the fair

I am going to go out on a limb and say my favorite, fondest memory of kidhood was the Danbury Fair. Came to town 2 weeks every fall and the friday before Columbus Day was fair day. All of the Danbury schools had the day off & all kids were given a free pass to the fair for that day. Columbus day being a larger holiday up north(more Italians) we would have a 4 day weekend but that friday we would go the fair. It was christmas & your birthday all rolled into one-there were rides, games, elephants, the big top with all sorts of silly things to buy-mom & dad still have their first ginsu purchased under the big top, cap guns, those little popper things,oxen pull, cows, horses, the Clydesdale's, chocolate covered frozen bananas, lumber jack contest-I guess that would be strong man now, ooh zeoplis, the Sleepy Hollow Ichabod crane statues & bridge, Paul Bunyon & babe statues, sheep, pigs, Dutch village windmill and all, cowboy hats(Danbury is hat city after all), the cannons where we would eat warm gingerbread & drink hot cider before heading home, the paddle boat ride, car racing-if you've seen Arthur you've seen the track at the Danbury fair. They also had races every saturday night in the summer you could always hear it from the house, we even went once or twice. God I could gone on for days! I remember one year mom had surgery or was sick or something Dad took us for just 2 hours & we were heart broken. The first year I was allowed to hang with my friends for a few hours without adults-of course we kept loosing people and spent our precious time unsupervised riding trams back & forth looking for 1 or 2 people. The last year of the fair in '81 we were allowed the whole day with friends, well we were "grown-up" freshman in high school after all..and yes the beloved fair grounds is a
mall-granted it did give me a job for several years and sort of eventually kind of brought me to the south so it wasn't all bad I suppose but I wish the fair was still around!
And all of these leads me to the Tennessee Valley Fair in Knoxville each fall, in the 15 years I have lived here for some reason I have never been until now. We have plans to go next Saturday and I can't wait I am so excited been talking it up to C who is clueless about it all so he doesn't even know he should be excited too, so I will excited enough for both of us!!