Leave a CommentShare: |
Subscribe
The mecca of any festival….. Of course I had to have some funnel cake right away. I got apples and caramel toppings. I mean, when you are consuming a plateful of FRIED FAT, you want to feel like you’re doing something healthy for yourself with that fruit. I noticed another booth selling something called elephant ears, which appear to be even MORE fried fat fun, so I’m thinking I must try that next year!
Princess practiced balancing towering cones of ice cream, which will be a useful life skill, I’m sure. She didn’t even pretend to try to eat anything nutritious.
She also honed her ability to spend twenty dollars every ten minutes at the carnival winning stuffed animals at the game booths. She just about had to be dragged away from the carnival. She couldn’t get enough of it.
Oh, to be eleven….and spending your mother’s money.
She actually got me to climb on this DEATH TRAP on Saturday. She said the friend she tried to ride with started screaming so they made them get off (you have to ride with a partner). This, believe me, was such a tempting way for her to frame her plea for me to go with her. Then as we stood in line, the carnival operator kept shouting, “This ride is NOT AS FUN AS IT LOOKS. Please get out of line if you think you might be scared. This ride can be HORRIFYING for some people.” And let me tell you, when we were at the top hanging upside down in this tiny metal cage, I was wondering WHEN in the last twenty years they’d had a safety check…. But I probably wouldn’t have liked the answer, so maybe a good thing I didn’t know.
More my style is parade-watching. We watched from my cousin’s second-story office overlooking the square and the street where the parade comes down. We sat on the window ledges and ate fried fat.
Princess kept yelling “hi!” to people and we kept trying to convince her that they couldn’t hear her……
One of my parade favorites are the flag girls. Don’t these look pretty? It was a beautiful day for a parade. I can’t stand watching parades on TV. Bores me to death. But I do enjoy them in person. Especially a small town parade, always so quaint with the festival queen and her court, the varsity football players, the volunteer fire trucks, and all the marching bands.
West Virginia governor Joe Manchin was the parade grand marshal. Five minutes after he walked down the street, he was choppered away. Hmmpph.
We had so much fun just walking around and looking at everything. There were vendors and booths everywhere. I gave the kids cell phones so they could walk around the festival on their own (benefit of a small town) and meet up with their friends. Here (left) is my cousin’s cornmeal he was grinding and selling behind the courthouse. At one point we ran into 16 and I managed to snag a photo of him with his cute girlfriend before they disappeared again.
When I hooked up again with 14, here is what he had in his arms…..
He said, “Some girl asked me to hold her puppy then she ran away.”
Brief research revealed the girl had been spotted earlier with a litter of puppies in a giveaway box. Well, there you go, if you have a litter of kittens or puppies you can’t give away, walk up to someone in a crowd and ask them to hold one then run away! This works especially well if the person you hand it to is a child and their parent isn’t in the immediate vicinity.
The puppy threw up twice on the way home.
But, of course, what are we gonna do? We are people with SUCKER plastered on our foreheads. So, meet our new puppy. His name is Blue. He IS cute, isn’t he?
The cats are just THRILLED.
I entered the art and photography show with some of my pictures, but I must report that I won nothing. And what chance did I have?
This photo, of a SLICE OF CORNBREAD, won a third place ribbon.
Did I mention that it is a photo of a SLICE OF CORNBREAD?
I have big plans for next year, big plans, I’m telling you. Rolls of toilet paper. Crumpled napkins. Empty glasses of milk. I’ll beat that slice of cornbread yet…..
The 4-H livestock barn is always fun.
Pretty brown cows…..
Sheep!!!!!
And pigs!
You ever notice pigs make really scary noises?
8:27
am
8:54
am
Second, Blue is so adorable! I can’t believe it; you came home with a puppy. Okay, I *can* believe it. LOL. Pictures, pictures, pictures!
Third, the photo of the cornbread shouldn’t have been in the contest in the first place, never mind winning third place. Ridiculous. Now, a contest for best cornbread recipe is another matter.
Fourth, teach Princess to do the royal wave (yeah, I’m Canadian and we’re still a member of the Commonwealth) and next year, instead of shouting, she can wave in regal fashion.
Fifth, that’s a nice-looking sheep! No, really! I used to love going to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto — huge, international fair. Big to-do, show-jumping with riders from North American and Europe, etc. Lots of neat stuff. I still remember the butter sculptures one year…Waste of good butter, I thought, but I admit, they *were* works of art.
Sixth (and last–lucky you): No way, no how would I ever get on any ride where my body hung upside down in the air. *Barf* So I’m impressed you did it!
Great post, Michelle. Give Blue a cuddle and kiss from me. :smile:
-Kim
9:00
am
Ooooo sheep!
But I have to ask… what is funnel cake?
9:11
am
9:26
am
That cornmeal is really good! Not so much for photography, but… I buy a bag every year and use it for everything. It makes good polenta!
And no way was I going to get on that ride!!!! That is a puke machine if I’ve ever seen one! :sick:
9:38
am
10:07
am
All the best,
Vikki Russell
12:18
pm
A slice of cornbread, won a third place ribbon?! Unbelievable!
It sounds like y’all had a wonderful time. Especially Blue!
12:34
pm
2:13
pm
Blue is too cute!
2:28
pm
I’m a sucker for the funnel cakes as well. (Elephant ears are also good, but easy to make at home).
Congrats on finishing the book!
3:44
pm
Leanne
4:50
pm
Congratulations of finishing the book. I’m sure your kids are thrilled, that mom is going grocery shopping. *g*
Have a great day!
6:15
pm
Blue is so adorable.
Congrats on finishing your book.
8:14
pm
And you were ROBBED on the photo judging!!
9:17
pm
Maybe you should take a photo of that for next year. I’ll bet it might beat out the cornbread!
9:28
pm
10:28
pm
The puppy is adorable and I’m not even a dog/puppy person!
The ride does look terrifying.
The ice cream cone has me drooling on the keyboard and you’ve got me laughing so hard tears are forming in my eyes!
12:53
pm
10:35
pm
Like your site.
8:48
am
We just bought 7 acres and an old farmhouse set back far enough on a hill for privacy (and the best view of two sets of hills and valleys out my back window) but close enough to Rte 16 to get into town when it snows.
My great-grandmother had 240 acres in Jackson County (post office was Given, then Liberty). She bought that farm across the road from her family farm and the house where she was born in 1882 in 1932 at age 50. She worked hard, and was thrifty, so she had money during the depression to get a loan to buy that farm for $6,000.
She stayed on that farm, alone for the last 35 years, and only left when we dragged her off it when she had her fifth stroke. The farm was sold in 1969 for $25,000 and it had a farmhouse, two barns, and level rolling meadows, and a high pasture. If I had been a little bit older I would have bought it myself!
My great-grandmother had electricity (finally, in the 50′s), a well, an outhouse, but free gas to heat the house from the gas wells drilled on the property. (I’m still getting royalties each month from the tiny share passed down to me.)
I started this ramble because I realized when I had to explain what exactly a black walnut was to my friends in California where my mother moved in 1951. They had never heard of black walnuts, and had certainly never tasted one. I realized that I was born in California, but I was “raised” by WV — the values and traditions I learned from my WV family describe my view of the world.
I’ve wanted to move here my whole life, and finally, at age 55 I’m here. The rest of my California family is tolerant of the move, but they think I’m nuts. How do I explain that I was homesick for a place that never was my home?
7:52
pm
10:24
am
i want to go back to where the bell bird calls and the big old hawk rises up and up through the bowl of the sky through wisping mist and arcing rainbows…. smiles from sally
2:45
pm