A fair day and a sip of merlot please

I've got a big assignment today. At 8:30, I need to be at the fairgrounds to do my duty as a judge. Bill will be there too, as will my sister Barbara. I'll be judging the creative writing entries and whatever else Rhonda dumps on me at the last minute. Back to that in a moment.

As for Barbara, she's been assigned 4-H photography. She's pulled that duty before. In addition, she's judged the open class photography. She doesn't like to do that department because she'd rather be entering her own photographic work, but to enter your own stuff and then judge it is just not kosher. Fair judges need to maintain the same ethics as trial judges----disinterest, expertise, FAIRness, etc.

As a professional forester and Eagle Scout, Bill will be using his experience to judge the 4-H forestry projects and the backpacking. This is his first judging duty in about 20 years. He was recalling last night how the trends seem to go with whatever 4-H leader the kids happen to have. It's often feast or famine, according to the person in charge of the project.

In some 4-H clubs, leaders are dedicated experts in the field. They study every aspect of the project and pass along that knowledge to their youngsters. As Bill says, you give one kid in that group a blue ribbon and it's likely most of the others will earn the same because they've been well-coached.

In other groups, however, leaders assigned to a project may function in name only, just to satisfy a signature on the required project book. Unless the kids are individually motivated, the quality of their projects can be pretty hit and miss. Pretty much the way it is in the real world.

Now back to my assignment, I'm feeling fairly confident that, like last year, I'll have just a few creative writing entries to judge. That gives Rhonda the opportunity to assign me to another department, just like last year when she asked me at the last minute to judge open-class wine. For some reason, there are no 4-H wine projects.

Anyway, two other men (Rhonda's husband and Bob, the fairgrounds maintenance man) and I gathered at a table in the middle of the main exhibit building with a superintendent to sample the works of Bonner County's amateur vintners. I told Rhonda I'd never judged wine before, and that I'm a cheap drunk. One glass of wine. One beer---that's usually it for me. She wasn't concerned; after all, she had other judges to round up for other categories.

So, there we sat. The guys gave me a few pointers. The superintendent began pouring wine samples into three glasses. A sack of saltine crackers sat before us. As the judging continued, our moods lightened but not our rigid discernment. About halfway through the process, we came upon a bottle which prompted me to get more vocal.

After all, I'd never judged wine before, so up to that point, I politely sipped and otherwise kept my big mouth shut. The guys did all the commentary and made the decisions, which I went along with. The superintendent recorded our final judgments.

Well, on this particular bottle, I decided I'd watched and listened long enough.

"I don't like the smell," I announced. The guys sniffed. One said he rather appreciated its odor, while the other decided to be nice and agree with me. Feeling emboldened, I continued on.

"Eeeeyou! This is really bitter," I announced after taking my sip. "Yuck, this really tastes like crankcase." Again, one guy stuck up for the wine, while the other once again politely deferred to my negative judgment. I think it was huckleberry wine, but it didn't taste like any huckleberries I'd ever sampled. Maybe they were Arizona huckleberries.

Anyway, after listening to enough of my continued hypercritical commentary, the guys agreed to award that that bottle of wine a white ribbon. As I've often said from my own fair experience with mad cows and bad seams, white ribbons are the humiliating ribbons that basically say, "Thanks for showing up."

My job in this wine-judging venture was to wash the glasses in between sampling. So, I took them to the fountain, rinsed them out, headed back and met with the stunning news that the wine we'd just judged had been fermented by the superintendent assigned to record our comments and our findings. She'd kept her mouth shut until AFTER I'd made my scathing comments about her home huckleberry brew. Fortunate for me, she also kept her fists firmly planted in her lap.

The only cure for escaping this foot-in-mouth disease sat on the table in the form of the next three bottles we had left to judge. From that point on, I simply sipped and agreed with whatever my male counterparts had to say.

I doubt very much that Rhonda will ask me to judge the wine this year. Maybe she'll send me to pick the best pocket pet!