A Row of Ribbons

While John was at work, the girls and I went the county fair before the free gate closed, and we immediately rushed to the exhibitor's building to see how many ribbons we won. This is important for much greater reasons than mere self-worth and vanity. Each blue and red ribbon we win translates into MONEY, which, in turn, translates into ELEPHANT EARS and TAFFY and a FERRIS WHEEL RIDE at the state fair come September. (This year, the ribbons also translated into a pair of cherry red heels on clearance for a foolish mama, but that's neither here nor there.)

I have a few gripes with the exhibits, mostly the fact that there aren't many classes in which children can enter and that the only two sections in the photography class are "color" and "black and white," but it's still a fun whirl every summer. And, as I've mentioned, the elephant ears and taffy are dependent on those ribbons.

I only lasted about three hours. The bigger girls could have chugged along, but Luci and Pip and Abigail were becoming cranky, and since we had already shared our elephant ear

while watching the miniature horse pull,

after hand-picking sixteen 8-inch long sticks of taffy (You read that right. Sixteen sticks. So what? The unsurpassed taffy of Fowler's is a treasured tradition from my childhood, and I ate four the first day)...

and watching barrel-racing and walking the midway six times and turning down the carnies who thought we were a traveling daycare and looking at the chicks and the roosters and the bunnies and the cows and the goats and choosing which rides we'd hop on if we'd won twenty times as many ribbons and scoring a free bottle of water from a kind woman and seeing a flood of hundreds of youthful, yarmulke-decked heads illogically descend on the most red-necked of bumpkin fairs and bumping into my brother and his family and using the restroom with its bowl of candy for generous tippers at the door,

it was time to go.


I didn't plan this, but Piper's dress has taffy on it. Perfection.

I include the obligatory stairstep picture of fair-going girls, but that's all I've got. Sorry, but lugging both a baby and a camera around is tiring.