What an amazing difference a year can make. Last year, we rather wheeled Nicholas about in his stroller and he still fit in the drop-in baby carrier. This year, we still had the stroller but we also had a much bigger boy to cart round the place.
As is our custom, we went on the day where you can donate a few cans and get free admission. Food Lion has taken the sponsorship of that away from Winn-Dixie and from what we could see, they were doing quite well filling those 53′ trailers full of cans for our less-fortunate friends. I rather agree with Harry Chapin that hunger in a country as abundant as ours should have been a thing of the past. So our donations duly made (with some extras for people without cans), it was time to visit the fair on a very overcast day.
The clouds may have been out in force but that sure didn’t dampen our spirits. The fair means rides, pigging out on fair food (which ranges from fair to bonzer), and just generally having a good time away from work and the concerns of the world.
Nicholas got to ride for the first time…he went on the spinning bears ride, the carousel (where he held on for dear life as the operator was running the thing at Mach 1.5!), the flying helicopters, and the spinning tea cups. But where I think he had the most fun was the pony ride and the petting zoo.
Yep, the same petting zoo where people were diagnosed with E.coli because they couldn’t obey the signs printed in 72 point type telling them to wash their hands at the Purell stations just outside of the exhibit. Not that I would wish E.coli on anyone, but gee…read the signs, will ya? None of that fazed Nicholas in the slightest…he waded in amongst the animals with utter abandon. I couldn’t help but laugh when this rather prissy pre-teen was complaining about being scared of the goats and here is Nicholas (much younger!) chasing them and if challenged, challenging them right back. The boy just doesn’t have any fear. He chased goats, stared camels in the eye, and made friends with the llamas. If he could have stayed in there for two or three hours, he probably would have.
At that point, the rains started and we managed to duck into the Butcher Boys shack for dinner. With the obligatory funnel cake dessert, it was time to make the long trek to the tram that would take us to the Escape on the other side of Carter-Finley for the drive back to Zebulon. And I assure you, we were tired and utterly stuffed…if you can imagine Templeton the Rat (from Charlotte’s Web) after his forays into the buffet that was the county fair, then you know just how we were feeling. We don’t remember much more than that other than having pleasant dreams of our time at the Fairgrounds.
