A Fair Amount of Work for an Old Lady

Those ribbons and that prize money do not come easily.  In fact, when I think back on the $3 for every blue ribbon, $2 for every red and $1.50 for every white, I don't think it ever did.

They talk about inflation.  As I think back, local fair premiums have been pretty much immune from inflation throughout the span of my lifetime.  

Did blue ribbons at the fair ever earn more or less than $3?  Probably not.

I was talking to a lady the other day who told me about her local fair somewhere else.

"It was hard to go home without earning around $300 for the ribbons," she told me.  That astronomical amount was pretty foreign to my ears, and, really,  it does not matter.

If people enter stuff in the fair to make money, they might have their priorities screwed up a bit---unless they're 4-H'ers, that is.  I can remember times when my 4-H premium money served as the big paycheck of the year. 

The only other cash cow that trumped anything earned at the fair was the News Bulletin subscription contest when I earned $17 and lost every penny of it.  

People will tell you not to carry your big wads of money around with you, but at that time as an 11-year-old, I would not listen.

That was the most money I'd ever laid hands on and figured it would be quite some time before such a bonanza ever happened again. So, I liked to show it off.

Well, my pride got the best of me when my wallet filled with those greenbacks slipped from my pocket one day while I was riding the Delamarter's horse Blackie.  

She liked to rear, and, as a youthful daredevil,  I liked riding her when she reared.  Apparently her shock absorbers didn't work with Blackie cuz somewhere along that ride, the wallet popped out, and I never found it again.  

As for our 4-H fair premium money, it usually went straight to First Federal Savings and Loan and sat there until Christmas time when Mother would take us down to withdraw funds from our big accounts of maybe $23.  We'd always leave some seed.  

The withdrawals served as our funds for purchasing Christmas gifts. 

Every year we worked for months to earn those 4-H premiums at the fair, and yesterday I decided that the bureaucratic obligations associated with entering open class exhibits these days is almost as challenging.

I suggested to some superintendents yesterday that filling out each exhibit ticket three times with all the same information, only sometimes in different order,  is almost worse than filling out a tax return.

It took me almost an hour to fill out my exhibit tags for seven photos alone.  I took the rest of the tags with me for homework, and the job still isn't done.  The homework tags will go on whatever veggies and flowers I decide to enter.

At this point, I will divulge to readers a piece of information that occurred to me a year after the fact.  First, I must tell you that they asked me at the in-gate yesterday what my fair number was.

Last year we got assigned fair numbers, but nobody told us to remember them.  So, I had to tell the superintendents I did not know what my number was.  They assigned me a new one, and today for future use, I'll post it:  5117.  

Okay, next year when I enter stuff, I can come back to my blog posting for today and know my number.  

Anyway, back to the original digression:  last year the lady handed me a bunch of yellow exhibit tags.  I filled out seven total.

Last year I won seven blue ribbons (yeah, 21 bucks for Christmas gifts!).  

Well, things started dawning on me last week after the discovery that for me be in a different photography division from my sister Barbara I had to be 65.  

When I pressed Barbara on her assumption that her big sister was 65, she said, "Well, you were in all those senior divisions last year, and, besides,  you keep talking about Medicare."

Well, it quite often takes a while for me to siphen out information coming from various venues and subsequently draw proper conclusions.   

In fact, it took until yesterday to realize that the lady at the superintendent's table last year ASSUMED---yes, ASSUMED that I was 65, so she gave me yellow exhibitors' tags. 

It also dawned on me, thanks to Barbara's comment, that I had inadvertently cheated when I won those seven blue ribbons last year.  

I was competing against all the old people because I did not know that the yellow exhibitors' tags meant you were supposed to be old.

After this lightbulb went on and before I went to the fairgrounds to enter my photography, I decided to keep my big trap shut at the superintendents' desk and see if that lady still thought I was old.

I walked in.  The same superintendent who gave me those yellow tags last year asked for my number.  I told her I couldn't remember my number from last year, quipping, "After all, I'm old; how would you expect me to remember?"

She said I'd have to select a new number, which I did.  Then, she asked how many items I planned to enter.   I said maybe as a many as 17.

The moment of discovery came.  She PICKED UP THE WHITE EXHIBITORS' TAGS and handed them over.

YES--I said to myself.  I'm young again!

And, as a youngster, I still have work to do.  Most of those white tags are filled out, so that means I have to go to the garden and select items that match each form filled out in triplicate.

If I'm lucky, I'll get it all done and down to the fair before the noon deadline.

So, I'd better get going to earn my wad from this year's county fair.  Happy Monday.