Romance Is In the Air--Or Is That Diesel Fumes?

A. announced yesterday morning, after softening me up with home-made blueberry sour cream blintzes, that he was going to take me on a date. To the state farm exhibition. Be still my beating heart.

Let it be known that I am not a big fan of fairs and festivals like this. I have been to more than my fair share in the past six years with A. and they are always hot and sunny, yet inexplicably muddy and filthy. A word of advice: If you ever go to an outdoor fair or festival, do NOT wear sandals, no matter how hot it is. Especially if there may be animals present. You will regret it.

BUT ANYWAY.

A. wanted to go. He was getting restless being at home all the time. This is not a problem I have, but after much sighing and grumbling, I gave in to the inevitable, smeared sunscreen on my face, put on socks and tennis shoes, and got in the car.

Now. This exhibition is big--300 acres. And the entire 300 acres are filled with farm machinery. That's pretty much it. Well, there were a few barns with a couple of beef cows, some food tents offered by the New York State Beef and Pork Growers, and several chewing tobacco tents, but for the most part, it's all farm machinery. Plows and combines, seeders and harvesters and I don't even know what else. It's a definite statement about what it means to be a farmer nowadays. It's the sort of place where a rant about the evils of high fructose corn syrup would get you lynched by a crowd of sunburned men in jeans and Cargill feed caps.

Incidentally, about those chewing tobacco tents? We passed no fewer than four, and it is possible to go into each venue (if you're 18, of course) and leave with three free cans of tobacco. Which means, if you hit up each one (and we saw at least one guy who had a bag from every vendor), you could pick up a dozen free cans of chewing tobacco. This seemed weird to me, so I asked A. why the tobacco companies do that. He explained that chewing tobacco is highly addictive, so they give it away free to hook new customers. Nice.

On a related note, when A. worked digging ditches in Phoenix in the 110 degree heat, there was always free chewing tobacco in the work trucks for the laborers. They didn't get a lunch break, but there was free tobacco, dammit. That's messed up.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, right. The farm exhibition. We only stayed a couple of hours. Long enough to consume an enormous pulled pork sandwich each, pick up some information about an upcoming goat and sheep symposium (yes, this is my life), and dehydrate ourselves pretty thoroughly wandering around in the sun. Then I whined enough to convince A. we should go home before I succumbed entirely to heat stroke on our hot date. (HAAAA!! Geddit? Hot date? Oh, I slay me.)

The end.