state of a fair

I meant to post this a while ago because it amused me so greatly, but procrastination kicked in and here we are several weeks later. Good things come to those who wait, so here's the good thing...

Sorry for the glare from my camera phone, but yes, ladies and gents, this is a statue of Superman carved in butter. I found this amazing specimen of artery-altering superhero at the Iowa State Fair. No, I didn't make a trip to Iowa just to see it. I was in town for meetings at work (I'm sure there's a long story about why we're headquartered in the otherwise predominantly corn-populated state of Iowa, but I don't know it), and we had a choice of going out to dinner or to the Iowa State Fair. A Florida co-worker of mine had attended a year or so ago and was awestruck by the size of it. I thought it surely couldn't compare to the amazing yearly shindig that is the MN State Fair, but I endeavored to reserve judgment until actually attending. Oh yeah, I was so right!!

For starters the Iowa version, while apparently large to the average out of state visitor, is definitely smaller than its northern counterpart. And the crafts building was underwhelming in comparison. The MN fair has huge buildings where you can see quilting and paper mache and wood carving and flower arranging and every other imaginable "competitive" homey art form. I'm pretty sure we walked most of the Iowa buildings, and there was one little one with some good sized vegetables on one end, the buttery Superman in the middle, and upon rounding the far corner we found a flower arranging section. I was searching to see if all were from grade-school entrants, but I couldn't find anything to confirm nor deny that. To give the arrangers the benefit of the doubt, it looked like they had to start with only local foliage, but some had oddball things sticking out, such as tennis rackets or golf clubs--completely randomly. Now, if there were some sort of category signage in the area such as "Native Wildflowers with Sports Equipment, If Desired," it would have at least made it clear that the eccentric entries were due to a local cultural category quirk rather than some sort of deluded idea by the arranger that they actually looked good. Your guess is as good as mine.

It was definitely fun to walk around and be reminded of the Midwest though. I saw a pig being born, an elk with gargantuan antlers, a 3000+ pound bull, another smaller one that was being sold to someone who owned a McDonald's, a fun little country quartet singing outside one of the barns and people sashaying in the street, and of course the food--there's no place like a fair to fill up on deep fried cheese curds (which nobody seems to know about, outside of Midwestern state fairs), mini donuts, and all manner of foods on a stick.

All in all, Iowa's was quite a respectable state fair, but I must keep my loyalties to my home state and hope to attend my favorite Minnesota State Fair again some year soon!