All's Fair...

I’m no Southerner, lets get this straight. I like my hot dogs disgusting and my requests for time answered with a cut “fuck you”. But I couldn’t resist one last shot at tasting the South. As fate would have it, I was in Louisville in time for the good ol’ Kentucky State Fair.

I honestly had no idea what to expect. Maybe some giant melons, both grown and implanted. A few heifers, bovine and otherwise. And maybe I’d see their world-famous mullets (it’s a type of fish, look it up).

Oh, it was all that and more. It was like Trace Adkins, the cast of High School Musical, and the Village People all in one place. Never before have I seen such an unholy clusterfuck of latent homoeroticism, dated references, modern pop assholes, and sheer unadulterated redneck. I’m actually unable to truly explain it. But let me put it to you this way: Trace Adkins, the cast of High School Musical, and the Village People were all slated to perform in concert.

The fairgrounds were absolutely massive. The parking lots seemed to dwarf Disney. The complex was so massive it functioned as a convention center and a minor league baseball stadium simultaneously during the fair off-season. So massive that people used golf carts to drive from Point A to B. That was especially fun, as some rich old money was in attendance. The more influential the visitor, the more tricked out their golf cart.

Upon entering, I wandered around a great hall, equal parts confused and scared. I was tripping harder than on cough syrup. I was in a giant room, one which could easily fit a football field, within which stretched an endless ocean of livestock. Cows, horses, pigs, and sheep, lovingly tended by their owners. The sheared sheep even had sweaters, ironically made of wool, with patterns ranging from military fatigues to superhero tights.

Escaping this twilight zone, I found myself just in time for the National Horse Championship. Forsaking the need for a ticket, I sat down in one of the nice seats near the front. If that seems wrong to you, consider how empty the stands really were. Even in this redneck paradise no one cared. When I saw what the ‘competition’ was, I realized why. Little ponies trotted out pulling little carts that resemble old Model T’s without an engine or chassis, containing unusually short men in formal wear. They loop around the room, performing breathtaking maneuvers at 5mph, getting judged on imperceptible differences. The most interesting part was that apparently William Shatner was in the audience somewhere. I never saw him. I was disappointed, having already seen George Takei at Pridefest and Leonard Nemoy turning tricks on the street corner.

Speaking of George Takei, there was a surprising density of gays at the State Fair. Maybe they came for the Village People. Or the cast of High School Musical.

As I continued on, the rooms only got bigger. The central terminal looked just that, like an airport terminal. A redneck airport full of airplane-sized people. The amount of fat was uncanny. There may have been even more fatty scooters than golf carts. One of the jetplane hanger-sized rooms contained all the commercial shit, hicks hawking their wares, ranging from clothes to hats to jewelry to expensive remote-controlled mechanical horses from Panasonic. The jewelry was most interesting, ranging from expensive and classy to rhinestone spellings of slogans including “I like cats”, “I [heart] slots” and “Bitch!”. This room connected to the competition hall, the bread and butter of your State Fair. Everything conceivable was judged, including vegetables, pies, quilts, beer, old postcards, older toys, ancient Christmas ornaments, and surprisingly, art, both classical and modern. Most of the animal judging was elsewhere, but the fish competition was in this hall. Someone entered a turtle in the fish-judging competition. I’m guessing it was the man with the rattail and Bluetooth headset, a wonderful commentary on the modern South.

Considered the potpourri of a State Fair to the one or two people who know that dictionary zinger, the Demonstration Room was the most interesting, at least to me. It had all the miscellaneous things. For example, each county in the state had its own posterboard and display. One county proudly showcased a working moonshine still from one of their many illegal cottage booze factories. The police had a few displays, including a car safety demonstration with a mechanized rolling car chassis, a tractor crash safety demonstration with a rolling tractor (apparently there are far more tractor-related deaths than I would’ve guessed), and a gun safety booth for kids featuring Freedom the Gun Safety Eagle. Also for children was the National Guard’s inflatable obstacle course – the military, having trouble meeting their recruitment goals because of Iraq, is apparently again widening their age range. The state legislature had Civics Jeopardy, a surprisingly high-brow exhibit at the fair. Unsurprisingly, I trounced the people who actually lived in the state. The Historymobile made a cameo appearance. And the Department of Healthy gave out free screenings for almost every ailment imaginable… except obesity.

The food booths including a wide variety of fares, including faux-italian, faux-greek, and faux-healthy. The overall variety wasn’t all that noteworthy. What is worth mention was the variety of things one could find deep fried. Deep fried dough, deep fried potatoes, Deep fried Snickers, Oreos, Twinkies, hot dogs, and PB&J sandwiches – crustless, naturally.

My cast-iron stomach finally rendered queasy, I figured it was time to make a break for it. As I made my way back through the “As Seen On TV” Hell I’d passed through before, I noticed a few fantastic booths I’d missed on my first pass. First was the weapons booth, where the one-armed Vietnam vet from the Simpsons was selling comically oversized knives. I wisely declined to ask what happened to the arm. The sausage booth purported to sell grinded meat from nearly every non-endangered animal obtainable, including emu, alligator, and cat. I wisely declined to mention the irony of pussy sausage. The Australian hat-and-boomerang booth naturally caught my attention. The man behind the counter met my gaze with a bombastic “G’day, mate!” I asked him what part of Australia he was from. He responded, “Sydney, mate!” in his exceedingly thick accent. “Where in Sydney?”, I countered. “I was born in Newcastle but moved here when I was young,” came his now nearly accentless response.

Oh, and how could I forget the booth head and shoulders above all the rest in popularity and business, the lotto booth.

I’d learned a few valuable life lessons from the Kentucky State Fair. One, there isn’t much that cant be deep fried. Two, trying to make a record-breaking giant vegetable will just result in a horrifying unedible mutant. Three, tractors are rather dangerous, treacherous things. And finally, most stereotypes about the South were very much true. Hell, that’s what my whole road trip taught me. I came to experience different ways of life, and experience them I did. I was ready to return to my little speck of blue in the giant sea of red. Four hours later, I did just that.