No fair

I want a Tom Thumb doughnut.

No, actually I want a whole bag of Tom Thumb doughnuts – all cinnamon scented and sugar crunchy, still hot from the fryer.

And I want to eat ‘em in the shade of a Sno-Cone stand, just down the street from the guy selling foot-long hot dogs with the aroma of hot grease and Pronto Pups heavy in the morning air.

It was Mom’s favorite State Fair breakfast, and I’m missing it.

Yeah, COVID-19 has dealt Minnesota a real gut punch this summer. Were it not for the immanent threat of dire sickness and death, folks from all over the state – heck folks from all over three or four states and parts of Canada – would getting things together to get together on 320 acres up in Falcon Heights to eat, drink and take turns on the Giant Slide. It’s State Fair time and the fact that there’s no fair is – well – no fair.

It’s been a long quiet summer that’s probably left a lot of Minnesotans a lot more svelte than usual at the end of a season usually featuring parades, brats, beer and deep-fried cheese at a different food-themed festival every weekend. And now, after a summer of outdoor exercise and reasonable eating, we’re left yearning for our traditional end of summer smorgasbord-on-a-stick. One more involuntary imposition of good health brought on by the ongoing plague.

But it’s tough. As a kid who grew up clambering over the big tractors up on Machinery Hill and sweating away a bored hour while Mom perused the hand stitched quilts and home canned green beans in the overheated exhibit buildings, going to the big fair in The Cities was a high point of every summer. I mean where else could a kid see the Worlds Largest Hog, fill up on Peter’s Wieners and swill All The Milk You Can Drink For a Dime?

Going to the fair was a chance to see things that just weren’t around every day. Like watching hometown girl Madge Stapleton sit in a refrigerated glass box while a bundled up artist carved her face into a block of butter, then heading over the Grandstand to see Liza Minelli belt out songs from Cabaret on a stage set where stock cars would race the next day.

It was a chance to collect a half dozen yardsticks and hit up the gimme-booths for enough pencils and ballpoint pens to last the coming school year, tossing the accompanying commercial propaganda into the nearest waste bin at the first opportunity.

Still, for a young fella fresh from the sticks, it could be a learning experience. I met my first real, live socialist at a dingy booth high up under the grandstand rafters, then came across the John Birchers a few yards down hawking copies of “None Dare Call It Treason” and “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.”

It was at the state fair that I first shook hands with Fritz Mondale and asked Mark Dayton if I could put his campaign contribution on my Target card. I sampled root beer milk at Senator Rudy Boschwitz’s campaign milk house and, just for yucks, picked up a couple of Jesse Ventura  bumper stickers – really, who would vote for a loudmouthed goofball pro-wrestler to be Minnesota’s governor?

But then, the fair’s a celebration of the unlikely – like deep fried Twinkies and Hotdish-on-a-stick. You can buy a miracle floor sweeper that magically attracts dog hair – as long as the dog lives on the fairgrounds, umbrella hats, a leash for your invisible dog or a wildly overpriced set of pots and pans pitched in a velvet tent by a velvet-voiced huckster with a deal “good only for the run of the fair…”

Well, there’s no deal this year. And that’s no fair.