Today I showcase a fascinating assortment of another favorite picture book of mine, In Search of the Corn Queen. In it, Greta Pratt shares pictures of various county fairs in the American Midwest. Some are hopeful; some are hopeless. But all are a window into small town celebration.
This one gives me a glimpse of that adolescent excitement over what could be, with the whole world laid out before you, an endless possibility.
Like I said, boy, all you gotta do is pop 10 balloons to win those skateboards on the wall. It’s a piece of cake. Would I steer you wrong?
Drench the volleyball coach!
Dang, I thought I was hot, but she’ll totally be hotter than me in ten years, when I’m like, ancient or something.
I learned it from watching you, Dad.
No, that’s cool. You just sit in your overalls on the tailgate, and I’ll hold our wriggling young’un and try to down this cup of Mad Dog before I get pregnant again.
High point of the afternoon; winning bundt cake in the last round of the cake walk.
Good clean fun or a gateway to Spring Break mud wrestling?
Two tickets for a dollar, six tickets per ride, means three dollars for the ferris wheel, or I could just blow it all on a Fanta and funnel cake. What to do? What to do?
No, I am absolutely not living vicariously through my grandbaby.
Oh, yeah, life goes on. Long after the thrill of living is gone.
I Don't Get It 
You must have the coolest collection of picture books in the country.
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You just wait.
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I have pictures of our county fair, but they’re not as artsy. I find them much more humorous in a wry way.
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Humorous is even better.
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#3 down: (in my best Jeff Foxworthy Impression) If you see absolutely no irony in the fact that the carnival barker calling out for you to win a stuffed animal is smoking and looks like he has liver damage…. you…. just might be a redneck
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Bingo. Yes, he does seem a bit…wizened. I don’t see him swinging by Whole Foods on the way home.
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Where is this? When is this?
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If you click on a pic, it will bring up the where and when in the pic name. So click on the three boys, and in the URL/web address up there on your upper left, it will say: osage-indian-heritage-festival-missouri-88.jpg. I’m sorry; I should have captioned them better, to make it easier.
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I always caption mine with bitter commentary.
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Ur a nutter, K. Well and truly. And I love it. 😀
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I will have to get my Australia to America dictionary and look up “nutter.” It must mean beautiful, talented, skinny woman…
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Haha yeah, it meants beautiful, talented, skinny CRAZY woman. hehe
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btw what part of the USA are you in?
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Texas, where I had to use half a can of hairspray on my coif today so the humidity wouldn’t destroy it.
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Good Lord how I loathe humidity. I grew on the Gold Coast, Queensland in Oz, where the humidity is very high. Imagine my delight (and dismay that I had not discovered ths place YEARS earlier…) when I moved to the mountains and discovered DRY HEAT. It is amazing! It is still a bit nasty at times but the humidity is so low here. It always amuses me when people complain about “the humidity” because they just don’t have a friggin clue what they are banging on about. lol
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But in the mountains, don’t you have to use chapstick to keep your lips moisturized?
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Amazing collection of images. Thank you for sharing!
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Thanks for stopping by! By strange coincidence, we passed a carnival today and spent an hour there. It looked a lot more like YOUR pics; bright and colorful, but with crazy carnies, drunk and smoking and too busy texting “my armed forces daughter in New Zealand” to look up and lock the kids’ rides into place. But my son won an enormous blow-up hammer, so that made his day.
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