

We went on to experience another key part of the county fair experience: the joy of constantly being harassed by game booth operators. If you’ve ever been to a fair, you know what I’m talking about. You’ll be walking along, minding your own business, when suddenly one of these guys will start yelling at you, trying to coax you into playing their game. By any means necessary.

Sometimes they’ll try to make their game sound easy and even offer you a practice throw, but a far more effective method is a careful use of guilt. They’ll beg you to play their game in such a way that you start to think that if you don’t, their children will starve to death. If you’re a guy and have your wife or girlfriend with you, it’s even worse. They’ll make guys feel like a horrible partner if they don’t win their significant other a cheesy stuffed animal, making it seem like if they don’t, they might as well cheat on their partner with her sister, mother, and grandmother while she watches. It won’t be long before they give up on the guilt trip and simply resort to pointing handguns at potential customers, assuring them that they’re going to have lots of fun as they toss plastic rings at bottles while sobbing. If you don’t think they would go this far, you’ve never been to a county fair.

The games usually involve throwing something, a privilege you only have to pay about five dollars for. If you win (yeah right), you might get a prize that cost the game booth operator maybe the five dollars you spent, assuming you win the top prize (again, yeah right). It’s a pretty safe investment, better than finding abandoned hundred dollar bills on the ground, because even if God himself comes down and wins the top prize (after he resets time a few dozen times so he can try again without paying), there are about seven hundred other suckers who will get, at maximum, the Medium prize, which sets the operator back maybe a dollar.

When I was younger, these booths used to offer large stuffed animals as the greatest prize possible, though it was usually impossible to win. Now, they’re waging Xbox 360s and PSPs against even more impossible games. Actually, now that I think about it, they don’t actually say you get one of these systems if you win, they just have the box out there. For all I know, you just win the box if you do somehow beat the game. After all, if you assume you can get new video game system at a game both, they’re making an ass out of you.

In some of these games, it seems like people were actually figuring out how to win. Since there are only so many variants of the throw-object-at-object theme (and since customers would likely give up on the knock-the-trash-cans-over-with-a-Nerf-ball game pretty quickly), clever game operators, some of whom should seriously think about becoming CEOs of major corporations, came up with the trade-up idea. What they do is take a game that is slightly easier to win than the others (like the camel-through-a-needle-eye game) and handing out smaller prizes to the winners. Then, the winners (and I use this term loosely) can trade up for larger prizes by winning more smaller ones, so, assuming they win every time, they’ve spent $78 on a $5 prize. I’m telling you, you can’t get this kind of whimsical experience outside of the fair.

We spent the rest of the day riding the other rides. Looking at them from the side, you can’t image how a ride that has fewer total parts than your VCR could possibly provide many thrills, but you would mistaken, assuming by “thrills” you mean “bone-crushing torture.” Most of the rides seemed intent on manually reconfiguring your skeletal system, while others tried to turn whoever you happen to be sitting next to into a death press that would make Giles Corey shudder.

For example, this one ride called the Hurricane looks innocent enough, as it just twirls you and your car around in a circle, then lifts you up and drops you harmlessly in the air. When you actually get up there, however, you better have a living will on hand if you sit next to anyone and end up on the outside seat. For example, Christy is pretty tiny and light, but this ride turned her petite frame into the Vice of Doom. When the ride got going, I was being pressed so hard against the side that I was literally hanging over the edge, trying to jump. I think if we really want to interrogate hardened terrorists, we should threaten to put them on this ride with Rush Limbaugh. They’ll reveal everything before we even have to plug the ride in.

It isn’t so hot for the person riding on the inside either. I was sitting behind a kid who, after the ride was over, casually opened his mouth and let a stream of his lunch fly out. I mention this because it’s hard to describe how he did it. He didn’t make any noise, gag, or tilt his head over the edge. He just opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and the lunch came out nonchalantly. I didn’t even figure out what was going on at first without the subtle clues, but it quickly dawned on me, “Hey, that kid is puking!”

And that wasn’t the only time someone ralphed in the ride. While we were waiting to ride it again, at the request of Christy, who secretly hates me, we came to find out someone got sick on the ride again. To clean the mess up, the ride operator (who didn’t get where he was by being dull-witted) dumped a bucket of water into the car and proceeded to run the ride without anyone in it to dry it out. This worked out fine until the water that was still draining out of the car was sent flying outward, sending (get this image in your head) puke-fused water into the line of waiting riders.

While this was going on, people were hiding behind each other and telling those around them not to ride in the Vomit Car. When it time for Christy and I to get up there, I heroically charged in to claim a non-chunked car, apparently running past one that she claimed already that was safe, and of course we ended up in the Pukemobile. Call it an act of guyness.

The other rides caused less organ rupture or projectile vomiting. The one I feel obligated to ride every year is the Ring of Fire, a ride that flips riders completely upside down. I’ve been riding this one for years, so it has a certain nostalgic appeal. That, and Christy is completely afraid of it. If she would volunteer to ride in outer seat of the Spleen Squasher/Lunch Upchucker 2000, however, she could probably bungee jump with a trunk tie and not break a sweat.

We finished the evening off with a romantic ride on the Ferris wheel, where we saw a gorgeous view of the fair lit up for the night and incited a few healthy “ewwwwws” from two small children in the cart next to us while we were making out (Christy and I, you sickos). We left the fair with a smile, satisfied with our day together, a day that we would remember warmly together. At least that’s why I think Christy was smiling. I was worried that if I twitched too much, my bruised organs would collapse in on themselves.