All's Not Fair At The Fair

Dear Laney,

This morning, we loaded up and headed into town to attend the Western Montana Fair.

Allow me to digress for a moment...

Sometimes, the Montana version of things is not the version of things I'm used to as a Southern-American. For example: football. Last fall, I attended a football "tailgate" at the University of Montana. I guess it could technically be called a tailgate because it featured grilled meat and beer and was within spitting distance of a football game, but it was in no way like the football tailgates of my youth. Where were the RVs that have been camped out for weeks and the drunken revelers yelling out nonsense like "Wahoowa!" or "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer!" while serving up pulled pork from the back of a tricked out truck-slash-mobile barbecue pit? For God's sake, where were all the people? If pressured to guess, I would say that the population of the Sanford Stadium parking lot on a fall Saturday would top the population of the entire state of Montana.

I say that as an introduction to this: Fairs in Montana ain't exactly Fairs.

The first red flag should have been when we called your uncle Nate and asked him if he wanted to come to the Fair with us, and without pausing to even inhale, he said "No, no I would not. I have no interest in that. No thank you."

We spent exactly 48 minutes at the Fair today, which should be called the "Western Montana Little Carnival Thingie." There was one small midway and a building that hosted livestock judging and that was about it. Where were the deep fried Twinkies? The funnel cakes the size of your head? The chocolate-covered bacon?? I was cursing the whole experience, particularly the loss of my $6 admission... until we entered the "Culinary Arts" building, and I got to behold the following prize-winning entries in the food competitions:

...like the watermelon bear with a cabbage head and cucumber appendages. I don't know if you can read the judge's comment on the attached card, but it reads "Very clever!" I wish I knew the Judge's home address so I could send him a letter on the dangers of enabling.

Then there was this monstrosity, which looks like what would happen if you threw half of our pantry in a paint mixer with a hot glue gun:

This one I can't even make fun of (although the Saltine roof is particularly startling), because it looks so much like the ACTUAL house at the end of our road.

This is actually cute, until you realize that it's store-bought Pepperidge Farm cookies coated in frosting to look like flip-flops. And it won a RIBBON.

For some reason, this all reminded me of that episode of "Designing Women" when they were talking about beauty pageants and Suzanne Sugarbaker said, "In Georgia, we don't care if you can play the harp with your teeth, you're not getting in the pageant unless you're pretty."

Through the whole 48 minutes, you had this same look on your face - one that seemed to beg the question, "Why the hell did you get me out of bed and make me wear this barrette if all I was going to do was look at this Hall of Hot Mess?"

I promise, you won't have to go to the "Fair" again until you're 12 and beg me to let you go so you can ride the Zipper with your friends 86 times. And I will be waiting for you in the parking lot, holding on to my $6.

Love,

Mom