County Fair Fabulousness

Well, Tim and I loaded up the kids and blew all our dough at the epic lunacy that is the county fair.

Not our county, either, but the next county’s.  I was sick two weeks ago when our county fair was going on, so I missed it.  That was fortuitous, because I hadn’t realized how truly awesome the next county’s fair actually was, even though I grew up in that nearby foreign land!

There were tractors, live hogs (I somehow missed the goats, AGAIN), free SnoCones for all, an auction, the midway, and lots and lots of trashy women in ill-fitting clothing, wearing flip-flops and smoking cigars.

One particular gal looked like she’d watched every eye makeup tutorial on Pinterest and YouTube combined, and decided to try them all out.  I saw 4H projects inside with less attention to detail than that!  

(But, oh, the 4H projects were divine.  My boys lingered in front of the cupcake decorating competition like starving men.)

Oh, what a cavalcade of inspiration.  I can’t wait to get back to writing Troll Or Park!!!!  

While we were leaving, our over-sugared, duly-shaken children, dazed from the spinning, whirling lights of their favorite ride (“The Barf-o-matic,” as they so charmingly call it) asked about the ruckus taking place at the back of the fairgrounds.

There were engines, a lot (a LOT) of loud country music, and people espousing the virtues of “mud bogs” over a well-tuned PA.

Tractor pull?  Maybe.  I stopped to ask a woman inexplicably shaking her ass between parked cars, what the event in question actually was.

“Mud drag!” she said, then she shrugged and got back to dancing in her cut off jeans.  Yep, you read that right.  Daisy Dukes, kiddies.

Do you think I make this stuff up?

I remember once, a wise man told me I could look out my window and just write stories about the things I see every day.  I scoffed.  Who would find that interesting?

Eventually I married that man and although he typically fails to read anything I write, I still thank him for the idea of writing about Indiana life.  I love it here.  I love its redneck honesty, it’s tacky wrongness, I love it backward and forward, I love its simplicity and beauty, I love it, I love the people, I love mud drags (although I haven’t seen one yet), I love lawn mower racing, I love homebrewed beer and basketball played on the farm at a hoop attached to a barn—even though dribbling the ball on grass is damned near impossible—I love summer hikes through freezing creeks, I love FARM SUPPLY STORES, I love the 4H fair and girls who overdo it with AquaNet and Maybelline instead of springing for the good stuff, because, by God, they like the way they look.

Yes, I like making fun of it, too, but I do genuinely love it.  

Ask anyone I love.  I love making fun of them, too.

Fun is fun, yo.

What about you?  What did you do last night? 

More inspiration for Troll Or Park is here.

The first book in the series is Troll Or Derby.  It is available now.