AUGUST 29, 2019 – Yesterday we took our international house guests to . . . the Minnesota State Fair, the nation’s largest.
I love to see the familiar with people for whom it is unfamiliar. Take gargantuan, snowplows, for example, on prominent display. Or hot-dish (Minnesotaspeak for “casserole”) on a stick . . . or simply (or not so simply) an annual gathering that runs for 12 days and draws over 140,000 visitors a day. For us who attend every year, so much is old siding with new paint, though substantial upgrades have been made since last year.
The fairgrounds lie within the boundaries of our town and adjacent to the University of Minnesota “farm campus,” in the heart of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Since we’re a quarter mile from the northeast corner of the fairgrounds, we can walk to the “festivities on a stick”—and feel the fireworks at the close of each Fair day.
Our Fair day was turned into a marathon on a stick. Or rather, without a much needed leaning stick. Just try standing and walking ever so slowly for 10 hours with no more than 15 minutes of cumulative “bench time.”
A few observations are in order:
FOOD. What started in 1854—statehood had to wait until 1858—as an exhibition of overall farm life has morphed into a steroidal display of creatively presented food. Civilization has come full circle when sustenance appears back on a stick, the utensil of choice among our earliest ancestors.
TRACTORS. Another sign of advancement is how “machinery hill,” which used to cover more ground than the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair has been reduced to an area the size of a postage stamp—an intentionally anachronistic analogy. This once hallowed ground is now occupied by a small collection of vintage tractors, many with brand names that had disappeared before I finished college. Our Portuguese guests took many photos, since tractors still work back in olive oil country.
POLITICS. The DFL (in Minnesota the Democratic Party name is officially, “Democratic Farmer Labor,” code for “People’s Socialist Democratic Republic”) has a prominent booth, as does “Trump in 2020” (formerly the Republican Party, now the “Trump Nationalism Party”). However, among the hordes I saw yesterday, not more than five—I was counting—wore any kind of presidential candidate cap, shirt or button. Perhaps people are simply exhausted. This segues to . . .
MINNESOTA NICE. Our overseas guests have remarked about the symbols of nationalism in American, most notably, the ubiquity and prominence of American flags. What I noticed at The Fair, however, was the relative absence of such, and in its place, caps and T-shirts bearing Minnesota-themed names and symbols. To The Fair so many people wore their pride in their home state. And politeness too. How many times in the crush of things, I heard an “Excuse me,” or a “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bump you. Are you okay?”
On a such a fair day, it was definitely a Fair day.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
