Meet Me at the Fair

In my home county, the fair came in early June. Just after the weather warmed and just before the horses ran at Del Mar. The time suited it. The Ferris wheel was at the far western edge; from its height you could look down on a ribbon of two lane highway or out beyond, where two low, tawny hills gave way to beach and sea. It was place wrapped in the promise of summer.I suppose that's why I'd rather forgotten that the fairs of storybooks are autumn affairs. Places for prize pigs and blue ribbon pies. Calico dresses, golden hay bales and cloud streaked harvest skies. Where storybook children run through carnival light in in the briskness of late September air, leaping from carousel horses to spend their nickels on gluttonously dipped apples, bright red and caramel. Such things are best in fall, so I'm quite glad the early days of October brought us to a new county fair and its amusements. Lanky-legged lambs, rambunctious pigs and brown spotted calves. The dust kicked up by hooves in paddocks. The slow spin of the Ferris wheel overhead. The midway lights by night. Folded quilts. Jars of honey. Corndogs from stands. And a three minute wait for photobooth prints."Don't tell me the lights are shining any place but there."