Clinton Lion's Fair

I had a pretty rough day today, so Amanda took me to the Clinton Fair this evening. Its only about ten minutes from our house, and it was a great few hours to spend this evening. For us, the food is the main event anytime we go to any fair--we had sausage, corndogs, doughboys (which is "mainespeak" for fried dough), and caramel apples. The whole concept of a corndog is ingenious: its a salty, fatty food, deep fried in the middle of sweet corn bread . . .and its on a stick! So you can be fat AND lazy. My philosophy is that if its on a stick, it can't be bad. Try and think of a food on a stick that isnt wonderful--terryaki, popsicles, corn dogs, and muppet. Delicious.

We strolled around and people-watched (Clinton is pretty "rural" to put it lightly). We checked out some cute little barnyard friends, like the Alpaca and goat you see pictured. The little baby goat you see saddened us--it was in a pen with six other grown up goats, and every time it went to go eat at the hay pile, the bigger goats would "ram" him out of the way. They knocked him onto his side, and he looked defeated. He was a runty little thing, so I hope he got some yum-yums in his little goat belly.

There was a "guesser" there, and he had a job I'd love to have. Basically, you gave him 3 bucks, and he randomly picked a question off the wall like "How many children do you have?" and "What time did you get up this morning?" and "What year is your automobile." There were also ones about your weight and age. I would imagine this man has lots of fun at work. But, I bet its tough too--14 year old girls from Clinton might have 3 or 4 children by that point in their lives, and the questions about what time you got up might prove difficult, because a lot of people in Clinton cannot tell time yet. More appropriate questions might be "how many original teeth do you still have" or "how many of your sisters have you married."

Our favorite part, after the food, had to be the tractor pulls. After trains, tractors are our favorite things in the "machine" category of things in this world. You see these old men (and women too!) riding these beautiful rust encrusted machines that have probably seen generations worth of work out in real farms. They aren't "hybrids," and they use a TON of gas . . .and they are beautiful. They make roaringly loud noises as they struggle to pull tons of weight (literally) down a 300 foot track. It is a very "Maine" thing to watch. You hear the announcer say things like "Let's see if Ephram can give 'er the whatfor to put 'er through the backyard" which, loosely translated, means let's see if Effie can shift her right so she can clear the track.

Or something like that . . .