The August Of My Youth

It's bad enough that our gas prices are steadily approaching three bucks a gallon - now the FBI thinks that Al-Qaida is going to target some of the biggest cities in the country using fuel tankers.  It's just too much to deal with right now.  I wish I could go back to the August of my youth. Even though August meant summer vacation was almost over, it was one of the most exciting months of the year for me.  When I was a kid, in August, all I had to worry about was going to the state fair.

First of all, I had to worry about when we would go to the fair. Traditionally, my family would go to the fair on one of the two Saturdays during the fair's ten-day run.  So really, I knew when we would be going to the fair; but technically, I didn't know when we would be going. Would we go early in the morning so we could get there when everything was opening?  Would we go later in the day so we could stay through the evening and attend the rodeo?  I needed to know. Not that it mattered; it wasn't like I had something else to do on a Saturday. But I still needed to know when we would go.

Secondly, I had to worry about bringing enough money.  Did I save enough money from my allowance, or would I have have to rely on the kindness of my parents or grandparents? Grandma and Grandpa knew how much I loved going to the fair, so regardless of how much allowance I'd saved up, they would always slip me some money.  Once at the fair, I had to worry about budgeting.  I couldn't spend the bulk of my wad of cash on the first cool thing that caught my eye.  I had to make the money last the whole day.  Mom and Dad would buy the tickets for the rides on the midway, and would buy my lunch, but everything else came out of my purse.  I was a very good shopper at the fair.  When I saw something that I just had to have, we would make note of where the booth was, and then walk around and see if we could find it at a cheaper booth.  If we didn't, then we'd go back to where I saw it first and buy it. Keep in mind, whatever it was that I bought at the fair, I could have probably bought it at a store for half the price.  But it wasn't the same; it had to come from the fair.

We also had to worry about what we were going to eat and drink at the fair.  Another family tradition at the state fair is this unspoken rule: you have to get a corndog at one of the booths in front of the fairgrounds on your way in.  Regardless if we got there at 9:00 in the morning or at 2:00 in the afternoon, we always stopped and got a corndog slathered in mustard.  We would also buy a lemon shake-up at the corndog booth to split between the three of us. To this day, whenever I go to the fair, I still do the same thing.  I could have just gotten up from the dinner table 30 minutes earlier, but I still have to get a corndog as soon as I get to the fair.

Another thing I worried about was what to take in my purse.  Sure, I had the prerequisite wallet with all of my money, Kleenax and a Chap-Stick.  But other things had to be packed for my trip to the fair.  One of the most important things I took was another tradition, handed down from Grandma and Mom: a wet wash cloth inside a plastic bag closed with a twist-tie.  I don't remember going anywhere with Mom and Grandma when they didn't have a wet wash cloth in their purses.  It could have been the dead of winter on a Christmas shopping trip, and Grandma and Mom would whip out the wash cloth and wipe my face or hands if I'd gotten messy. So in the event that they let me go off by myself for a bit,  I brought my own wet wash cloth just in case.

A lot has changed since the August trips to the fair.  We never go on a Saturday, because it's way to crowded, and to stay all day is totally out of the question.  If we do go together as a family, it's on a week day, where we get there at 9:00 just to get a decent parking space, and we're usually back home worn out by no later than 1:30.  We still get our corndog when we first arrive, too. I still wonder if I've brought enough money to pay for parking and the high-priced food. But the wet wash cloth has since been replaced by little packs of wet wipes.