Starts with K

I have a confession.

I’ve been a resident of this state for 40 years and have never been to the Minnesota State Fair.

While my sons are all men now, most with families of their own, there was a time when having four kids in six years seemed … daunting.

We rarely took vacations, worked a lot, and had to budget hard for the trifecta: Christmas, back-to-school shopping, and the Steele County Free Fair.

The last two were uncomfortably close together, folks, but there was never a doubt that both would happen. There was no way we would not pack into the van and drive to Owatonna for the fair.

I don’t remember buying all-you-can-ride wristbands for the boys, because I honestly don’t think they existed then.

Instead, we did strategic-ish planning at the car before hitting the midway each of the three days we went. It was almost always three days; never two, rarely four.

When the kids were really little, it was more of a sightseeing event. They loved looking at the animals. They loved just watching the rides. They definitely had a love/hate relationship with the games of chance. They were content with a lemonade and some cotton candy or kettle corn. Maybe a hot dog.

Once they hit the age of 6, each kid had $25 per day to spend however he wanted – a very unsettling feeling for poor Jack, the baby. He cried the first year he leveled up into the cash, because, “I don’t even know the fair!”

We parents paid for the day’s meal and all beverages, but any games, rides or miscellaneous purchases – $15 caricature anyone? Unwise. – had to come out of the $25. It’s not as cruel as it seems: Rides were two or three tickets each, with each ticket $1. On kids’ day, they were even cheaper.

The days were long. We still traveled in a pack, staying in the same vicinity on the midway so nobody would snatch them away. There were literal hours wiled away while somebody agonized over what prize to select. Fates – despite our name – are an unreasonably unlucky bunch, so a win at anything was not to be hurried.

As the boys got older, they were able to peel off from the family, with a meeting time and place determined and repeated multiple times before they were released into the wild.

I was an unlikely judge of the talent show for years, which was always on Sunday, one of our three fair days. When it was over, we’d pile back into the van, sunburned and dusty and always criticizing my votes for the talent show finalists.

The last day of the fair was bittersweet; it was fun, but lordy, I was exhausted. I think we all were.

So when people inevitably asked me a couple of weeks later if we were heading up to the state fair, it was an easy “no,” and here’s why:

For 40 years, I’ve attended what I call “The Second Greatest Minnesota Get-Together” – the Steele County Free Fair – and it’s absolutely been more than enough.