A Fair By Any Name is Still So Sweet

September 2019

Going to the Los Angeles County Fair always gives me a giggling “superiority complex” when I compare it to the “real” fairs of the Midwest I grew up going to.

I will never forget the first time I took my four young kids to the L.A. Fair. They had already been to our Indiana Kosciusko County Fair by then. Our Kosciusko Co. fair is small potatoes compared to the gigantic, wondrous, and multitudinous State Fairs of the Midwestern States, but it’s still a real fair, with barns of competing 4H entries, with scores of animal and crafts barns, and a midway to rival the Mouse’s, and all that. The first time that I, with great excitement, took my young kids to the L.A. fair, I remember so clearly that we had been strolling around a while and my children were already hot, and sweaty, and cranky, and hating the whole “fun” day. And of course, my kids were kinda hating me by then for “forcing” them to go to a Fair. You aren’t laughing if you have never been a parent of young kids, and you aren’t laughing if you currently are parenting young children whom you are forcing fun things on, like going to fairs and amusement parks. BUT if you once upon a time were a parent of young kids, and you have survived them, then you are laughing with recognition at how much your kids once “hated” you for the fun things you took them to.

So the first time I took my four young children to the L.A. Fair, I finally walked up to and asked one of the Los Angeles Fair workers, “Where are all the animals?”