Yes, yes, I know. It is a play on words...
On Monday, Jeanie and I went to the fair with our friend Andrew.
Andrew was our inspiration / motivation - he sent us an email asking if we wanted to join him in going.
The reason Andrew chose Monday, was that he had seen that Mike Cross was performing that night.
Mike Cross is a great performer and entertainer. He is one of the few performers whose live performances are much more than real-time performances of his music. In the great old tradition of the Appalachians, his show is a combination of stories, music, song, and humor. He is not as widely known as he should be because he made the decision to spend time with his wife and children - at the expense of fame and fortune - rather than spend 300+ nights a year on the road seeking fame and fortune at the expense of his family. Given his talent, had he chosen the "other" road, I think he would have been a big country / folk star.
Given my previous writings on the subject of concerts, you might wonder why I would go to this one. Well, first off, all of my Mike Cross recordings are on vinyl. For all of you who aren't members of the Bloggers Over Forty webring, vinyl is what music used to be recorded on, before there were CDs. Since I don't even have my turntable (the thing used to play records) connected to my stereo (gee, I really am dating myself, no?) anymore, I don't get to hear Mike's music much anymore. Also, admission to the concert was included in the price of the admission to the fair (all of $6.00). Now, I must admit, we did opt to purchase better, reserved seats for the show. These set us back a whole five extra dollars each!
The show was thoroughly enjoyable, and brought back some fond memories.
The rest of the time at the fair was equally enjoyable.
We arrived around 4:30 PM, thus beating most of the traffic.
We wandered around the midway, made our mandatory visits to the cows, poultry, and rabbits. As expected, it took all of Jeanie's willpower to not try to sneak off with a duck chick under her coat.
As we had hoped, Jeanie's Aunt Jessie and Uncle Lyman were at the rabbit exhibit. We got an added treat of finding Jeanie's Aunt Hattie and Uncle Howard visiting with Jessie and Lyman. And, in an incredible feat of foresight, Hattie and Howard even thought to bring Jeanie's toiletries case that she had forgotten at their house months ago - just on the off chance that we would come to the fair while they were there.
While we didn't go totally overboard on fair food, we did eat our fair share (sorry, couldn't resist). Jeanie had her roasted corn, and we shared a London broil sandwich and a smoked turkey leg. For dessert, we shared some fantastic sopapillas, and Jeanie had a caramel apple.
As a wonderful finale to our evening, we enjoyed the nightly fireworks show, which was surprisingly long and good - around fifteen minutes with lots of big shells.
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Posted by David at October 22, 2003 11:24 AM | Categorized under: A day in the life