County fair finds

A visit to the county fair is always a must in summer around here and this year was no exception. My husband and I met up with friends and their kids there. Our first stop, before we visited the farm animals, which we both like to see, was the old one-room country schoolhouse that they have on the premises as a small museum.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so the cellphone had to do the job. Still, I was glad to have at least a way to get the picture of the 1915 Rules for Teachers above, which are hilarious and disturbing all at once ("You may not dress in bright colors"!!??). I definitely would've been fired, if I'd been a teacher back then (for that and many other reasons probably!).

What teachers had to know before they were accepted into teaching, below, would have also sealed my doom, since there's a lot of that I don't know how to answer even today.

We then went on the look for the Día de los Muertos calavera that the daughter of a nurse I know here in town made for her 4H project. We figured it would be the only Latin@ artifact in the whole fair so it was worthwhile having to search from exhibit to exhibit until we did find it (too bad for the fuzzy picture). Good for her to have done such a great job!

We then moved on to the animal pens, first and foremost to the draft horses, which are glorious and I took that picture of the hoof prints on the concrete floor because the horses were in their shaded stalls and I couldn't get a good shot of them. We did see one horse that seemed unhappy to be penned and kept kicking his stall and ignoring his owner's shouts to stop, and two other horses who were tied next to each other and started bickering and one tried to kick the other one. Quite a lot of action for a small fair.

Finally, we met up with our friends and their kids, and after funnel cake and lemonade (they had pulled pork and my husband had a caramel apple) we went on to watch the Figure 8 Bus Racing, which was funny in a sort of disturbing way, especially given the very dark smoke emanating from the buses as they tried to outrun or collided into each other. "Has anyone heard of the environment?" I asked.

Then there were rides for the kids (I went with the girls to watch them go on Berry Go Round and the tiny fake helicopter rides) and a visit to the petting zoo where we saw and fed kangaroos, a fawn, a domesticated skunk (probably de-glanded), antelopes and goats.

Cotton candy to go and we were done with this year's fair. Next year, I will remember to bring my camera and will, hopefully, find even more things to record.